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22May

Reviews in Short: May 2012

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Rampart See Woody snarl. See Woody cry. See Woody puke. This is an “actors’ movie” if ever there was one, and Harrelson is very good as a crooked L.A. cop, but you still need a story, and Rampart’s plot is threadbare and unpleasant. Release: 2011 Grade: C

*****

Corman’s World For decades, Roger Corman has been Hollywood’s crazy uncle, the embarrassing relation who tells dirty jokes at dinner and insists on shots of whiskey for dessert. Corman made B movies, but his list of protégés is impressively A-list. Jack Nicholson and Martin Scorsese are just two of the Corman graduates who pay tribute in this entertaining, clip-filled documentary. Corman himself never graduated to the Hollywood big-time — a fact not really explained in this movie. Release: 2011 Grade: B

*****

Asylum Blackout My bar is at ground level for low-budget horror movies, but this one isn’t half-bad. Here is what Asylum has going for it: 1) characters with some depth; not a whole lot of depth, but more than we usually get when kids hang out at cabins in the woods (in this case, the kids are trapped in a mental hospital when the power goes out); 2) some genuine suspense; 3) an intelligent screenplay, albeit a tad too smart for its own good near the end; 4) ominous settings; and 5) a good, creepy villain. Release: 2011 Grade: B

19May

Shame

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Shame is an emotionally wrenching portrait of modern-day sex addiction and features a powerhouse performance by Michael Fassbender.

Just kidding.

Here is a more accurate lede: Shame reminded me of masturbation — self-indulgent and meaningless. Its star, Michael Fassbender, shows his penis and, consequently, critics are hailing his performance as “fearless” and “brave.”

At least a good session of self love lasts no more than 15 minutes, whereas this pretentious drama from director Steve McQueen drags on for an hour and 40 minutes.

Shame is one of those tiresome “damaged people” films, with mournful piano music and actors who wear haunted expressions. When they wear anything at all.

There are lingering shots during which the audience is expected to reflect on what it’s just witnessed. Sex addict Brandon (Fassbender) jogs and jogs while his sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) has sex with his boss in Brandon’s apartment. Sissy, a struggling nightclub performer, sings a complete rendition of “New York, New York,” presumably to give us time to ponder the fact that Sissy isn’t likely to “make it” — anywhere.

Mostly, I grew bored during these interminable scenes and instead pondered what might have been in the actors’ film contracts. Did they void “non-nudity” clauses so that they could perform full-frontal scenes in this movie? Had any of them seen a really good film about addiction, such as Days of Wine and Roses? Why does Brandon masturbate so much, when he apparently has no trouble picking up chicks in bars?

Nothing in Shame makes us care about these characters. Brandon’s a handsome, well-paid office drone who lives in a nice Manhattan crib. Sissy is a moderately talented, attractive singer. Apparently Brandon and Sissy are Irish kids who somehow wound up in New Jersey. That’s as much as we learn about them.

Shame delivers sermons about the usual crap — sex for sex’s sake is sad and destructive; addicts have trouble connecting emotionally with others. Along with the graphic sex scenes, this is material that might have been daring in the 1960s, but today is just a pointless jerk-off. Grade: D+

Director: Steve McQueen Cast: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale, Nicole Beharie, Lucy Walters, Mari-Ange Ramirez, Loren Omer, Hannah Ware, Elizabeth Masucci, Rachel Farrar Release: 2011

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13May

Lord Grizzly

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by Frederick Manfred

When I was a kid, my parents used to drop me off at Blue Mounds State Park in Luverne, Minnesota, near the confluence of that state, South Dakota, and Iowa. Not only were the park’s pink, quartzite cliffs spectacular, but in the distance I could see buffalo grazing, and nearby was the futuristic-looking (this was the 1960s) home of a real curiosity: a man who wrote books for a living, name of Frederick Manfred.

