For the past two weeks, I have been eyeballs deep in docs. Big sweaty docs and little docs alike. You can read all my reviews and interviews over at Criticize This!, but if you are looking for a specific title, here is a breakdown for you what is in each part. You should read them all, but consider this a cross reference. Follow the links for full reviews. All star ratings out of five stars
HotDocs Part 1
The Chocolate Farmer (**)
Uprooted (short) (***)
The Lumberfros (***1/2)
Wiebo's War (*****)
HotDocs Part 2
Becoming Chaz (**1/2)
Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then (*1/2)
Fightville (****)
Beauty Day (*****)
The Burton Cycle Part 1, Fahrenheit 7-Eleven (short) (****)
Magic Trip (***) Bonus: Interview with Magic Trip co-director Alex Gibney
HotDocs Part 3-D
Hell and Back Again (*****)
Hot Coffee (****)
Grinders (*)
Chance Encounters (short) (***)
Family Instinct (****)
Recessionize! For Fun and Profit! (**)
HotDocs: The Final Chapter
Bury the Hatchet (****1/2)
The Interrupters (***1/2)
No Entry No Exit (***)
Beats, Rhymes, and Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest (****)
HotDocs Part V: A New Beginning
Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Story Ever Sold (***1/2)
Superheroes (****)
Ola Svensson Superstar (**1/2)
Bobby Fischer Against the World (****1/2)
Boy Cheerleaders (****)
HotDocs Part VI: Andy Lives!
Buck (****1/2)
Limelight (**)
Becoming Santa (****)
The Team (**1/2)
Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey (****)
The Bully Project (***)
HotDocs Part VII: The New Blood
The National Parks Project (****)
Who Took the Bomp?: Le Tigre on Tour (***)
Family Portrait in Black and White (*****)
The Pirate Tapes (Zero Stars)
Battle for Brooklyn (****)
HotDocs Part VIII: Andy Takes Manhattan
My Reincarnation (***1/2)
Eco Pirate: The Story of Paul Watson (****)
The Redemption of General Butt Naked (****1/2)
Grande Hotel (***)
Andy Goes to Hell: The Final HotDocs (written by Brian McKechnie, head of Criticize This!)
Mighty Jerome (****)
El Bulli - Cooking in Progress (*)
Inside Lara Roxx (****)
Andy X
Bob and the Monster (****)
The Guantanomo Trap (****)
The Good Life (****)
Highway Gospel (***)
HotDocs: The Inevitable Reboot (coming soon)
Open Secret (****)
Wild Horse, Wild Ride (***1/2)
The Castle (**1/2)
The Advocate for Fagdom (**)
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Thursday, April 21, 2011
The Earth Day Spectacular!
When I was younger and didn’t know any better, I was considerably more excited by Earth Day’s pseudo-holiday status. I guess now they have this thing called Earth Week, which in all seriousness and with all redundancy set aside should be every week and not just a one week cram session for people who feel guilty. This year, I had no clue what day of the week Earth Day fell on. Apparently it was Thursday. Or Wednesday. Or maybe sometime in May. Who the fuck knows? Oh, it's the same day as Good Friday? That's a great day to get the environment noticed.
Sorry if I come across as being a little bitter. When I was much younger I had no problem remembering when Earth Day was. I don’t remember now what the exact date was, but I remember it being a weekday in fifth grade. Back then, thanks to a very generically titled book fair purchase (Save the Earth!), I was far more eco-minded. Save the Earth! was a very elementary read, but I guess all future Greenpeace members need to start somewhere. It espoused the virtues of reducing, reusing, and recycling. It gave you addresses of people to write so you could better voice your outrage. My mind vaguely mumbles that it said something in great length about saving the rainforests (which was in vogue at the time, before we had to start saving everything). As I recall, it's cover was a strange Noah’s Ark type homage with a boy and a girl looking way too excited to be on a wooden ship with exotic animals (giraffe, elephant, rhinoceros, velociraptor) all set amongst a sky of blue with wispy white clouds and a rainbow to nowhere over their heads. Oh, and there was a palm tree in the background. Now that I try to remember the cover, maybe I am slightly delusional, but I digress. I wrote that while listening to “Tiny Dancer” played at maximum volume.
