Opening
British Television Advertising Awards (Britain, 2008) A
showcase of almost 100 award-winning videos from the annual contest.
Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque. At 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 3,
and 7:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 4.
Crude (U.S., 2009) This documentary explores the lawsuit
filed against Chevron by the Ecuadorian Amazon’s Cofán Indians.
Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque. At 7:15 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 5,
and 8:15 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 6.
Fellini Satyricon (Italy/France, 1969) Pity the fools
raised on Gladiator or 300 who go to Federico
Fellini’s “free adaptation” of the ancient writings of Petronius
expecting something remotely similar — though there are bits that
seem to anticipate the later Caligula.The setting of the
pageant-like narrative is the Roman Empire at its most corrupt and
pagan. In a rambling narrative (for the Fellini novice, it can feel
eons long), a stud named Encolpio — a young, blond, handsome,
bisexual would-be poet and “educated” man — careens from one
disaster to another: He loses his androgynous boy-lover to a
treacherous frenemy; he’s sold into slavery; he has to fight the
Minotaur; and he suffers a bout of impotence. This last is evidently
the worst possible fate, given the overriding grotesque decadence.
Encolpio is a little like Candide except with no particular character,
leaving the viewer with nightmare-memorable backdrops (many of the
sets, even outdoor ones, are plainly theatrical artifice), creepy
Barbarella B.C. costumes, leering faces and occasional
deformities. The obvious temptation for modern eyes is to link
Fellini’s pansexual, painted, prancing freaks with the off-screen
flower-children, psychedelic fashion and drugged-up free-love hippies
prevalent in the late 1960s (which is just about as ancient history),
and that’s probably as fair an explanation as any. Cleveland Institute
of Art Cinematheque. At 9:20 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 5, and 3:45 p.m.
Sunday, Dec. 5. ** 1/2
(Charles Cassady Jr.)
Gogol Bordello Non-Stop (U.S., 2008) Margarita Jimeno’s
unfocused documentary about gypsy-punk band Gogol Bordello has one
thing going for it: It truly captures the manic energy that frontman
Eugene Hutz and his band of merry pranksters bring to the stage. We see
Hutz in several different contexts: DJing a basement party, performing
on the street, opening for Manu Chao at large outdoor festivals. And
each time, the guy doesn’t disappoint, stage-diving and running around
like he’s possessed. Jimeno unearths rare footage from the early days,
when the band was still formulating its theatrical stage show in small
New York bars in the late ’90s. And she interviews several musicians
who have played in the band. But the film never develops a narrative,
only occasionally touching on Hutz’s background as a Ukrainian refugee.
He’s become such a notable movie star, you’d think at least a portion
of the film would touch on that career too. Cleveland Museum of Art
Lecture Hall. At 7 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 2. ** 1/2 (Jeff Niesel)
Little Ashes A stereotypical art-house film that flopped when
it came out in limited release earlier this year, Paul Morrison’s movie
imagines what it must have been like when painter Salvador Dali (Robert
Pattinson, who looks ridiculous in a thin handlebar mustache), poet
Federico Garcia Lorca (Javier Beltran) and filmmaker Luis Buñuel
(Matthew McNulty) met in Madrid in 1922. The three instantly bond when
they meet at a university, but the friendships become strained as Dali
and Lorca begin a torrid love affair made even more complicated by
Dali’s reluctance to fully commit to a homosexual relationship. He
eventually backs away, and a disgusted Buñuel leaves the two,
moving to Paris to pursue his filmmaking ambitions. While Morrison
obviously took some liberties with the story (Dali has denied he ever
slept with Lorca), that’s not the issue with Little Ashes. The real problem is that it’s poorly acted and pretentious
and makes these three literary figures caricatures rather than
characters. Cleveland Museum of Art Lecture Hall. At 7 p.m. Friday,
Dec. 6, and 1:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 7. *(Niesel)
Transylmania Reviewed at clevescene.com.