So it was with a mix of nostalgia and intrigue that I recently picked up Manfred’s Lord Grizzly, a National Book Award finalist in 1955 and the story of Hugh Glass, a real-life mountain man who survived a bear attack and subsequent abandonment in 1820s South Dakota – not far from my Blue Mounds stomping ground.

Lord Grizzly invokes that long-ago land of Indians, grizzlies, mountain lions and buzzards, but Manfred recreates it to a fault. The book reminded me of Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain with its endless depictions of wilderness flora and fauna – nirvana for naturalists and American West fans, I’m sure – but not my cup of tea. Old Hugh’s cumbersome crawl across the Midwestern Plains had nothing on my tedious trek through 100 pages of riverbeds, sunsets, and prairie-dog villages.

The plot is about Glass’s quest for revenge on the men who left him for dead, but the theme is man’s struggle between his desire for freedom and the bonds of society. Manfred seemed to prefer the former; for me, those daylong prowls in his Blue Mounds backyard were wilderness enough.

Blue Mounds State Park: my childhood playground and Manfred’s backyard.

08May

Sherlock

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No Shit, Sherlock

When this modern-day retelling of the venerable Sherlock Holmes stories debuted two years ago, I was pleasantly surprised. My powers of deduction had warned me that text messaging, computer hard drives, and Internet blogs would be a poor substitute for Arthur Conan Doyle’s 19th-century cobblestone, London fog, and horse-drawn carriages. And I thought that the young actors cast to play Holmes and Dr. Watson, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, were too green and baby-faced to convincingly battle the lords of London’s underworld.

OK, so I was wrong. If anything, Sherlock is getting better. The second season’s opening episode, “A Scandal in Belgravia,” is a delight on several levels:

1) The pace is breakneck — almost as fast as Holmes’s crime-detecting intellect and his rapid-fire dialogue. In fact, it’s not a bad idea to watch the first episode twice, because if you blink you might miss important clues.

2) If solving the mystery is too much of a chore for you, you can simply sit back and enjoy the real draw of the series: the amusing interplay amongst what can only be described as the queerest “family” ever to break bread on Baker Street — Holmes, Watson, and the irrepressible Mrs. Hudson. Unlike the 1980s-’90s Jeremy Brett take on Holmes (also superb), humor and warmth permeate Sherlock. Just when the rat-a-tat pace and complex plot begin to make your head spin, some bit of comic business between Watson and Holmes reminds us that it’s their relationship that holds everything together.

3) “Belgravia” is an especially good episode because Holmes is pitted against his greatest challenge: his own human feelings. There is a Christmas scene in which Holmes is compelled to socialize (awkwardly) with his small circle of friends. And then there is a secondary foe, the formidable Irene Adler (Lara Pulver), an upscale dominatrix who handles kingmakers with aplomb but who meets her match in the peculiar Holmes. To Sherlock, Adler is simply “the woman.” To Adler, Holmes is “the virgin.”

All of this is done tongue-in-cheek, and with energy and visual flair. The only downside to the start of a new season of Sherlock is the unfortunate fact that there are just three new episodes. Sunday’s entry promises to provide a showcase for Freeman (The Office) because, if the script adheres to Conan Doyle’s original story, The Hounds of Baskerville will feature more Watson than Holmes. Grade: A-

Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, Una Stubbs, Rupert Graves, Loo Brealey, Mark Gatiss, Andrew Scott, Lara Pulver Premiere: 2010 Sundays on PBS

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01May

The Hunger Games

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by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games is a pretty good “young adult” book. If that sounds condescending, I apologize, but the story has just a few too many silly contrivances, shallow characters, and teen-angst moments to transcend its Y.A. genre.

There are valid reasons why Games has become a cultural phenomenon: The feisty heroine is appealing, and Collins creates some genuine suspense in a futuristic North America where 24 teenagers engage in a televised fight to the death. Collins also introduces some interesting themes – including class warfare – but what really sets Games apart from ancestors like The Most Dangerous Game is its “reality TV” angle.

