Opening
Dragonball: Evolution Despite its flashy special effects and kung fu fight scenes, this adaptation of the popular Japanese comic book and cartoon is almost wholly devoid of excitement. The plot is standard issue stuff as an unlikely hero (Justin Chatwin) with a destiny bands together with a quirky supporting cast to save the earth from an evil alien warlord (James Marsters), learning a valuable lesson about being true to himself along the way. In the ’70s and ’80s, a movie like this would have been shot on the cheap with cheesy special effects, bad acting, a ridiculous script and plenty of rough edges showing. It most assuredly would have been bad, but it wouldn’t have taken itself too seriously and might even have been kind of fun. Dragonball Evolution may be better than that on a technical level, and the cast is at least blandly competent, but the end result is still a bad movie. Only with all the rough edges smoothed over, the fun is gone as well. * (Robert Ignizio).
Empire of Passion (Japan/France, 1978) Nagisa Oshima’s
follow-up to In the Realm of the Senses also deals with obsessed
lovers. Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque. At 5:30 p.m. Saturday,
April 11 and at 9 p.m. Monday, April 13.
Gomorrah Winner of the Grand Prix award at last year’s Cannes
Film Festival, director Matteo Garrone’s adaptation of Roberto
Saviano’s 2006 international best-seller is a no-holds-barred expose of
the Camorra, Italy’s most notorious mob cartel (their profits are
estimated at $233 billion per year). Five intersecting storylines
describe how the trickle down effects of organized crime affect the
lives of ordinary Neapolitan citizens in southern Italy. With its
multiple protagonists and dueling narrative arcs, Garrone’s
impressionistic mosaic is a lot closer to HBO’s Dickensian-dense The
Wire than it is to the gritty, hyper-romanticism of, say, The
Sopranos. If the film’s wealth of sociological detail takes some
getting used to — the first half hour may seem needlessly
confusing if you aren’t familiar with the Saviano source material
— the artistry and rigor of Garrone’s dispassionate, yet
harrowing vision is its own reward. Cedar Lee Theatre.
****(Milan
Paurich)
Hannah Montana: The Movie Hannah/Miley (Miley Cyrus) is out of control. Well, as out of control as a Disney diva can get. After a good old-fashioned shoe fight with Tyra Banks, she shows up late for her best friend’s birthday party and doesn’t make it to her brother’s going-away get-together. But dad (Billy Ray Cyrus) has a plan to get her back on track. He takes her back to her Tennessee home so she can get in touch with her true self. Predictably enough, Miley learns that “you can always find your way back home,” as she puts in a syrupy song. Teens and tweens will hyperventilate as Miley makes mistakes and then quickly learns from them. But between the predictable plot and the god-awful songs (all of which are rather poorly lip-synced), this movie is simply dreadful. * (Jeff Niesel)
In the City of Sylvia (Spain, 2007) A young artist sketches
girls who frequent his favorite café as he waits for the return
of the “one that got away.” Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque. At
9:10 p.m. Thursday, April 9 and at 7:40 p.m. Saturday, April 11.
In the Realm of the Senses (Japan/France, 1976) Based on a
true story set in pre-war Japan, Nagisa Oshima’s notorious film has
been banned many times over the past 30 years because of its graphic
sex scenes. But it’s no porno. With a solid narrative, credible acting
and skilled filmmakers at the helm, it’s more of an art-house movie
with lots of fucking. Lots of it, including onscreen
intercourse, blowjobs and a cum shot. The story centers on a married
man and a former prostitute now working as a hotel maid. They hook up
and quickly realize that both are addicted to sex. Their nonstop romps
eventually take on more sadomasochistic qualities. Needless to say, it
doesn’t end well. Senses is ultimately a tale of obsession. But
it’s also kinda hollow, with nothing really connecting — except
for the penises and vaginas, that is. Cleveland Institute of Art
Cinematheque. At 7 p.m. Thursday, April 9 and 9:20 p.m. Friday, April
10. ** 1/2 (Michael
Gallucci)
Kirikou and the Sorceress (France/Belgium/Luxembourg, 1998) A
baby boy battles a sorceress in this animated tale. Cleveland Museum of
Art Lecture Hall. At 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 8 and at 1:30 p.m.
Saturday, April 11.