In Theaters
Amelia The only good thing about the otherwise dreadful
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian that came out
earlier this year was Amy Adams’ zippy performance as a fast-talking,
1920s-era-slang-hurling Amelia Earhart. I doubt that either the
screenwriters or Adams spent much time researching Earhart’s speech
patterns or nailing down the details of her life. The same can’t be
said for director Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding) and Hilary Swank,
who plays the ill-fated aviation pioneer in the straightforward biopic
Amelia. In their fussy period film, Earhart’s adult life plays
out as a series of career and gender accomplishments. Swank is good as
the fly girl (a media sensation in her day) — intense, stoic and
determined in everything she does. But the movie sinks under its
seriousness, emphasizing Earhart’s proto-feminist status every step of
the way: first woman to do this, a woman who can do that, etc. Much of
this seems shoehorned into a blah story that needs a little emblematic
boost. Plus, Nair drowns nearly every semi-pivotal scene in inflated
significance. Though some tension is built during Earhart’s final
flight, there isn’t much drama here (you know how the story ends,
right?). Amelia comes off like an old-school Hollywood biopic: a
little bit corny, sorta self-serious and emotionally stagnant. You’d
think the most exciting thing Earhart ever did was to disappear.
** 1/2 (Michael
Gallucci)
The Box When a mysterious disfigured man (Frank Langella)
gives a married couple (Cameron Diaz and James Marsden) a box with a
large red button, you just know something is up. The man tells the
couple that if they press the button, they’ll get a million dollars. At
the same time, someone whom “they don’t know” will die. Set in 1976,
The Box takes great pains to accurately reflect the era, right
down to its excellent retro orchestral score. The film is based on
Richard Matheson’s short story “Button, Button,” a simple and elegant
dark fantasy tale whose twist ending packed a wicked punch of social
commentary. It’s a great story, but there’s not really enough there for
a feature film. So writer/director Richard Kelly has expanded on and
changed the source material considerably. Kelly’s adaptation is too
long and piles on so much weirdness that it threatens to overwhelm the
story at times. His ending also lacks the bite of Matheson’s original.
Nonetheless, this is a fascinating and uncompromising film that will no
doubt attract the same sort of cult following as Kelly’s Donnie
Darko. ***(Robert Ignizio)
The Blind Side The Blind Side belongs to “white-man’s
burden” movies like Dangerous Minds or The Soloist, in
which benevolent whites heroically rescue underprivileged black people.
Accordingly, there are moments in this movie, based on the life of
Baltimore Ravens rookie tackle Michael Oher, that are cringingly
uncomfortable, like when Sandra Bullock — as Leigh Anne Tuohy, an
affluent Southern woman who has opened her home to Oher — sashays
into the kid’s rough Memphis neighborhood in tight skirt and heels to
give a drug dealer a talking-to, warning him that she’s packing heat.
If this were fiction, it’d be as phony as Astroturf. But like those
other movies, it’s a true story, told with enough sensitivity to almost
overcome the troubling sense of noblesse oblige. Bullock acts her heart
out as the feisty Leigh Anne. Her performance makes a character that
might have been repellent — privileged, pushy evangelical —
rather endearing. ***(Pamela Zoslov)
A Christmas Carol Using the same performance-capture
animation technique employed in 2004’s Polar Express and 2007’s
Beowulf, Robert Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol is another family friendly
holiday feature by the veteran director of Back to the Future and
Forrest Gump. Zemeckis doesn’t mess with Charles Dickens’ book much,
quoting directly from it in the opening sequence, which finds Ebenezer
Scrooge (Jim Carrey) busting out a “bah humbug” when his nephew Fred
(Colin Firth) arrives to wish him a “merry Christmas.” Of course,
Scrooge is in for a shock when he goes home and an apparition of his
old boss Jacob Marley (Gary Oldman) arrives to warn him that he’s going
to be visited by three ghosts before the night is over. Though his
recent attempts to show off his dramatic acting abilities have fallen
short, Carrey is in good form here. He occasionally indulges in
exaggerated facial gestures and slapsticky antics, but that’s going to
keep young viewers interested. That and the fabulous digital 3-D
effects that make it look like snowflakes are falling in front of your
face. ***(Niesel)
Couples Retreat It’s axiomatic that a beautiful tropical
setting will do nothing to save a bad movie. In this offering written
by the Swingers team of Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau, the best
moments come before its four couples arrive at their island paradise.