The protagonist’s romantic dilemma of choosing between two boys (neither of them particularly well written) is probably of interest to teen girls only. But her struggle to survive the games while simultaneously pleasing an audience – it’s all being shown on live TV – is often intriguing.

28Apr

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

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In 1994, three explorers stumbled on a cave in southern France that, having been shielded from the elements for thousands of years, harbored an amazing treasure: prehistoric paintings of horses, panthers, lions, and at least one human, all of them etched on calcium-lined rock and dating back some 32,000 years. Two years ago, the French government granted limited access to the Chauvet Cave for filmmaker Werner Herzog so that the world might share in this archaeological wonderland. In 3-D, no less.

Sounds like the makings of a spellbinding documentary, doesn’t it? Alas, too often during Cave of Forgotten Dreams I felt like I was back in 7th-grade science class, grateful when the lights went off so that I could catch a few winks during the screening of some plodding educational movie.

The images in Cave are impressive. I did not see the film in 3-D, but I was still drawn to Herzog’s lingering, panoramic views of what most inspired our ancestors: animals. Not only are the paintings well-preserved, many of them are artistically striking.

Unfortunately, Herzog’s film is 90 minutes, and that’s a long time to fill the screen with slow pans of stalactites, stalagmites, and hand prints on shadowy walls. Also, Herzog is determined to speculate on What It All Means, and that means introducing the “experts.”

Among the scholars who provide archaeological insight, we meet one geezer, “Master Perfumer” Maurice Maurin, who — I kid you not — sniffs at holes in the ground to ferret out caves. “Primal techniques,” Herzog explains in narration.

We also watch as a cave researcher wobbles a spear through the air in a clumsy attempt to demonstrate how primitive man hunted game during the Ice Age. “His efforts may not look very convincing,” says Herzog, stating the obvious.

In a strange postscript, Herzog photographs some mutant albino crocodiles and wonders aloud what the crocs might make of the nearby cave paintings. Is it possible, he asks, that future historians might look back at humans who explored the Chauvet Cave in much the same way that we now look at these crocodiles?

As long as Herzog was dragging me into la-la land, I began to speculate about one particular drawing on the cave’s wall, which is shown near the end of the movie. I could swear that the image is of Bart Simpson. Grade: B-

Director: Werner Herzog Featuring: Werner Herzog, Jean Clottes, Julien Monney, Jean-Michel Geneste, Michel Philippe, Gilles Tosello, Carole Fritz, Maurice Maurin Release: 2010

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Above, can you spot Bart Simpson?

20Apr

Drift

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by Rachel Maddow

Reading a book like this one can fill you with hope or despair. Hope, in that there are still good Americans (the one percent of our population comprising the volunteer military) and vital journalists like Maddow; but also despair, because as the proverb says, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The cycle goes like this: Presidents and institutions gain power and then proceed to abuse or misuse it. There is public outcry, restraints are instituted – and those presidents and institutions resist mightily. Good intentions lead to unforeseen disaster. These patterns are repeated throughout history. Your choice, as an average citizen, is to be outraged, depressed, or desensitized. Maddow’s book makes the case that, since the Reagan administration, Americans have become desensitized to war, and this attitude is encouraged by politicians (right and left) who prefer that most voters be removed from the actual cost of endless military adventures.

I suppose it’s a product of my age, but I believe that a lot of the material in Drift would have outraged me when I was younger. Now, mostly, it just depresses me.

14Apr

The Cabin in the Woods

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If I told you that this review was written by Zargon, a 10,000-year-old wooly mammoth that was recently discovered in Antarctica, unfrozen by scientists, and then taught typing skills by an English teacher, you’d have to admit that the possibility is fairly imaginative. Hopefully, we could also agree that it’s a profoundly stupid claim. But that’s what you get with The Cabin in the Woods — an imaginative but profoundly stupid horror movie.

