Stars Trapped in their Vehicles

Robin Williams, Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton and Nicholas Cage are no slouches but these releases fall short despite their best efforts, usually due to over-indulgent writers/directors. I’m giving all of these two shakers each.

A pre-heart attack Robin Williams shot “The Worlds’ Greatest Dad” in Seattle and although that’s good for our local economy I wish this black comedy worked for me. Written and directed by fellow frantic comedian Bobcat Goldthwait, both the comedy and Williams are surprisingly understated. In fact Williams is so quiet that he almost disappears performance-wise and that doesn’t help. As a high school teacher, aspiring novelist and single parent, his character Lance Clayton seems to do all badly. Lance’s teenage son is a pervy arrogant fool (well-played by Daryl Sabara) who meets an early death which earns both he and his father the fame that eluded them both while he lived. The reverence and whitewashing we give to the dead is a great topic for satire and this film almost works; however, even a black comedy must have laughs. Caught up in its own dour plot machinations it wastes not only Williams but the great supporting cast. Too many music montages, an over-reliance on cutting to the goth girl and what feels like a tacked on Hollywood ending eventually bring it down. It’s a shame because I think if Bobcat played it less safe we might have a comedy in the “Heathers” vein instead of a film as repressed as Lance is.

I’m not going to lie; I am not a fan of Quentin Tarantino. I find his movies over-hyped and ridiculous. Long b-movie speeches interrupted by sensationalized hyper-violence and not a touch of reality. His fan base eats them up though and I was curious how he’d take on a period drama in his latest: “Inglorious Basterds”. Weighing in at two and a half hours it’s a long haul but for a war film it had surprisingly less torture than I suspected, unless you count the twenty minute scene set in a basement pub to be audience torture. I feel if someone had been allowed to edit Tarantino the film would have worked better but perhaps not. When all the top brass for the Third Reich are attending an event it’s a bit surprising to see that only two guards are posted. We also are supposed to believe that the “Basterds” are a super squad of Nazi hunters but we see very little of their tracking and hunting, only Eli Roth (the fellow torture-porn director of “Hostel”) happily beating a Nazi to death with a baseball bat. Pitt’s portrayal is complete caricature, kind of like Foghorn Leghorn in a uniform. However the two female stars, (Diane Kruger as a German film actress/spy and Mélanie Laurent as a Jewish survivor who is living covertly as a local theater owner) outshine their material. But the breakout performance here and probable Oscar nom is Christoph Waltz portraying a nefarious “Jew hunter” SS Officer. Acting well and in four languages he represents the quiet evil of the Nazis better than most war movie heavies outshining even the Hitler in this one. If only the film lived up to his performance with a little less conversation a little more action. (Thanks Elvis!)

Another Oscar worthy performance trapped in a bad film is Tilda Swinton as the title character in “Julia”. It begins as a naturalistic character-driven story where Julia is shown as a hopeless alcoholic who sleeps around and finds it hard to hold down a job or to attend her AA meetings. However soon she meets her neurotic Mexican neighbor who wants to kidnap her son from his wealthy grandfather and the film begins to turn into a marathon of the improbable. This time director Erick Zonca steers the two and half hour ship as Julia makes one bad decision after another, abusing the ten year old in question endlessly before the film literally transforms into a Mexican soap opera where evil-looking gangsters scream “Puta!” a lot with drawn weapons. One twist too many for me and an unbelievable ending to boot, which is a shame since Swinton really shined through this overlong story.

Finally we have the newest trend in action films- full-out apocalypse! We know Nicholas Cage can act from “Leaving Las Vegas” but since then he has chosen films more for their paychecks which is a shame. In “Knowing” we have numerology, crazy psychic kids, Matrix-like aliens with shiny mouths and a shitload of CGI! Cage is a single parent whose son loses out when a fifty-year old time capsule is opened at his school; while the other kids in his class get drawings from the past students (kind of an expensive and wasteful school project no?) he gets a page filled with numbers written by a creepy girl in the film’s prologue. Cage cracks the code which turns out to be a listing of the time, locations and casualties of all the major disasters in the world. Frantically he races off to witness elaborately staged plane and subway crashes but seems only slightly perturbed. The biggest disaster is this film itself. You’ve been warned! Here’s to better DVDs in 10!!