One of the suggestions in the book was to start a club to encourage people to take notice of their environment (a word that in grade five I had to continuously write on the blackboard five times at the insistence of my English teacher, Mrs. Avery, for chronically misspelling it despite the fact that I was always right and she was always wrong in her marking. It took my father coming to school and practically shoving a dictionary in her face to show her that there was indeed an “n” in the word. I never had any of my tests re-graded retroactive to her stupidity. I did however make a battle rap about how she had a “fat, fat ass” on my tape recorder. That, despite being a digression, I am quite sadly not delusional about.). Don’t ask me how or why we even decided to do it, but we did. We meaning myself and maybe ten other students teamed up with my social studies teacher Ms. Desy (pronounced De-cee, who also taught me that New Brunswick was actually a part of Canada and not Maine or even its own independent nation) as our official advisor.
The one big event we managed to pull off, other than implementing a half-heartedly embraced recycling programme, was a mass tree planting. Mass meaning five. The club’s only concern was a lack of money. I approached our principal, Mr. Shaw, about planting trees on school property, and while he was immediately intrigued at the possibility of getting the dying bushes removed from the front of the property through good, old-fashioned child labour, he said that the school would in no way fund the planting or provide the materials for it. They would hold an assembly for the planting, but they wouldn’t front a single cent. We were also not permitted to raise funds from the student body as a whole because the school board did not recognize us as a legitimate club and we couldn’t become accredited until after the school year was over.
We also wanted to place a bench in front of the trees we planted. One of the club members had parents who had an almost brand new park bench they wanted to get rid of, and we all figured that if we couldn’t plant as many trees as we wanted, we might as well have a monument for the one that we did plant. The bench idea was once again vetoed by administration since having a bench in front of the building “encouraged loitering.” Apparently Mr. Shaw neglected to remember that the entire front of the building acted as a bus stop.
Amongst ourselves we raised about $120, or enough for one very nice tree to go in the front of the school. After much searching we settled on a rather beautiful dogwood that flowered in beautiful pink and white. Still, we weren’t entirely content with just the one tree. My friend Jeff, who's parents owned the park bench and was quickly becoming my second in command, came to me with an interesting, sugar coated idea: we eat a shitload of Trix. Now while eating mass amounts of sugar laden, slightly fruit based cereal created by a giant corporation seems to have nothing to do with tree planting, it turned out that General Mills had gotten on the eco-bandwagon. With every 4 UPC-barcodes you sent in (plus a $1 check or money order for shipping and handling) they would send you a sapling and planting kit.
At that moment it was our solemn duty to go on a strict Trix diet. It was a lot less fun than it sounded. After days and days of eating them for breakfast they really do become gross. After that I had to take a six year break from eating Trix with its sub-Skittle flavouring and the chalky aftertaste it always left on the back of my teeth and tongue no matter how hard or how many time I brushed.
We managed to collect enough barcodes to get four saplings and just hoped we all didn’t become diabetic for them. The saplings arrived quite promptly and it was for the best since the planting was going to happen the following week. It was decided that these saplings would be planted within the woods behind the school where there were bare patches that no one could really explain. It was almost as if these sections of the woods for cut down just for the heck of it and then never developed or had anything replanted in any way. This planting was not going to be a part of the assembly as no one felt like having to move the entire crowd from the front of the school to the middle of the woods, or vice-versa. The assembly would focus on only the planting of the dogwood in the front.
I really wish I remembered more about the planting. One of the local news anchors, Lester Strong, would stop by to say some words and film the planting for a spot to run over the weekend. Much later in life what almost amounted to my first one-night stand would be with his daughter. Mr. Shaw said something. I said something. We all cheered and had a great time. It was a wonderful moment, that sadly I remember very little of to this day. I do remember years later nearly sleeping with Lester Strong's daughter. Or at least I think I could have slept with her had I not frozen and just ignored the fact that I was practically getting a hand-job from her on her couchwhile watching Demolition Man. .
The trees! Oh yes, the trees! Sorry for that.
The saplings were sadly not long for this earth. Someone had kicked two of them over and the other two appeared to have been lit on fire. They were in the ground less than a week before they were victims of bullying. The dogwood, however, survived and bloomed beautifully. It remained consistent and beautiful.
A year after graduating high school I went back to visit a few teachers and give them my best wishes. I went to the adjacent Junior High School to visit my tree that I hadn’t given as much love to over the years as I probably should have. The tree had grown quite mightily and branched out into a very shady canopy for people to sit beneath.
