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07Jul

Reviews in Short: July 2014

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Tiny

There’s something romantic about chucking it all and adopting a back-to-nature existence, but I’m not sure I could follow the example of the young couple in Tiny who spend a year building a 130-square-foot cabin to call home in Colorado. They filmed their project, which is part of a “tiny house” movement in which ecologically minded (or financially strapped) folk build and live in miniature homes. It’s a fantasy with allure, but — there’s not enough room for my books. Give me Dick Proenneke’s cabin in Alaska, or perhaps Jim Rockford’s trailer on the beach – small, certainly, but not that small. Release: 2013 Grade: B+

*****

Black Rock

It’s “girls’ night out” from hell for three women whose bonding trip to a deserted isle goes sour when they encounter some Iraq war vets. Rock asks some good questions: Is a woman ever partly responsible for her own sexual assault? Is every military veteran deserving of our respect? But after an intriguing setup, director-writer-star Katie Aselton’s story degenerates into a silly, quite literal, battle of the sexes. Release: 2013 Grade: B-

24Jun

Fatal Vision

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by Joe McGinniss

A fatally bloated book. The case of Jeffrey MacDonald, the “all-American” young doctor who was convicted in 1979 of slaughtering his family, is fascinating, but not enough to justify 900-plus-pages that too often read like dry trial transcripts. McGinniss crams Vision with page after page of often-repetitive legal minutiae – which is fine for aspiring lawyers but a drag for the true-crime aficionado.

02Jun

Reviews in Short: June 2014

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Birth of the Living Dead

The best part of this “making of” documentary is the gee-whiz good humor of filmmaker George A. Romero who, 46 years after the release of Night of the Living Dead, still gets a kick out of the fact that so many people have seen — and loved — his little Pittsburgh-based movie. Romero is a much better salesman than some of the gassy windbags who are also interviewed and who seem hell-bent on attributing way too much cultural significance to what is, after all, a low-budget horror film. Release: 2013 Grade: B

07May

Reviews in Short: May 2014

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Don Jon

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Jon, a shallow bartender who is addicted to porn. Scarlett Johansson is the spoiled “princess” who wants Jon under her thumb, and Julianne Moore is a lonely widow out to save him from both porn and bad relationships. The message is a good one, but unless you buy into the Gordon-Levitt and Moore hook-up – I didn’t – it falls a bit short as romantic comedy. Release: 2013 Grade: B

*****

Captain Phillips

Hollywood has always been good at producing the fact-based action movie – provided the script isn’t too beholden to actual facts. I have no idea how accurate Captain Phillips is as it dramatizes a 2009 cargo-ship hijacking off the coast of Somalia, but it’s tense and exciting – think Dog Day Afternoon on the high seas – and Tom Hanks’s captain is, as Hanks characters so often are, a man you can cheer for. Release: 2013 Grade: B+

23Apr

Valley of the Dolls

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by Jacqueline Susann

There is good soap opera, and there is bad soap opera. Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls was a literary sensation in 1966 (it was the top-selling book that year), and it’s easy to see why: It’s juicy and entertaining. Part of the enjoyment comes from trying to decode former actress Susann’s roman a clef. The penniless singer who becomes a major star, then succumbs to alcohol and pills – is she based on Judy Garland? The boom-voiced Broadway battle-axe – is it Ethel Merman?

Susann’s prose is occasionally dreadful, and her story about three Cosmo Girls trying to make it in New York and Hollywood show business, circa 1945-65, is quaint by today’s standards, but her gossipy style is infectious and her themes about doing whatever it takes to achieve love, fame, and success in America are timeless.

18Apr

Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964)

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You see a movie when you’re a kid, and you think it’s the greatest. Many years later, one night after you’ve paid bills, mowed the lawn, and put the kids to bed, you notice that your beloved old movie is playing on the late show. Your first emotion is nostalgic; you remember adoring this film, no matter how silly it might have been. Your second reaction is more practical: Most of the movies you loved as a child and then re-watched as an adult turned out to be, well, pretty bad.

So it was with a healthy dose of skepticism that I recently watched Robinson Crusoe on Mars, which I fully expected to put the kibosh on my fond memories of the first time I saw it, lo those years ago. It would probably suck – even the title of the film is goofy. But I watched anyway. And … what a pleasant surprise!

The plot: Two astronauts and a test monkey are orbiting Mars when a near-collision with an asteroid forces an emergency evacuation to the surface of the planet. Just one astronaut successfully lands and, a la Daniel Defoe’s island castaway, he must use his training and wits to survive the harsh Martian environment. Also per Defoe’s story, eventually there is a “Friday.” Not so like Robinson Crusoe, we also meet evil space aliens.

The pros: 1) When I see special effects in something recent like The Avengers, I usually have this thought: “Wow, that looks really cool – and fake.” When I see special effects in Robinson Crusoe on Mars, I have a similar response, yet there is something more impressive about a 1960s art department designing and photographing spectacular visuals, as opposed to a cadre of computer geeks moving a mouse to achieve similar effects. Director Byron Haskin, a special-effects wiz who ten years earlier filmed the classic The War of the Worlds, combines studio FX with real Death Valley footage to make sci-fi magic. 2) TV veteran Paul Mantee, as the hero, will never be mistaken for Daniel Day-Lewis, but he’s adequate and what his astronaut thinks, does, and says (he has that monkey to talk to) is always credible. Mantee’s activities on Mars in the early stages of the film are just plausible enough, science-wise, to hook us so that we don’t run for the exit when things later get wacky (the arrival of those space aliens).

