The Grouchy Editor

Some movies beg for comparison to others, and the film that The Square most resembles is Body Heat.  Both dramas fall into the category of film noir, both feature illicit lovers doing very bad things, and both want nothing more than to ratchet up audience tension.

The Square mostly succeeds, but it falls short of Lawrence Kasdan’s 1981 classic for a number of reasons.  The Square doesn’t have two compelling characters, it has just one (the male lead).  And director Nash Edgerton’s film lacks something else found in Body Heat — a delicious twist ending.  It tries to compensate by jacking up the body count.

David Roberts plays everyman Ray Yale, a married construction foreman carrying on with Carla (Claire van der Boom), who is married to a small-time crook.  When Carla discovers her husband’s stash of stolen cash, she persuades Ray that the money is their ticket to paradise.

Ray reluctantly goes along with Carla’s plan, and of course their scheme rapidly goes from bad to worse.  Edgerton does a nice job building suspense, but The Square is handicapped by a script that has plenty of bodies, just not enough soul.    Grade:  B

Director:  Nash Edgerton  Cast:  David Roberts, Claire van der Boom, Joel Edgerton, Anthony Hayes, Peter Phelps, Bill Hunter, Hanna Mangan-Lawrence  Release:  2010

                                          Watch Trailers  (click here)

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

We humans are truly a fickle species.  Or at least I am a fickle human.  I watched a motion picture this afternoon that would have absolutely astounded any man or woman throughout most of human history and yet, I must confess, parts of the film seemed dull to me.

IMAX’s Hubble 3D, if you think about it, is a magnificent achievement.  Not only did astronauts travel into space, but they brought cameras to film the adventure as they penetrated the deepest recesses of outer space, and technology then allows an audience — popcorn in hand and reclining in comfort —  to feel like it’s along for the ride.

I suppose space travel isn’t as gripping as it ought to be because fiction has made so much of it seem familiar.  Hubble 3D is weakest when it focuses on the astronauts inside the space shuttle as they eat, play, or prepare for the task of repairing the Hubble Space Telescope.  Compared to what we see in movies like Aliens or Star Wars, watching an astronaut prepare a burrito in zero-gravity is pretty tame stuff.

Ironically, the movie is most spectacular when it uses 3-D computer technology — done right here on boring old Earth — to enhance pictures taken by the telescope.  Zooming through the stars, plunging deep into the constellation Virgo to inspect a gigantic black hole, the images rekindled in me a semblance of primitive awe.      Grade:  B+

Director:  Toni Myers  Narrator:  Leonardo DiCaprio  Release:  2010

Watch Trailers  (click here)

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

Cyrus is a movie you want to like, if only because it dares to be different.  Here we have corpulent Jonah Hill (Superbad) in a comedy, only this time it’s not produced by Judd Apatow, and Hill’s character actually has some depth.  And the star is John C. Reilly, whose major attribute is that he doesn’t look like a movie star.  This hangdog actor could be your mechanic, or veterinarian.  In other words, Reilly’s characters are instantly relatable.

Reilly plays John, a sad sack who’s been divorced for seven years yet can’t seem to let go of his ex (Catherine Keener), who is soon to remarry.  At a party, John gets drunk and somehow winds up with vivacious Molly (Marisa Tomei), who finds him charming.  Things are looking up for our hero.  But then he meets Cyrus (Hill).  Cyrus is Molly’s 21-year-old son and he has  …  issues.  Cyrus initiates a passive-aggressive campaign to get John out of his mother’s life, because in his mind, there is only room for Cyrus and Molly.  It’s at this point that the film falls apart.

I envisioned the story going in one of two directions:  It could have morphed into Neighbors, in which a seemingly normal mother and son reveal their true psychotic selves.  Or it could have become like The War of the Roses, with the battle between John and Cyrus escalating to epic proportions.

Alas, Cyrus does neither.  It’s not funny enough to succeed as pure comedy, and its attempts at sensitive male bonding are shallow.  Directors Jay and Mark Duplass don’t help matters with their filming style.  They shoot the action as though Cyrus were the latest Bourne adventure, with hand-held, herky-jerky zooms that are completely out of place in a movie like this.          Grade:  C

Directors:  Jay Duplass, Mark Duplass  Cast:  John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei, Jonah Hill, Catherine Keener, Tim Guinee, Matt Walsh, Katie Aselton  Release:  2010

                                                 Watch Trailers  (click here)

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

This little number from Ireland is the kind of movie you plop into the DVD player late at night, sit back and enjoy, and eventually forget.  I don’t mean that as an insult, although I suppose it’s not much of a compliment.  The problem with playwright-turned-director Conor McPherson’s ghost story is that it lacks tonal harmony.