Only this time there was a bench.
And a plaque.
I took off my sunglasses like Horatio Caine and inspected the plaque that resided next to the brand new bench.
“This bench and tree is presented to the students of Shrewsbury Middle School in memory of Brian Maloney. Beloved son, student, and friend. 1978-1996. Presented in partnership from MADD and Laidlaw.” The plaque has the bronzed signatures of Dr. Preston Shaw and Catherine Mehne, president of MADD, and wife of the school board president, Christopher. Their son was always my arch enemy (and cause of years of psychological abuse that I will get into at another point), and as such, a final screwing from their family is no huge surprise.
Other than being an outright lie, a fraud, and hypocrisy, I was even more upset because of who they were memorializing in the first place. Brian Maloney didn’t even die in a drunk driving accident and was a bully to begin with. It was even suggested at first that he was amongst the group who destroyed the saplings in the middle of the woods. Brian Maloney was a special needs student, but really was a psychopath. He would make off colour and often needlessly graphic sexual jokes in the middle of classes. He shit on his teacher’s desk in grade one. He would take kids by the backs of their heads and slam them to the concrete just for the fuck of it. He drunkenly showed up at my friend Ali's house while he was in grade seven because he thought Ali had purchased Wrestlemania on pay per view. This was six months before Wrestlemania was even supposed to happen. He then punched Ali's dad in the face for trying to throw his drunk ass out. He was hospitalized for siphoning gas and swallowing it. He didn't even bring a gas can or the car to put it in. His plan was literally to spit it into the gas tank. He broke more safety glass in high school than anyone else imaginable. All around class act.
Brian never actually bullied me, but I knew people who had been. His bullying wasn’t even that original. He would sucker-punch you and run away so fast you would have thought that Vanilla Ice, whom Brian resembled in dress and mannerisms, had just beaten you up and you didn’t even know it. He was the typical picture of someone who never made it off being a benchwarmer on the junior varsity football team despite being a senior in high school twice.
Brian died drunkenly, but not from an automobile accident. He was at a party where he got the wise idea to lie face down in Lake Quinsigamond; in less than an inch of water and with a red plastic cup still in his hand as if he were looking for a refill before he ultimately drowned. Needless to say, he is the perfect candidate for a plaque and accompanying bench beneath a tree he had nothing to do with and probably carved the “A.D.I.D.A.S” that now ran down the side of it.
I went into the school and realized that the administration had changed. Mr. Hochstein, who used to be the Vice-Principal and was the coach of the High School basketball team. He was in charge now. I asked for a brief meeting with him that I was granted as soon as he returned to the office. Hochstein, much like his son Matt, was much nicer and easier to get along with than Shaw. No one was exactly sad to see Shaw go, but apparently according to Hochstein, the plaque and bench were one of the last things that Shaw agreed to before he left the previous year.
Hochstein called Mrs. Mehne on the phone while I was in the office and put it on speaker so I could conference and because he didn't remember the full story himself. Hochstein knew that the plaque in front of his school was bullshit and he didn't know the reason why she would take credit for something involving a kid that only the five students who attended his funeral were actually sad passed away.
She told me that she had no idea that we had planted the tree, but since the Save the Earth! Club wasn’t recognized as an official club that year and only lasted for the one year, the tree was essentially public domain and could be dedicated to anyone. She maintained that my work was completely irrelevant at this point and if I had a problem with the plaque, my gripe lies not with MADD but their corporate partner, the Laidlaw bus corporation. I asked about the bench and she said they did have trouble convincing Shaw to let them put a bench in, but she was quick to remind him that a person had just died and needed to be remembered properly with disregard for such a silly no bench policy.
Her tone of voice was so haughty and disingenuous. I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle her, her entire family, and rip their ovaries and prostates out so they could never reproduce. I despised that family when I was in school and they have made quite the living off of making the lives of the little people in the town completely miserable. I asked her if she even attended Brian’s funeral and if she wasn’t just making him a figurehead for an empty, hollow sentiment. She answered with a simple no to both counts and hung up. Our conversation was over.
I let it go. I was moving soon, anyway. It is a great town and generally a good school system with the exception of the board itself. Besides, if I went to take my tree back, I wouldn’t know where to put it, and if I tried to overturn the bench or plaque, everyone would know right away who did it.
