The Grouchy Editor

I’ll bet The Book of Eli looked great on paper.  In some Hollywood conference room, the movie’s sales pitch might have gone something like this:  “Post-apocalyptic – but with a serious theme (we’ve included the King James Bible!).  We’ve got Denzel on board; he’s going to produce, as well.  And the picture will look great – special effects galore!  As for plot, well, we’ve borrowed some stuff from Ray Bradbury’s story, Fahrenheit 451, so we’re not too concerned about that, and audiences love twist endings.  Boy, have we got a twist ending!”

The Book of Eli is certainly stylish, and it really does look great.  Its barren, desert landscapes resemble a montage of the coolest-looking album covers you can imagine.  And Denzel Washington is suitably somber, doing his best “man with no name,” Clint Eastwood-channeling.  Gary Oldman is, as always, eminently watchable as the movie’s villain, a cackling madman who decides that the Bible is all he needs to expand his post-nuclear slice of America.

It is The Book of Eli’s misfortune that it opened so close to the premiere of a much superior after-the-bomb movie, The Road.  I guess the cinematography and art direction are grander in Eli than in Road, and a bit more “happens,” plot-wise, in Denzel’s movie.  But all of Washington’s glum stares, ominous growls, and a somber, strings-heavy soundtrack can’t overcome the pretentious, derivative story, shallow characters, and preposterous twist ending.         Grade:  C+

Directors:  Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes  Cast:  Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis, Ray Stevenson, Jennifer Beals, Michael Gambon, Tom Waits, Malcolm McDowell  Release:  2010

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Want to know what makes comedienne Joan Rivers tick?  Curious if Rivers believes in God or in an afterlife?  What drives this woman, now 77, wealthy and secure, to still play rundown nightclubs in the Bronx and backwater venues in Wisconsin?

Surprise!  You won’t find the answers to any of those questions in Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, the new documentary covering one year in the workaholic comic’s life.  You also won’t laugh very much during the film.  There are occasional clips of Rivers performing on stage — and then you’ll probably laugh (I did) — but this movie is not a concert film, and it’s not a very detailed biography, either.

What Joan Rivers is, however, is a riveting look at Rivers right now.   Conventional wisdom declares that people either love her or hate her, but to this reviewer, sitting here entrenched in “the end of the world” (Rivers’s conception of the Midwest, in her view anywhere outside of New York and L.A.), Rivers is not so black or white.  She is more like an odd lab specimen.  She defies every grandmother stereotype, whether she’s competing with daughter Melissa on The Celebrity Apprentice, joking about anal sex on stage, or yelling back at the heckling father of a deaf child, calling the man a bastard.

There are surprises about this show-business legend.  Rivers first and foremost considers herself an actress – not a comedienne, which she considers just another acting role.  She lives in an apartment she deems worthy of Marie Antoinette, yet she also delivers meals to the disabled on Thanksgiving.  She allows the documentarians to film unflattering footage of her surgically enhanced face, decries deceased husband Edgar as a poor businessman, and doesn’t hesitate to name names in a roll call of comics she does or does not favor (Maher, Stewart, and Rickles get passing grades;  Ben Stiller, not so much).

Above all, Rivers is ceaselessly entertaining.  The movie is amusing because with Rivers there is no alternative.  The filmmakers could have placed a camera on a tripod in her living room and left town for a week, and I’m sure whenever Rivers was in view, the result would be hilarious.

We are told that Rivers, like all comedians, is a “damaged” soul in need of constant audience approval.  We read Entertainment Weekly, so we already knew that.  But what caused Rivers’s psychic trauma?  I still don’t have a clue, and that’s my only complaint about this fascinating documentary.          Grade:  B+

Directors:  Ricki Stern, Anne Sundberg  Featuring:  Joan Rivers, Melissa Rivers, Kathy Griffin, Emily Kosloski, Mark Anderson Phillips, Larry A. Thompson, Don Rickles  Release:  2010

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Alice in Wonderland is a smorgasbord of rainbow-hued vistas, mist-enshrouded glens, and hallucinogenic castles, most of it photographed in vivid, primary colors.  I haven’t had posters on my bedroom wall since college, but after feasting on director Tim Burton’s visual delights, I’m considering big ones of Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen and Anne Hathaway as the White Queen.  (I’ll tack them up right where Farrah Fawcett used to hang out.)  Burton’s images will be my lasting impression of Alice in Wonderland, I’m certain.  Unfortunately, I’m also pretty sure that everything else about his movie will fade from memory in no time at all.

I’ll forget that the surrealistic special effects were so eye-popping that I spent most of the film staring at them – completely oblivious to any plot developments.  I’ll remember Johnny Depp’s makeup as the Mad Hatter – and not recall that he was horribly miscast in the role.  Depp is a fine thespian, but the Mad Hatter requires a quirky, physically unusual actor, not someone who looks like a matinee idol in clown makeup.

Everything takes second place to the look of this movie.  Alice author Lewis Carroll’s written wit is not here.  There is nothing remotely humorous about what Tweedledum and Tweedledee have to say in the film, but boy, they sure look cool. Fake, but cool.