Hyper-organized Jason and Cynthia (Jason Bateman and Kristin Bell),
troubled by infertility, persuade their friends, via an amusing
PowerPoint presentation, to join them at Eden West, a
partnership-renewal retreat. The other couples — Joey and Lucy
(Favreau and Kristin Davis), Dave and Ronnie (Vaughn and Malin Akerman)
and divorced Shane (Faizon Love) and 20-year-old girlfriend Trudy (Kali
Hawk) — are compelled to participate in therapy and absurd
activities like swimming in shark-infested waters and yoga that
involves a hunky instructor dry-humping the ladies. What might have
been an amusing domestic comedy and satire of marriage-therapy schemes
devolves into a scattershot collection of unfunny, unsexy sex jokes and
curiously stale references (Fabio, Chewbacca, Mr. Belvedere). Vaughn
and Favreau reverse their Swingers roles, with Vaughn playing
the nice, devoted husband who, in one of the funny male-banter scenes
that are the movie’s saving grace, warns Favreau’s horny Joey that if
he keeps chasing tail, he’ll end up eating alone at Applebee’s.
**(Zoslov)
An Education Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is a “pretty and clever”
teen living in 1960s London when smooth-talking David (Peter
Sarsgaard), who’s twice her age, sweeps her off her feet and introduces
her to his fast-living lifestyle. “You have no idea how boring
everything was before I met you,” she tells him. And you believe her.
Her casually racist dad (a terrific Alfred Molina) has misgivings at
first, but warms to David after he promises to show Jenny around
Oxford, where she hopes to enroll. Sarsggaard — one of our best
and underappreciated actors — flawlessly straddles the line
between charismatic and slimeball. Olivia Williams is also great as a
sympathetic teacher. But the real find here is 24-year-old Mulligan,
conveying (and stirring) tons of emotions with just one look. She’s
totally believable as a 16-year-old girl blossoming into womanhood.
It’s the best performance of the year. *** 1/2 (Gallucci)
Fantastic Mr. Fox Based on a Roald Dahl story, this dark
farmland fable about a group of foxes that wages war against
weapon-packing farmers centers on Mr. Fox (George Clooney), who makes a
promise to his wife (Meryl Streep) to stop stealing birds for a living
and becomes a newspaper columnist. After two years (which is actually
12 in fox years), he’s bored with the lifestyle and the fact that
nobody reads his column. So he buys a new tree for his family and gets
back in the chicken-killing game for one or two (or three) last scores.
When things don’t work out like Fox plans and he puts a bunch of
friends (including a rabbit, badger and an opossum) in danger, he must
use his natural leadership skills to save them. There’s no mistaking
director Wes Anderson’s touch in Fantastic Mr. Fox: The
dialogue, the way the actors read the dialogue and the movie’s pacing
bear his trademarks. And the old-school stop-motion animation is an
exhilarating break from today’s CGI crop. But a great-looking movie
means nothing if there isn’t a story attached to it. Anderson’s film
not only expands on Dahl’s book, it’s really funny.
*** 1/2 (Gallucci)
The Men Who Stare at Goats As Lyn Cassady, a possibly insane,
self-proclaimed Jedi Warrior in the U.S. military’s stealth
“remote-viewing” program, George Clooney brings his usual steely
intelligence and old-school charisma to a role that might have been
virtually unplayable by a different actor. A certifiable wackjob,
Cassady’s unbridled craziness is the very thing that makes him so
seductive to a gullible, eager-beaver journalist (Ewan McGregor) hot on
the trail of a rogue operative (Jeff Bridges’ kookier-than-the-Dude
Bill Django) in 2003 Kuwait. Cassady (and Clooney) makes going postal
seem like the sanest response to a truly demented situation. But The
Men Who Stare at Goats isn’t a knee-jerk liberal polemic condemning
the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Politics, in fact, is the least of its
concerns. All director Grant Heslov and screenwriter Peter Straughan
(adapting Jon Ronson’s 2004 non-fiction book) want to do is make us
laugh. And on that count they succeed — sometimes brilliantly.
*** 1/2 (Paurich)
Michael Jackson’s This is It Michael Jackson’s This
Is It begins with a sense of optimism. We see Jackson at a press
conference, pumping his fist because he’s clearly excited to tell fans
about the shows, which he says will be his last ever in England. His
tragic, sudden death in June meant not one of the concerts ever took
place. This is It is an uneven attempt to replicate what the
production might have looked like. As we see Jackson and a group of
militant dancers work in front of a green screen and as director Kenny
Ortega shoots new video footage to be used during renditions of
“Thriller” and “Smooth Criminal,” it’s apparent this would have been
one helluva production, easily comparable to a Broadway musical. But
because it’s such an odd pastiche of performances and interviews,
This is It doesn’t really do the concert’s magnitude justice.