The point, somewhat, of this long rambling entry is that sentimentality in the form of symbolic gestures is complete bullshit. I did what I did for no real reason, which is slightly bullshit, but to have it stolen from me in the name of cheap, hollow sentiment really grind my gears; especially when it came at the hands of a family who have never once done something for someone else that didn’t also reflect nicely on them.
Final Note: Laidlaw, however, was surprisingly accommodating. They said they would replace the plaque and maintain that they had nothing to do with the tree, and just the bench was in memory. I don't know if they were got around to it, but if they did, I have no problem with it.
Sorry if I come across as being a little bitter. When I was much younger I had no problem remembering when Earth Day was. I don’t remember now what the exact date was, but I remember it being a weekday in fifth grade. Back then, thanks to a very generically titled book fair purchase (Save the Earth!), I was far more eco-minded. Save the Earth! was a very elementary read, but I guess all future Greenpeace members need to start somewhere. It espoused the virtues of reducing, reusing, and recycling. It gave you addresses of people to write so you could better voice your outrage. My mind vaguely mumbles that it said something in great length about saving the rainforests (which was in vogue at the time, before we had to start saving everything). As I recall, it's cover was a strange Noah’s Ark type homage with a boy and a girl looking way too excited to be on a wooden ship with exotic animals (giraffe, elephant, rhinoceros, velociraptor) all set amongst a sky of blue with wispy white clouds and a rainbow to nowhere over their heads. Oh, and there was a palm tree in the background. Now that I try to remember the cover, maybe I am slightly delusional, but I digress. I wrote that while listening to “Tiny Dancer” played at maximum volume.
One of the suggestions in the book was to start a club to encourage people to take notice of their environment (a word that in grade five I had to continuously write on the blackboard five times at the insistence of my English teacher, Mrs. Avery, for chronically misspelling it despite the fact that I was always right and she was always wrong in her marking. It took my father coming to school and practically shoving a dictionary in her face to show her that there was indeed an “n” in the word. I never had any of my tests re-graded retroactive to her stupidity. I did however make a battle rap about how she had a “fat, fat ass” on my tape recorder. That, despite being a digression, I am quite sadly not delusional about.). Don’t ask me how or why we even decided to do it, but we did. We meaning myself and maybe ten other students teamed up with my social studies teacher Ms. Desy (pronounced De-cee, who also taught me that New Brunswick was actually a part of Canada and not Maine or even its own independent nation) as our official advisor.
The one big event we managed to pull off, other than implementing a half-heartedly embraced recycling programme, was a mass tree planting. Mass meaning five. The club’s only concern was a lack of money. I approached our principal, Mr. Shaw, about planting trees on school property, and while he was immediately intrigued at the possibility of getting the dying bushes removed from the front of the property through good, old-fashioned child labour, he said that the school would in no way fund the planting or provide the materials for it. They would hold an assembly for the planting, but they wouldn’t front a single cent. We were also not permitted to raise funds from the student body as a whole because the school board did not recognize us as a legitimate club and we couldn’t become accredited until after the school year was over.
We also wanted to place a bench in front of the trees we planted. One of the club members had parents who had an almost brand new park bench they wanted to get rid of, and we all figured that if we couldn’t plant as many trees as we wanted, we might as well have a monument for the one that we did plant. The bench idea was once again vetoed by administration since having a bench in front of the building “encouraged loitering.” Apparently Mr. Shaw neglected to remember that the entire front of the building acted as a bus stop.
Amongst ourselves we raised about $120, or enough for one very nice tree to go in the front of the school. After much searching we settled on a rather beautiful dogwood that flowered in beautiful pink and white. Still, we weren’t entirely content with just the one tree. My friend Jeff, who's parents owned the park bench and was quickly becoming my second in command, came to me with an interesting, sugar coated idea: we eat a shitload of Trix. Now while eating mass amounts of sugar laden, slightly fruit based cereal created by a giant corporation seems to have nothing to do with tree planting, it turned out that General Mills had gotten on the eco-bandwagon. With every 4 UPC-barcodes you sent in (plus a $1 check or money order for shipping and handling) they would send you a sapling and planting kit.