The cons: 1) This was filmed several years before Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey revolutionized special effects, and so the Martian vistas do look artificial. They also look imaginative and incredibly cool. 2) Some of the science presented is dubious at best, but hey, this was 1964. Giant fireballs cruising the surface of the red planet? Why not? 3) I suppose you could argue that the (white) hero’s relationship with (dark-skinned) Friday is borderline racist – I wouldn’t.

The verdict: I still like this movie. It’s fun. Sometimes even little kids have good taste. Grade: B+

Director: Byron Haskin Cast: Paul Mantee, Victor Lundin, Adam West Release: 1964

Watch the Trailer (click here)

Mantee, Lundin, and “Mona” the monkey on set.

09Apr

Books

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If Art Garfunkel feels the need to post a “books read” list on his Web site, then so does the Grouch. Here is a list of Grouch’s literary conquests of the past 20 years – works of genius and works of dreck. Click here.

02Apr

Reviews in Short: April 2014

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Klown

This Danish road-trip comedy recalls old-fashioned American slapstick, the type of goofiness we used to get from Laurel and Hardy – but with one big difference: The sight gags, often hilarious, are also rated X. Danish TV comics Frank Hvam and Casper Christensen star as oil-and-water pals who embark on a male-bonding wilderness trip that goes awry thanks to their own ineptitude and a 12-year-old boy who tags along for the ride. Release: 2010 Grade: B

*****

Stained

Canadian actress Tinsel Korey plays a troubled bookseller going through hell at work and at home – but who, or what, is responsible for that hell? Stained tested my tolerance for the “it was only a dream” school of filmmaking, in which the viewer is never quite sure if what he sees happening is, in fact, really happening, and it doesn’t help that the first half of this psychological horror-show is slow. On the plus side, Korey is good as a woman who doesn’t handle stress particularly well. Release: 2010 Grade: B-

*****

The Woman

Well, The Woman ain’t boring. I’m not entirely sure what the movie is – black comedy, feminist revenge flick, unpleasant gorefest – because it’s a tonal mess, but it ain’t boring. Sean Bridgers plays Henry Higgins from Hell, a country lawyer named Cleek who keeps his family in check with a mix of condescension, threats, and old-fashioned whuppings. One fateful day Cleek spots a primitive woman in the wilds of Massachusetts (yes, apparently there are wilds in Massachusetts), decides to take her home with him, and then … I can’t explain it. But it ain’t boring. Release: 2011 Grade: B

*****

Passion

Thirty years ago, Brian De Palma was king of the erotic thriller. Today … not so much. It’s a shame because Passion is certainly watchable and bears De Palma’s distinctive visuals and soundtrack. But the story, in which a corporate cat-fight between executive Rachel McAdams and subordinate Noomi Rapace turns deadly, is confusing and illogical. In De Palma movies of yore such narrative lapses were both minor and overshadowed by the man’s dazzling direction. Not anymore. Release: 2012 Grade: C+

*****

Short Term 12

Looking for something that all of the critics love? Short Term 12 has a 99% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and for good reason. This little film about a handful of young counselors at a home for at-risk teens worried me at first, because it initially carries a whiff of Afterschool Special. Uh-oh, I thought, it’s one of those earnest “good for you” movies. But I was wrong. Unlike just about every other Hollywood release, Short Term 12 is neither cynical and snarky nor sappy and stupid. It’s smart and moving. And lead actress Brie Larson is a real standout. Release: 2013 Grade: A-

*****

20 Feet from Stardom

Stardom puts the spotlight on vocalists who came close to the music-industry brass ring but, either through hard luck or, in some cases, because they didn’t really want it, missed out on solo stardom. There is a lot of great music in this Oscar-winning tribute to backup singers – but not, really, all that much drama. Release: 2013 Grade: B-

*****

Jailbait

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A quote in the ads for this film informs us that Jailbait is “in the vein of Orange Is the New Black.” Uh, no, it isn’t. It’s “in the vein” of trashy ’70s women-in-prison flicks like The Big Doll House. Mostly it’s just writer-director Jared Cohn filming his girlfriend, actress Sara Malakul Lane, in one degrading nude scene after another. Lane, who was about 30 when this was shot, plays a “juvenile” sent to a detention center for young girls, which of course entails rape, shower scenes, more rape, and lesbian sex. Lane does look good naked (she also looks 30), but unlike those ’70s B-movies, this jail drama is a bore. Release: 2013 Grade: D

25Mar

The Round House

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by Louise Erdrich

Erdrich wins awards and is a critics’ darling, and there are aspects of her writing that I admire, but to me a lot of the prose in Round House – especially character motivations and behavior – does not ring true.

The protagonist is a 13-year-old Native American whose mother is raped, and so Erdrich is compelled to enter the boy’s head, but the result often reads like a middle-aged woman’s skewed idea of what teen boys think and do. I also didn’t buy her characterization of some of the adults: Episodes with a foul-mouthed, hunky Catholic priest are meant to be humorous but are just flat-out bizarre. On the plus side, the climactic scenes are powerful, and the depiction of life on a North Dakota reservation is colorful.

Some critics predict that this book will be thought of as an American-Indian To Kill a Mockingbird. I suppose this is because the story is told from a child’s point of view, the boy’s father is an Atticus Finch-like judge, and the plot includes rape, racial tensions, and social injustice. But To Kill a Mockingbird? Perhaps in theme, but certainly not in execution.

09Mar

Art That Changed the World

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OK, it’s a “coffee-table book,” but it’s one lavishly illustrated coffee-table book. Art doesn’t go into much detail about individual painters or paintings – actually, it doesn’t go into much detail about anything – but as a guide to finding what you like so that you can find more of what you like, it’s a precious resource. Now, about that title … judging from the book’s content, the only “art that changed the world,” at least until recent years, was art produced in Europe. Oh, really?