** 1/2 (Niesel)
Ninja Assassin Ninja Assassin is about guys in black
pajamas who hide in the shadows with swords and razor-sharp metal stars
waiting to kill people. Such films were at the peak of their popularity
in the ’80s, and while they were seldom good, at least they were
usually good, violent fun. Sho Kosugi starred in just about all the
ninja movies made back then. He’s rightly given a sizable role in this
update of the genre as Ozuno, the harsh master who trains the film’s
hero Raizo (Rain). Eventually, Raizo chooses to walk a different path
than the evil one his master intended for him. This brings us to the
present, where forensic investigator Mika (Naomie Harris) finds herself
in trouble after learning too much about the secrets of the ninja.
Ninja Assassin is nothing special in the plot department, but no
one watches these movies for their original and insightful stories. Far
more damaging is that Rain makes a bland hero, the action scenes are
shot in a choppy, confusingly edited style and the gratuitous CGI
bloodshed looks ridiculous. ** (Ignizio)
Old Dogs Veteran actors Robin Williams and John Travolta show
no shame in hamming it up incessantly in this insipid Walt Becker
(Wild Hogs) comedy about two pals whose friendship is tested
when Dan (Williams) is recruited to babysit two kids he didn’t realize
were his. The slapstick humor gets some easy laughs but usually doesn’t
involve anything more than a swift kick in the crotch. The flimsy plot:
Dan’s ex (Kelly Preston) has to serve a two-week prison term for
protesting an environmentally irresponsible company and enlists Dan to
take care of her 7-year-old twins, revealing that they’re actually his
and she never bothered to tell him. But Dan and Charlie (Travolta) are
trying to take their sports agency to the next level and are in the
middle of signing the “biggest deal ever” with a Japanese company. Oh
yeah, and Charlie has an old dog that hangs around the office, peeing
on everything because it’s so old. It’s no surprise that by the end of
the movie, we realize Dan and Charlie are like two old dogs, loyal to
the core, even though they sometimes bark at each other.
**(Niesel)
Pirate Radio Set in the late ’60s — “the greatest era
for British rock ‘n’ roll,” a pre-titles card tells us — this
thin story about the renegade DJs who broadcasted music from a boat at
sea is really just an excuse to champion rock music from the era. Back
then, British radio played barely an hour’s worth of rock ‘n’ roll. The
heroes of Radio Rock – led by hotshot American the Count (a
bearded Philip Seymour Hoffman) and flashy Brit Gavin (Rhys Ifans)
– right this wrong, pitting themselves against a bunch of
uptight, suit-wearing boardroom fogies, fronted by a frowning Kenneth
Branagh, whose pit-bull is a guy named Twatt. Pirate Radio is
seen mostly through the eyes of teen Carl (Tom Sturridge), who’s kicked
out of school and sent by his mom to spend some time on the floating
pirate radio station with his godfather (Bill Nighy), Radio Rock’s
mastermind. Even if there isn’t much to the movie (despite its
two-hour-plus length), it’s hard not to cheer for these characters
(loosely based on real people and played by guys who were in The
Flight of the Conchords and Shaun of the Dead). It’s also
loaded with classics by the Kinks, the Rolling Stones, the Who, and
many others. So you can’t beat the music. ** 1/2 (Gallucci)
Planet 51 This animated film tantalizes with an interesting
idea: a planet whose green, Matt Groening-esque inhabitants live in a
candy-colored 1950s Americana time warp with drive-in movies, horror
comic books and “Be Bop-a-Lula.” Jung would have a field day with this
culture, which is obsessed with alien invasion. They delight in space
movies and sincerely believe aliens will someday eat their brains. When
square-jawed American astronaut Chuck Baker (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson)
lands on Planet 51, the natives think their worst fears have been
realized. While Army General Grawl (Gary Oldman) and monocled “alien
expert” Professor Kripple (John Cleese) scheme to kill the invader,
green teenager Lem (Justin Long) helps the comically arrogant Baker
return to his ship, complicating the teen’s budding romance with Neera
(Jessica Biel). Ample satiric opportunities (Red Scare analogies, the
American invader’s view of a native population as “alien”) are bypassed
in favor of a yawningly predictable plot and superfluous poop jokes.