Lumumba (France/Germany/Belgium/Haiti, 2000) Filmmaker Raoul
Peck had previously dramatized the career of slain Congolese leader
Patrice Lumumba in documentary form. This respectful but stolid
scripted version paints an equally heroic portrait of the martyred
statesman. Lumumba is introduced as a Congolese Nationalist Movement
activist (and beer salesman) in the 1950s, agitating for independence
from Belgium and, for many, embodying the progressive “new” Africa. But
after the Congo’s 1960 liberation, Lumumba and his infant parliamentary
democracy are beset by enduring tribal feuds, separatists in Katanga,
scars of colonial genocide and the Cold-War meddlings of France, the
U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Lumumba practically signs his own death warrant
by not selling out to a corporate superpower (unlike his pragmatic
onetime cohort, the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, who came to power in
1965), and CIA agents are there to oversee the resulting coup and
execution. The drama, most of it in flashback, unreels in drably
efficient socialist-realism style, with a dynamic (dare one say,
Obama-esque) lead performance by Eriq Ebouaney, a renowned
international actor who otherwise surfaces for Western white-devil
audiences from time to time in supporting parts in stuff like Femme
Fatale and Transporter 3. Cleveland Museum of Art Lecture
Hall. At 6:45 p.m. Wednesday, April 15. ** 1/2 (Charles Cassady)
Observe and Report Writer-director Jody Hill specializes in deluded, self-important antiheroes (The Foot Fist Way), and in this movie, he casts Seth Rogen as Ronnie Barnhardt, a volatile, bipolar mall security guard who lives with his doting mom, lusts after a pretty cosmetics clerk (Anna Faris) and dreams of becoming a real cop. If you think you’ve seen this before, know that this is the evil twin of Paul Blart: Mall Cop: same basic story, funnier but with the violence cranked up to 11. The story is about Ronnie’s plan to catch a flasher and thereby seize his chance at law-enforcement glory. His inept efforts pit him against an ambitious police detective (Ray Liotta). Rogen is always enjoyable, but he is defeated by Hill’s wobbly screenplay, which hasn’t decided whether Ronnie is a psychotic gun nut or a sweet, well-intentioned slob. The movie is replete with funny lines, and the scenes between Ronnie and his alcoholic mom (Celia Weston) are brilliant. It’s hard to understand, then, why Hill found it necessary to include so much ugly mayhem. You can’t just throw a lot of shooting into your movie and call it a “dark comedy.” Generally speaking, comedy and serious gun violence are a queasy mix. ** 1/2 (Pamela Zoslov)
The Room (U.S., 2003) Among film hipsters on the West Coast,
cult notoriety has been conferred upon
writer-director-producer-star-mogul Tommy Wiseau’s tragic psychodrama
as a prime example of cinematic bulldada — something that
achieves greatness by not being aware of its ineptitude. Wiseau, who
kinda seems (in more ways than one) like Fabio crossed with Ed Wood,
plays the lead role (no surprise there) of Johnny, a nice-guy San
Francisco banking exec whose idyllic life starts to fall apart a month
before his planned nuptials. Fiancée Lisa secretly doesn’t love
him anymore (we are told this about four or five times) and is carrying
on an affair with Mark, Johnny’s “best friend” (we are told this about
400-500 times). Yes, with English-as-a-second-language dialogue,
characters who awkwardly entrez and exeunt, laughable love interludes
and from-hunger acting, the world may now be laughing at Mr. Wiseau,
not with him. But grant The Room this much: It’s not an amateur
Tarantino/Lucas/Spielberg/Romero genre clone, like so many turkeys, but
bravely blazes its own way, à la Wood’s singular Glen or
Glenda. You can bet that if David Lynch or (25 years ago) Rainer
Werner Fassbinder had turned in this same movie, critics would be
praising it as a masterpiece of camp irony. Cleveland Institute of Art
Cinematheque. At 7 p.m. Monday, April 13. ** 1/2 (Cassady)
Ongoing
Adventureland It’s the summer of 1987 and recent college
graduate James (Jesse Eisenberg) finds his plans for a European
vacation put on hold when his father gets demoted at work. Worse yet,
it looks like James’ parents won’t have enough money to send him to the
grad school of his choice. There’s only one hope: Get a job to help
cover the bills. But with no work experience, the only job James can
get is running rigged games of chance at an amusement park. It’s a
crappy job, but at least James hits it off with cute coworker Em
(Kristen Stewart), and the two start to date. But not so fast. Things
are actually kinda complicated. Em is also carrying on an affair with
married maintenance man Mike (Ryan Reynolds), while James finds it hard
to resist the charms of another park employee, Lisa P. (Margarita
Levieva).Writer-director Greg Mottola, whose previous film was the teen
sex comedy with a heart, Superbad, should have made this film
into something fresh and funny. Rather than really explore its carnie
milieu, Adventureland wastes most of its time with a tired
“coming of age” plot and romantic-comedy clichés.