The 20 Worst DVDs of 2009

In the last month I have started blogging DVD reviews for another site! I am just trying something new. To build up content I have repackaged a lot of my reviews from SP, but I have also suceeded in adding unique posts there too. But I can swear on this one and that fucking rocks! I hope if you like what we do here - you'll also check my Seattle PI blog.

The good news this year is that where last years' list were all single shaker turkeys- this year we have more two shaker selections meaning that either there are less bad releases, or that I'm getting better at screening out the bad. Here are my year-end round-up of all those mediocre movie nights- the spoiled cream of the crop!

(Again these are only new releases, no re-releases)

1. Blindness – A virus makes everyone (except Julianne Moore) blind and they are then locked into a hospital and pitted against each other. Kind of like "Lord of the Flies" meets "The Miracle Worker" without the laughs.

2. The Day the Earth Stood Still – The classic original had benevolent aliens trying to save us; this unnecessary remake has them on an extermination mission led by Neo no less! So not excellent dude!

3. The Haunting in Connecticut - Quick cuts, soundtrack blasts and excessive CGI – it's like lipstick on a demon pig. The original 2002 TV documentary was much scarier on no budget.

4. JCVD - Jean-Claude Van Damme mocks his own image playing a version of himself having a middle-age crises only to then be taken hostage by bank robbers. Funny premise but that's basically it.

5. Medicine for Melancholy – Proves that African American indie filmmakers can be just as boring, pretentious and mumblecore as their dull white counterparts. The two leads try hard with bad material and slack direction.

6. Momma's Man - Kind of an arthouse "Step Brothers", an adult man refuses to leave his parents loft in the East Village avoiding his family and responsibilities. I wanted something else to happen here.

7. Of Time and the City - Filmmaker Terence Davies presents his "visual poem" (mostly stock footage) dedicated to Liverpool. This would have been more effective with a little less bombastic poetry recitation and venom (He hates the Queen, the church and the Beatles). Like an English Ken Burns dissing people over mushroom tea.

8. Paper Heart – Hipsters Charlyne Yi and Michael Cera try not to fall in love, because that's so funny right? (Take swig of PBR here)

9. Rachel Getting Married - Anne Hathaway is the black sheep who wrecks the wedding of her sister through her neurosis and addiction. I would have done the same; this wedding weekend is lame and overlong.

10. Righteous Kill – Although they had a brief scene in "Heat", screen legends Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro never made a film together outside of "Godfather II". (Genuflect) This unoriginal police drama proves that maybe that ship has sailed. . . ("Attica!" "You talkin' to me?")

11. RocknRolla – Wants so desperately to be cool as a dozen-or-so stock characters are paraded through this backlit piece of shite. All of them speak quickly and strive to be clever; none are developed or believable in the least.

12. Street Kings – Keanu Reeves (second appearance on this list –sorry!) is a hardened LA cop gone bad- and I'm just stopping there.

13. Synecdoche, New York - If nothing is real and the characters playing characters playing characters are neither really living nor really acting; why does anything matter? This is morose and confusing.

14. The Taking of Pelham 123 – Another unnecessary remake that is all loud and flashy without the street cred.

15. Tulpan – The critics loved it, but this Kazakhstan "comedy" left me as dry as a camel.

16. War, Inc. - Poor John and Joan Cusack who mug their way through a film that tries too hard to satire everything and ends up just a noisy mess. It wants to be "Dr. Strangelove" but instead it's another "Southland Tales".