Esteemed film critic Roger Ebert has written of Cabin’s plot, “You’re not going to see this one coming.” With any luck, that’s because you’re a somewhat rational human being who expects at least a modicum of realism in your movies, even silly movies like this one.

Everything in Cabin is culled from countless kids-in-peril flicks of the past. You already know the story: Five kids party at an isolated cabin, where bad things happen to them. The kids are all archetypes from other slasher movies, which isn’t entirely bad because it does mean we get an obligatory topless scene from one of the girls, this time courtesy of actress Anna Hutchison.

Much has been made of Cabin’s supposedly novel take on a tired genre, but imagination with no discipline is also what you get when a three-year-old draws pictures on the wall. With his own poo. Grade: C

Director: Drew Goddard Cast: Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison, Fran Kranz, Jesse Williams, Richard Jenkins, Bradley Whitford, Brian White, Amy Acker Release: 2012

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12Apr

The Psychopath Test

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by Jon Ronson

Ronson is a peculiar fellow. At times, while reading his descriptions of the charm and deception utilized by psychopaths to get their way, I wondered if perhaps Ronson himself was a psychopath, using his considerable writing skills to mislead us and cajole us into buying his book. For one thing, the title of The Psychopath Test is inaccurate: Yes, Ronson unearths a psychopath or two, but mostly he presents a series of encounters with people who are merely odd – or possibly crazy, but not psychopaths.

Test is no scholarly analysis of mental illness, but it is a fascinating read, letters from a Caspar Milquetoast with balls (Ronson) who passes on the unwelcome news that all of us harbor some of the traits found on the Hare checklist of psychopathic symptoms. There is also the unsettling possibility that – with all of our recent talk about the wealthy “one percent” – we should perhaps be focused on a different “one percent”: the estimated number of psychopaths in our midst.

12Apr

Lebanon

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The gripping war movie Lebanon is unpopular with some groups in Israel because, according to a news report, “the film will deter young men from volunteering for the [Israeli] army.” I don’t entirely buy that argument.

Does Lebanon emphasize the horrors of war? Yes, indeed. As you might expect from any war film, there are graphic scenes of violence, gore, and sheer terror. Does Lebanon also glamorize war? I’m certain that it does — at least for some members of the audience.

I feel confident that many young men will identify with at least one of the film’s four main characters, young Israelis confined in a hellish tank at the onset of the 1982 conflict in Lebanon. This kind of viewer-identification is nothing new; audiences sided with Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker when Bonnie and Clyde was in theaters. And I’m guessing that more than one Nightmare on Elm Street fan would enjoy being in Freddy Krueger’s blood-stained shoes. Some young men who watch Lebanon will be repelled by what they see; others will leave the movie and seek out an enlistment officer.

For me (an old man), the most compelling reason to see Lebanon is its stunning photography. Director Samuel Maoz, who wrote the script based on his own experience as a gunner in the 1982 battle, also has a background in art direction and photography — and man, does it show. Shot almost entirely within the confines of a leaking, creaking tank, Maoz’s visuals are a luminescent feast, with green and gold patinas casting an eerie glow onto a drop of sweat falling off a soldier’s chin, or a crushed cigarette floating in a pool of oil.

You might think that a 93-minute movie restricted to the inside of a tank is about 90 minutes too much, but you’d be mistaken. We feel the men’s claustrophobia, but there is also suspense because we see what they see: kaleidoscopic snapshots of chaos on the dangerous streets outside of their metal cocoon, all viewed through the lens of a rotating gunsight.

Some people will likely experience Lebanon as a big-screen videogame: cool-looking, violent, and with clearly defined good guys and bad guys. Others will see it as a harrowing anti-war statement. Some people will see it as pro-military; some will see it as anti-army. That’s just the way we are. Grade: B+

Director: Samuel Maoz Cast: Yoav Donat, Itay Tiran, Oshri Cohen, Michael Moshonov, Zohar Shtrauss, Dudu Tassa, Ashraf Barhom, Fares Hananya, Reymond Amsalem Release: 2010

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