**(Robert Ignizio)
Duplicity Julia Roberts and Clive Owen play a pair of über-competitive corporate spies who fall in love (sort of) while attempting to pull a multi-million dollar scam. Or maybe they’re just scamming each other. It’s hard to tell who’s on the level in writer-director Tony Gilroy’s screwy follow-up to the Oscar-nominated Michael Clayton. Gilroy plays so many tricks with point of view and jumbles the chronology in such a seemingly random, pell-mell fashion that you could get a migraine just keeping track of all the glamorous locales (New York, London, Miami, the Bahamas, Rome, Dubai) fleetingly glimpsed along the way. Two actors who can class up any joint (Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson, reuniting following their roles as John Adams and Ben Franklin in HBO’s John Adams miniseries) contribute a few stray moments of welcome mirth as Roberts and Owen’s conniving bosses, but Gilroy’s stubborn refusal to tell his story straight makes this more of an exercise in frustration than the larkish screwball romp he seems to think it is. ** (Paurich)
Fast and Furious This sequel to The Fast and the
Furious starts out firing on all cylinders as Dom (Vin Diesel) and
his gang, including girlfriend Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), pull off a
daring fuel truck heist. That’s followed by a foot chase in which FBI
Agent Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) smashes through at least two windows
and the roof of a parked car in order to get his man. A surprising
early twist reunites these old adversaries, as well as Dom’s sister Mia
(Jordana Brewster). Justin Lin’s direction remains confident
throughout, especially in the action scenes, and the film also benefits
considerably from the screen presence of its stars. But as it goes
along, it gets bogged down by a convoluted plot and never quite lives
up to the promise of its early scenes. As a mindless popcorn movie
about fast cars it’s not bad, but it felt like it had the potential to
be better. ** 1/2
(Ignizio)
The Haunting in Connecticut Sara Campbell (Virginia Madsen) rents a house so her family can be near the hospital where teenage son Matt (Kyle Gallner) is undergoing experimental cancer treatments. The rent is cheap, and with good reason — the house used to be a mortuary, and if that’s not enough, séances were once conducted there. One such séance led to the deaths of several people, and the disappearance of the young medium conducting it. Considering the movie’s title, it should come as no surprise that this place is haunted. Spookiness ensues, and, given the PG-13 rating, the scares are surprisingly creepy and effective. Dramatic license has been taken with the alleged “true story” this is based on, but does that really matter? As a movie, this is a gripping, well-acted ghost story in the vein of Poltergeist or the original Amityville Horror that delivers chills and thrills without all the gore and sleaze of most modern horror flicks. *** (Ignizio)
I Love You, Man I Love You, Man isn’t a Judd Apatow
production; it was directed by John Hamburg (Along Came Polly),
who wrote the script with Larry Levin. But it pays homage to the
formula, and stars Apatow alumni Paul Rudd and Jason Segel
(Forgetting Sarah Marshall). Rudd plays Peter Klaven, an L.A.
realtor who has just proposed to Zooey (Rashida Jones, The
Office), whose parents apparently named her in a fit of Salinger
worship. Peter is a dream boyfriend: handsome, ambitious but not
aggressive, talented in the kitchen and bedroom, and a man who enjoys
an evening watching Chocolat with his fiancée. But he
has, in Apatovian terms, a problem: he’s a “girlfriend guy.” He has no
close male friend who can be his best man. Quelle horreur! The movie
advances the notion that men can enjoy greater intimacy with men than
with women, though of course, they’re not gay. Wobbly premise
aside, the movie, while not raucously hilarious, has a breezy
likeability, mainly owing to the charismatic Rudd, whose character
spends much of the movie trying to master the art of casual banter.