17. Watchmen - A sadistic abomination proving that torture porn and fanboys are still ruling Hollywood.

18. Whatever Works - A creepy old neurotic, a self-described genius, finds himself cohabitating with a very young girl who he ends up sleeping with to the shock and amazement of his pals. Where does Woody come up with these ideas?

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19. What Just Happened? - Will Bruce Willis shave and should the director cut a scene of a dog being shot? This film is just as contrived and shallow as the Hollywood culture it's mocking.

20. Zack and Miri Make a Porno - Kevin Smith tries to mix gross-out comedy with a date movie and fails both audiences. Judd Apatow has already delivered that money shot son

Surreal Japan – Lost in Translation

Hikikomori - a Japanese term to refer to the phenomenon of reclusive individuals who have chosen to withdraw from social life, often seeking extreme degrees of isolation and confinement because of various personal and social factors in their lives.

Well I’m down for this! I love to learn about social phenoms and in the film “Tokyo!” which presents three short films (about 35 minutes each) we have this lifestyle dramatized in the final sequence "Shaking Tokyo," directed by Korean director Joon-ho Bong (“The Host”). Similar in style to 2006’s “Paris, je t'aime”, this time all three films are by foreign directors again using the titled city as a setting.

The first segment is “Interior Design,” by Michel Gondry who gave us the great “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and the poor “The Science of Sleep” and “Be Kind, Rewind” (Though Jessi and I disagreed on that one). I really enjoyed this tale in the offbeat style of Jim Jarmusch. A quirky indie director and his supportive girlfriend crash at her friends’ apartment in Tokyo in attempt to get his film shown and to become established there. They look at dirty potential apartments and try to find work as their host becomes increasingly annoyed since her apartment literally gets smaller as the film goes on. Once her filmmaker beau begins to get some recognition, the girlfriend is sidelined and must find a new purpose in her life possibly supporting another artist, this time a musician. Wonderful and bizarre!

The next segment “Merde” by director Leos Carax then destroys the charm by introducing an overacting Caucasian male playing a childlike “monster” who lives in the sewers and terrorizes the city. This film was so horrible I had to fast-forward through it. It is pretentious, boring and I swear unwatchable which means it will be hailed by critics as a masterpiece.

The final triptych “Shaking Tokyo”, as I noted at the start, returns to the offbeat tone of the opening segment, presenting an isolated man living off his fathers’ kindness (mailed cash) who has chosen not to leave his apartment in 11 years. The shots outside of an empty Tokyo are quite remarkable as everyone else appears to have chosen to do the same. I thought this was a very creative take on the isolation of a mega-city and Yû Aoi as the cute delivery woman who literally displays her emotions is great. Yet this story’s pace is way slow and in the end the structure is weak. So the cumulative effect of the film “Tokyo” is one of exhaustion and frustration due to its' uneven nature, a common problem with these kinds of anthology films. I think “New York Stories” started this trilogy and trend twenty years ago since I remember that Coppola’s segment really bit. My rating therefore is based on the segments and the overall effect; the salt here would be four shakers, one shaker and three shakers which gives us a two shaker overall.

In a full length film which actually would be better off it were a shorter entry in the above is Hitoshi Matsumoto’s “Big Man Japan” This one features some wonderfully freaky fight scenes between the title character (A beefy giant in his briefs carrying a big stick) and bizarre monsters that have to be seen to be believed. Unfortunately these absurdist scenes are interspersed in a mockumentary about the hero who spends most of his time as a normal-sized man looking sullen and bored. There are some clever ideas about how the glory days of his giant ancestors are gone as modern Tokyo holds him accountable more for the wreckage he causes than for his heroism in his frequent battles to protect its’ citizens. He must now rely on selling his giant body as a corporate billboard and deal with a condescending agent and an estranged daughter. Yet these sections just drag on and any potential humor gets lost in the tedious direction. Then the ending just drives the stake through this films’ heart as it dramatically changes style and tone further alienating the frustrated viewer. Like the giant himself, the director doesn’t know when to let up and move on.