Alice in Wonderland is a prime example of what happens when story and character play second fiddle to computer and motion-capture effects.  I did not see Burton’s film in 3-D, and I can imagine it is even more visually impressive in that format.  But it’s a sad day when you go to watch a story by the great nonsense-writer Carroll, and watch it is all you do, no listening required.            Grade:  C-

Director:  Tim Burton  Cast:  Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Crispin Glover, Matt Lucas  Release:  2010

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It’s always risky for someone like me to go negative on a movie like When in Rome.  By “someone like me,” I mean a male of the species, and by When in Rome, I mean a romantic comedy tailored for women.  Particularly young women.

But I have to defend myself.  When in Rome has some obvious cinematic ancestors, and one of those would be a 1953 movie called Roman Holiday.  I happen to like Roman Holiday.  I consider the Audrey Hepburn-Gregory Peck film one of the best romantic comedies ever made.  In fact, I consider Roman Holiday one of the best movies ever made, period.  So please spare me any “he just doesn’t get it” attacks.

What I do understand is bad writing, and When in Rome is drowning in it.  The film contains a fair amount of slapstick, but there is a difference between clever-funny and stupid-funny.  I take that back, because the jokes in Rome are 100 percent stupid — no funny whatsoever.  But I take that back, as well, because there is an amusing bit of dialogue in a wedding scene, when the minister mistakenly says, “Do you take this woman to be your awful wedded wife?”  Oh, wait.  That line is stolen verbatim from Four Weddings and a Funeral.

There are a few good things about the movie.  Kristen Bell, as art curator Beth, is cute, likable, and quite adept at physical comedy.  Her romantic costar, Josh Duhamel, is suitably handsome, affable, bland … and looks as though he can’t believe he’s been cast as an ex-jock in a screwball comedy.  Old pros Danny DeVito, Anjelica Huston, Don Johnson and Peggy Lipton do not embarrass themselves, although DeVito comes close.

When in Rome has one outstanding attribute.  Over the past decade or so, Hollywood movies have gotten longer and longer, trying audience patience with stories that take much too long to tell.  When in Rome, blessedly, clocks in at a paltry 91 minutes.  That proves that there is a God.  And I’ll bet God prefers Roman Holiday to this mess.        Grade:  C-

Director:  Mark Steven Johnson  Cast:  Kristen Bell, Josh Duhamel, Anjelica Huston, Danny DeVito, Will Arnett, Jon Heder, Dax Shepard, Alexis Dziena  Release:  2010

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The Killer Inside Me is certainly thought-provoking.  How do you feel about violence against women on film? What are your thoughts about violence on film, in general?  What is the best possible career move for actresses Kate Hudson and Jessica Alba (I’ll get to this one later)?

I haven’t read any of pulp-crime writer Jim Thompson’s books, on one of which Killer is based, but Hollywood has a long history with his works (The Grifters, The Getaway).  The late, great Stanley Kubrick was a Thompson fan.  I think that prior to watching director Michael Winterbottom’s new movie, some familiarity with Thompson’s world would probably be of help.  As Killer unfolded, I kept asking myself:  “Who are these people?  What makes them tick?”  I’m guessing that the answers to these questions come more easily to Thompson fans.

In the case of “hero” Lou Ford (Casey Affleck), we probably don’t want to know who he is – not who he really is.  Ford is a small-town cop, a young man seemingly as amiable as his high-pitched, West Texas drawl.  Everyone in town knows soft-spoken Lou; they’ve known him since his childhood.  Or do they really?  Do they, for example, know that in his youth Lou sexually assaulted a little girl, then let his stepbrother take the fall for it?  Do the townspeople know that Lou harbors near-constant urges to act violently?

Killer is nothing if not violent – primarily violence against women.  There is one scene in particular, in which Alba’s character, a prostitute, is graphically pummeled in the face, which will probably mesmerize some in the audience, and repel others.  We all know that violence is part of human nature, but do we need it spelled out in such detail?  Your answer to that question will probably determine how you react to this film, overall.

The performances are praiseworthy.  Affleck is a study in sociopathic coolness as he vacillates between inbred Southern manners and the “sickness” within.  His amoral cop listens to classical music, surrounded by shelves of books in his father’s study, while contemplating his next atrocity.  Hudson and Alba are apparently on board to transition their careers from eye-candy roles to “serious actress.”  In this movie, that requires both of them to bare all (well, at least their derrieres … well, at least Alba’s derriere; Hudson might have used a double) in rough-sex scenes. 

My guess is that any potential controversy over the violence in this film will come to nothing.  Killer isn’t mainstream enough to garner much attention outside of, possibly, the art-house circuit.        Grade:  B-

Director:  Michael Winterbottom  Cast:  Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson, Jessica Alba, Ned Beatty, Elias Koteas, Tom Bower, Simon Baker, Bill Pullman, Rosa Pasquarella  Release:  2010

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