***(Zoslov)
Knowing In this sci-fi thriller, a time capsule is unearthed containing a sheet of paper predicting every major disaster of the last 50 years. Three dates and locations remain, including one that portends the very end of the world. Can John Koestler (Nicholas Cage) find a way to avert destruction? Cage is in full over-the-top mode here, at times literally tearing apart the scenery in his efforts to sell the simplest of scenes. But then, he’s only following the lead of director Alex Proyas, who seems more interested in CGI destruction than exploring human nature in the face of armageddon. Knowing is a film that has nothing of substance to say, despite its weighty subject. Even its vision of the apocalypse seems calculated to be as inoffensive as possible, as it awkwardly blends elements of the Christian rapture, new-age “space brothers” mythology and dubious science. And lest anyone say they just want to be entertained, there’s precious little in the way of fun here, either. * (Ignizio)
Monsters vs. Aliens Even though Monsters vs. Aliens incorporates new characters to the talking-animal genre (actually,
Pixar got there first eight years ago with the otherworldly creatures
of Monsters, Inc), it’s still the same mix of
animated elements. The opening scenes set up the plight of Susan
(voiced by Reese Witherspoon), a bride hit by a piece of space junk on
her wedding day. She soon begins glowing and growing. The government
tosses her into a cell with other imprisoned oddities: Dr. Cockroach,
an oversized, lab coat-wearing roach (Hugh Laurie); a fish-man called
the Missing Link (Will Arnett); Insectosaurus, a ginormous bug; and
B.O.B., a jumbo blob of blue Jell-O that sounds like (and is) Seth
Rogen. When a four-eyed, tentacled alien attacks Earth, the monsters
are recruited to save the planet from the imminent invasion.
Monsters vs. Aliens certainly makes good on its promise of the
titular creatures. And it looks great (be sure to see it in 3D —
the sci-fi spectacle leaps off the screen). But there isn’t much of a
story here. ** 1/2(Gallucci)
12 Rounds At their best, Hollywood action movies can be
exciting thrill rides that make audiences cheer; at their worst,
they’re pointless exercises in property destruction. 12 Rounds falls somewhere between those extremes. The premise is a blend of
Die Hard and Speed, with a police detective (John Cena)
trying to save his girlfriend (Ashley Scott) from a European terrorist
(Aidan Gillen) by completing a series of timed challenges. Former WWF
wrestler Cena certainly looks the part, and he’s not a terrible actor.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t have the necessary screen charisma to keep
viewers engaged in this by-the-numbers nonsense. Gillen’s bad guy isn’t
particularly interesting, either. So with plot and characters a bust,
we’re left with the action scenes. At least those are staged well, and
if you’re an action junkie desperately in need of a car chase and
explosion fix, this might do it for you. Everyone else should give this
one a pass. ** (Ignizio)
Sunshine Cleaning This bittersweet comedy about two sisters
who launch a crime-scene cleanup business was produced by the team
responsible for Little Miss Sunshine, which it resembles in its
mordant affection for its hard-luck characters and the casting of Alan
Arkin as an eccentric grandpa. Amy Adams is Rose, an Albuquerque
ex-cheerleader who cleans houses and is having an affair with a married
cop (Steve Zahn), who tells her there’s money to be made cleaning up
after murders and suicides. Rose, who needs to pay for private school
for her imaginative young son (Jason Spevack), recruits her hapless
sister Norah (Emily Blunt) and plunges into the messy business. The
sisters, who along the way meet a gentle, one-armed janitorial-supply
salesman (Clifton Collins Jr.), are affected by the tragedies they
encounter, particularly Norah, who’s so moved by a dead woman’s family
photos that she tries to befriend the woman’s daughter (Mary Lynn
Rajskub). Eventually, the sisters begin to heal the wounds left by
their mother’s premature death. Some situations are strain credulity,
and Megan Holley’s script wanders a bit, yet the movie achieves moments
of sublime poignancy. The acting is superb, and the mood artfully
balanced between sadness and hope. Shaker Cinemas.
*** 1/2 (Zoslov)
This article appears in Apr 8-14, 2009.