Talking Back to Tim

We agree...and disagree. He says tomato, I say, tomahto. It's perfect, 'ain't it? Two of Tim's recent reviews ( "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and "Happy Go Lucky") are just ripe for a toss-up of opinions.

I selected "play" on the DVD player just the other night for "The Day the Earth Stood Still." Approaching it with the expected angst of watching yet another "why did the remake this?!" film, I was even more disappointed than anticipated. Kathy Bates as a hard-nosed government official? Ouch...painful to watch. (For a real kick-ass politician, see Cherry Jones as the President on "24"). There were, subsequently, so many inconceivable, bad moments that I've blocked out the film. I have to admit...I couldn't even watch the whole thing. Painful, indeed. I'd give one fewer star than Tim did to this completely unnecessary remake.

On my first viewing of "Happy Go Lucky," I nearly threw the remote at the screen. I'm a fairly chipper person, but Sally Hawkins' "Poppy" made me want to grind my teeth down to smooth, polished ivory stubs. Is there something...deficient...with someone who remains cheerful in virtually all circumstances? True, she wasn't facing war or terminal illness. Rather, she merely encountered everyday annoyances that would drive the rest of us into a flurry of expletives. Instead, she persists with a loving silliness against a cranky bookstore owner, for example. The degree to which she perseveres with her downright scary driving instructor (a chilling performance from Eddie Marsan) is almost difficult to watch. And is it courage or foolishness that compels her to approach a boisterous homeless man in a desolate setting?

In between these tests of spirit, there are the everyday situations--drinks with friends, dating, a family get together-- into which she weaves an optimism and glee that no doubt draws her friends and family closer to her.

It wasn't until my second viewing of the film that I found the deeper meaning that brilliant director Mike Leigh had no doubt intended (a character study of optimism and saintly goodness). Still, it's hard to watch. Like being the only one at a party who isn't drinking...and just not seeing what's so funny, after all.

“Towelhead”- Coming of age is horrifically gross - let's shoot that in close-up!

Isn’t the world horrible? Jesus what a way to start a new year! I see and usually rate the “look I’m provocative for the sake of provocation” school of films a banal average rating. (“Welcome to the Dollhouse”, “Happiness”, “Kids”, “Spanking the Monkey”, etc) They remind me of the ‘torture porn’ flicks that have to desperately go over the top in the name of attempted coolness. (Cough- Tarantino!) Excess only works in the context of an already strong film (“Thirteen”, ”Trainspotting”, “Eating Raoul”, “Boogie Nights”, “City of God” and in theaters “Slumdog Millionaire”).

Since Alan Ball wrote the fun “American Beauty” (and “Six Feet Under”) and was making his directorial debut with “Towelhead”, I thought this would be decent. Somewhere between the low angle shot of menstruated panties and the -well: the dead pet in the freezer, the casual sex between young children, the pedophilia, bigotry, abuse and other such horrors presented in a matter of fact fashion, my mind just switched off. Our shell shocked teen (who in fact acts appropriately like a zombie compared to thirteen year olds I’ve met) moves from one abuse to another while some critics cheer. Set in Texas against the backdrop of the first Gulf War our broken Middle Eastern family comments on – blah- blah-blah…not one of these characters seemed real to me but were more like caricatures in a morality play. The DVD has extras that include discussions on prejudice in a desperate attempt to cast this film as non-exploitive. It is in the “Funny Games” camp of filmmaking to manipulate the audience to teach it about itself. I get enough condescension in real life guys, get into documentaries and stop exploiting the same wrongs that you preach to be against. It’s ‘Theaters’ not “The Haters" , so please stop hating the audience. Like your main charactor we are shell shocked and in need of love or at the very least meaningful entertainment that touches us without that sledgehammer.