The animation design has charm — the round hovercraft vehicles
based on American tail-fin cars are especially adorable — but the
movie lacks energy and originality and, most unforgivably, wastes the
talents of the extraordinary Cleese. ** (Zoslov)
Precious Don’t let the Oprah and Tyler Perry imprimatur scare
you off. Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire confounds
expectations (prejudices?) at every turn. A remarkably accomplished
sophomore outing by director Lee Daniels, Precious tells the
story of morbidly obese 16-year-old Harlem teenager Claireece
“Precious” Jones (knockout newcomer Gabourey Sidibe) forced to deal
with a second unwanted pregnancy after her first baby was born with
Down’s Syndrome. Compounding Claireece’s dire predicament is an abusive
mother (sitcom diva Mo’Nique in a fearless, take-no-prisoners
performance that seems destined to win the Best Supporting Actress
Oscar) battling formidable demons of her own. Despite the unrelenting
bleakness and gut-wrenching despair of its no-exit milieu and dead-end
characters, Precious is leavened with flights of magic realism
as captivating as they are emotionally cathartic.
****(Paurich)
A Serious Man Set in a blandly pastoral midwestern suburb in
1967, Joel and Ethan Coen’s A Serious Man is reportedly the
Coens’ most personal work. Larry Gopnick (New York stage veteran
Michael Stuhlbarg in a remarkable performance), the film’s Job-like
physics-professor protagonist, was modeled after their
college-professor dad, and the movie’s near-fetishistic details of
coming-of-age in the mid-’60s were taken directly from their own
Minnesota adolescence. When Larry’s wife Judith (Sari Lennick)
announces out of the blue that she wants a divorce so she can marry
unctuous family “friend” Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed), his life quickly
spirals out of control. Reduced to living in a no-tell motel with his
deadbeat brother (Richard Kind), Larry is forced to take shit from
every direction. His department head wants to deny him tenure, a South
Korean student (David Kang) tries blackmailing him to get his grade
changed, a Columbia Record Club phone rep harasses him at work, his
rabbi repeatedly blows him off and his soon-to-be-bar-mitzvah son Danny
(Aaron Wolff) is a burgeoning pothead who complains that “F
Troop is fuzzy” on the family TV. So full of classic moments
(including the funniest bar mitzvah on record) that it’s impossible to
catalog them after just one viewing, the movie has more big laughs than
any film released so far this year. ***(Paurich)
The Twilight Saga: New Moon Ten minutes into this sequel to
2008’s Twilight, Bella (Kristen Stewart) celebrates her 18th
birthday at the home of boyfriend Edward (Robert Pattison) and his
vampire family, where she gets a paper cut that causes one of the
bloodsuckers to lose control. Worried that Bella won’t be so lucky next
time, Edward and company leave town. This sends Bella into a depression
that lifts somewhat thanks a combination of dangerous behavior and
spending more time with her Native American friend Jacob (Taylor
Lautner), who just happens to be a werewolf. A better film than its
predecessor, New Moon is an entertaining romantic fantasy with a
stronger visual look and better action scenes, while still keeping the
focus on the central love triangle. Stewart’s acting has gotten better,
and while Pattison has a smaller role this time, Lautner more than ably
picks up the slack. The problem with focusing so much on Bella’s
dalliance with Jacob is that when the story brings Edward and the
vampires back, the conclusion feels rushed. Also, with all its loose
ends and assumptions that the audience knows what came before, New
Moon doesn’t stand on its own very well. ***(Ignizio)
2012 When Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) goes to India to
see a colleague’s research at a copper mine, he discovers that, thanks
to giant solar eruptions, Earth’s core is heating up, something that
will inevitably trigger tectonic plate movement and devastating
earthquakes. Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), a struggling sci-fi writer
who can’t quite cut it as a single dad, stumbles upon similar evidence
while on a crappy campy trip with his kids in Yellowstone. There, he
meets wackjob conspiracy theorist Charlie (Woody Harrelson), who warns
him that a huge volcano is about to erupt. Jackson races back to
California to get his ex-wife and her boyfriend, and they barely make
it out of there before the whole state slips into the ocean. The film
has plenty going for it. The special effects are amazing. Landmarks
like the Santa Monica Pier slip into the ocean, and luxury hotels in
Vegas disintegrate. And Cusack is great as the lovable loser who has to
dig deep to redeem himself during a time of crisis. But at 158 minutes,
the movie is too long (the protracted ending is particularly
torturous), and there are too many subplots (most involving strained
relationships between parents and siblings) that don’t really amount to
anything. ** 1/2
(Niesel)
This article appears in Dec 2-8, 2009.