The Eclipse begins as a melancholy chiller, with recently widowed Michael Farr (Ciaran Hinds) moping and coping with his two kids in their eerie little house in County Cork.  One night, Michael thinks he sees a ghost downstairs. 

He volunteers as a driver for a local literary festival, where he meets arrogant writer Nicholas Holden (Aidan Quinn) and, much more to his liking, London novelist Lena Morelle (Iben Hjejle).  There begins a middle-aged romance between Michael and Lena, complicated by the jealous and frequently drunk Holden.

Actors Hinds and Hjejle make for a refreshingly mature couple, something Hollywood can’t — or won’t — offer anymore.   They both hold back and reveal just the right amount of their characters’ inner selves.  We find ourselves pulling for them.

But this is also supposed to be a ghost story.  And this is where writer-director McPherson stumbles.  He works hard to create a quiet, charming romance between two very nice people, and every 20 minutes or so the SOUNDTRACK EXPLODES as some horrifying apparition manifests itself to poor Michael.  It’s exactly the same effect you get in any Nightmare on Elm Street film.  It’s jarring and it doesn’t fit in with the rest of the movie.       Grade:  B

Director:  Conor McPherson  Cast:  Ciaran Hinds, Iben Hjejle, Aidan Quinn, Dorothy Cotter, Eanna Hardwicke  Release:  2009

      Watch Trailers (click here)

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

Kick-Ass is stirring up controversy, mostly because of the foul language and violence swirling about its star, young Chloe Moretz, now 13.  Moretz plays a superhero of sorts, a gun-totin’, daddy-lovin’ prepubescent lass dubbed “Hit-Girl” who clobbers grown men, is clobbered in return, spews profanity like a hardened convict and, of course, saves the day.  She uses the c-word.  Both of them.

A lot of people apparently don’t like this.  They see it as sinful.  They might be right, but the biggest sin that Kick-Ass commits, to my way of thinking, is the imposition of boredom on its audience.

Does the idea of a little girl raising all that hell make you want to see the film?  If so, knock yourself out, because that would be the only reason to waste your time and money.  The plot is standard comic-book crap:  Nerdy teen boy (imagine a movie with a character like that!) dreams of being a hero, mostly to impress the girl who ignores him.  He gets his wish in the way only dumb movies like this can contrive, and is soon involved in ridiculous exploits with cardboard villains.

The introduction of “Hit-Girl” and her ex-cop daddy (Nicolas Cage) is mildly amusing.  When she swears and fights, it looks like an 11-year-old girl following a director’s instructions.  That didn’t bother me so much.  Everything else about the film certainly did.       Grade:  D

Director:  Matthew Vaughn  Cast:  Aaron Johnson, Chloe Moretz, Nicolas Cage, Lyndsy Fonseca, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Mark Strong, Sophie Wu  Release:  2010

     Watch Trailers and Clips (click here)

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

Not long ago I read the novel The Monster of Florence, in which the Italian “justice” system was, well … put it this way:  I no longer wish to visit Italy as an American tourist.  Now comes director Erik Gandini’s documentary Videocracy, and it’s frightened me away from Italian television.

OK, so I don’t watch Italian TV, anyway.  But Gandini’s film elevates the corrupting influence of television to a whole new level.  According to this film, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has managed to sway an entire electorate with a televisual combination of sex, youth, and beauty.  Berlusconi, a charismatic media mogul and three-time prime minister, has used his television and magazine monopoly to convince the Italian populace that, with just a bit of good fortune, every last one of them can live the good life.  As Gandini narrates over the film’s final images:  “Anyone can become popular.  You just need to be seen.”

Gandini shows the folly of this daydream by juxtaposing the pathetic stabs at stardom by Ricky, a talentless young mechanic, with the life of luxury and decadence enjoyed by Berlusconi and his shady acquaintances, including baby-faced talent agent Lele Mora and paparazzi king Fabrizio Corona, whose hobbies include extortion and nude preening for the camera.  (Some of you ladies might consider this scene worth the price of admission; Corona is, ahem, blessed — and not the least bit camera shy.)

None of this is a revelation, of course.  The cult of celebrity has been examined and re-examined in this country and elsewhere for decades.  But unless Gandini’s film is a gross exaggeration of conditions in his native country, we might all do well to turn off the tube and pick up a good book instead.  Like, say, The Monster of Florence.      Grade:  B+

Director:  Erik Gandini  Featuring:  Silvio Berlusconi, Fabrizio Corona, Lele Mora  Release:  2010

      Watch the Trailer (click here)

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)