"August" - Not a hot one

Since Jessi and I won’t always be looking at the same discs, I will occasionally try to match her- domino style, in shaker ratings. My two shaker selection would be the indie tale “August” set in the long ago time of the oft mentioned dotcom bubble burst of 2001. This film has some things going for it, including a moody electronic score that seems almost a funeral dirge. Not only a comment on the death of the optimism of the startups, but also an anticipation of the horror of September 11th which would occur the following month. It is filmed in a casual laidback style with some good cinematography. It also has a predictable plot with cliched characters.

Josh Hartnett does his best as Tom Sterling (wow- like currency), the hotshot CEO of a down and going dotcom he has started with his techie brother. They have a distant relationship that you think will lead somewhere- it doesn’t and the same goes for an ex-girlfriend architect who is so ‘brick and mortar’. His dad (Rip Torn) doesn’t respect him and quietly mocks how his suspiciously idle staff just sit around eating Oreos. The techie brother finally displays an emotion outside of that of the doting family guy, by berating Tom for sending their dad a b-list Buddha as punishment. (Like Bill Murray sending folks towels in “Scrooged”) Meanwhile the TV blasts heavy-handed reminders of the time frame- look everyone- Aaliyah just crashed! Ben Affleck is in rehab! Hartnett’s character is just an asshole and you don’t really buy all that gibberish tech jargon they make him spout about his beloved company “Landshark”. (No Chevy Chase does not reprise his SNL role)

“What do you do?” Torn pleas for the audience. Yet the purpose of the company is as much as an enigma as the soul of the characters here. David Bowie appears as an old school suit who wants to take over the firm. When you think Wall Street blue-blood- Bowie is not who comes to mind but he is welcome just because we need someone to call the main character out. If you see two documentaries of this period: “E-dreams” and “Startup.com” you’ll see more compelling tales of the dotcom crash. This one is all atmosphere and set up, but it just doesn’t click.

"Jumper" (2008): Jumping through Millions

Imagine what you would do with 75 million dollars. Assuming you’re not Bill Gates, this would be a staggering amount of money. Travel the world? Make generous donations? The choices would be endless.

So when films are made with large budgets, you have to ask: was it worth it? Did that amount of money go towards the creation of something life-changing? Was it pleasurable escapism? Thought-provoking? In the case of “Jumper,” the answer would be a resounding no, no, no.

I hadn’t planned on being too hard on this flimsy story until I heard the director interviewed on the DVD extras. He said that, in most cases, films are funded for either big special effects (all shot in one location) or for numerous locations, but never both. He wanted to do a budget-doubling BOTH---huge special effects in many locations (I counted seven: New York, Rome, Tokyo, Baja, Prague, Ann Arbor, Toronto). Exorbitant? Yes. Worthwhile? No.

The story, or what should be the backbone on which every great film stands, is simplistic and underdeveloped. Hayden Christensen does his best to infuse a translucent and roughly drawn character with life. Rachel Bilson seems painfully self-aware, striking poses more suited to fashion photography.

Being a sci-fi fan, I had high hopes for this film, which opens with a shy teen hero who suddenly discovers his own ability to “jump” or teleport himself at will. In that, we have the makings of rich fantasy (the novel which inspired the film, “Jumper,” by Steven Gould, was published in 1992). Instead, the film spends too much time celebrating it’s own jumping technology, and the story becomes so shallow that the jumps become meaningless. (Hurry and jump away from Samuel L. Jackson's hot-on-his-tail executioner. For some unknown reason, Samuel L. Jackson sports a distracting and purposeless
head of bleached white hair).

(Jumping...old school ----->)

Yes, kudos go to the creative team behind the “jumping” effect. Rather than a Star Trek-like rippling camera dissolve, these “jumps” have gravity and emotional intensity behind them, made more real and believable by how they seem to follow the laws of the universe (ie. leaving the trail of a time/space “scar” behind, for several seconds after a jump, and the jump’s physical, often destructive, impact on the environment in which it takes place). If enough attention had been placed on casting and story as had been on special effects, this could have been something really good.

In an ideal world, I’d have given this project to Jon Favreau, who created a thing of depth and beauty with "Iron Man."