At that moment it was our solemn duty to go on a strict Trix diet. It was a lot less fun than it sounded. After days and days of eating them for breakfast they really do become gross. After that I had to take a six year break from eating Trix with its sub-Skittle flavouring and the chalky aftertaste it always left on the back of my teeth and tongue no matter how hard or how many time I brushed.
We managed to collect enough barcodes to get four saplings and just hoped we all didn’t become diabetic for them. The saplings arrived quite promptly and it was for the best since the planting was going to happen the following week. It was decided that these saplings would be planted within the woods behind the school where there were bare patches that no one could really explain. It was almost as if these sections of the woods for cut down just for the heck of it and then never developed or had anything replanted in any way. This planting was not going to be a part of the assembly as no one felt like having to move the entire crowd from the front of the school to the middle of the woods, or vice-versa. The assembly would focus on only the planting of the dogwood in the front.
I really wish I remembered more about the planting. One of the local news anchors, Lester Strong, would stop by to say some words and film the planting for a spot to run over the weekend. Much later in life what almost amounted to my first one-night stand would be with his daughter. Mr. Shaw said something. I said something. We all cheered and had a great time. It was a wonderful moment, that sadly I remember very little of to this day. I do remember years later nearly sleeping with Lester Strong's daughter. Or at least I think I could have slept with her had I not frozen and just ignored the fact that I was practically getting a hand-job from her on her couchwhile watching Demolition Man. .
The trees! Oh yes, the trees! Sorry for that.
The saplings were sadly not long for this earth. Someone had kicked two of them over and the other two appeared to have been lit on fire. They were in the ground less than a week before they were victims of bullying. The dogwood, however, survived and bloomed beautifully. It remained consistent and beautiful.
A year after graduating high school I went back to visit a few teachers and give them my best wishes. I went to the adjacent Junior High School to visit my tree that I hadn’t given as much love to over the years as I probably should have. The tree had grown quite mightily and branched out into a very shady canopy for people to sit beneath.
Only this time there was a bench.
And a plaque.
I took off my sunglasses like Horatio Caine and inspected the plaque that resided next to the brand new bench.
“This bench and tree is presented to the students of Shrewsbury Middle School in memory of Brian Maloney. Beloved son, student, and friend. 1978-1996. Presented in partnership from MADD and Laidlaw.” The plaque has the bronzed signatures of Dr. Preston Shaw and Catherine Mehne, president of MADD, and wife of the school board president, Christopher. Their son was always my arch enemy (and cause of years of psychological abuse that I will get into at another point), and as such, a final screwing from their family is no huge surprise.
Other than being an outright lie, a fraud, and hypocrisy, I was even more upset because of who they were memorializing in the first place. Brian Maloney didn’t even die in a drunk driving accident and was a bully to begin with. It was even suggested at first that he was amongst the group who destroyed the saplings in the middle of the woods. Brian Maloney was a special needs student, but really was a psychopath. He would make off colour and often needlessly graphic sexual jokes in the middle of classes. He shit on his teacher’s desk in grade one. He would take kids by the backs of their heads and slam them to the concrete just for the fuck of it. He drunkenly showed up at my friend Ali's house while he was in grade seven because he thought Ali had purchased Wrestlemania on pay per view. This was six months before Wrestlemania was even supposed to happen. He then punched Ali's dad in the face for trying to throw his drunk ass out. He was hospitalized for siphoning gas and swallowing it. He didn't even bring a gas can or the car to put it in. His plan was literally to spit it into the gas tank. He broke more safety glass in high school than anyone else imaginable. All around class act.
Brian never actually bullied me, but I knew people who had been. His bullying wasn’t even that original. He would sucker-punch you and run away so fast you would have thought that Vanilla Ice, whom Brian resembled in dress and mannerisms, had just beaten you up and you didn’t even know it. He was the typical picture of someone who never made it off being a benchwarmer on the junior varsity football team despite being a senior in high school twice.
Brian died drunkenly, but not from an automobile accident. He was at a party where he got the wise idea to lie face down in Lake Quinsigamond; in less than an inch of water and with a red plastic cup still in his hand as if he were looking for a refill before he ultimately drowned. Needless to say, he is the perfect candidate for a plaque and accompanying bench beneath a tree he had nothing to do with and probably carved the “A.D.I.D.A.S” that now ran down the side of it.
I went into the school and realized that the administration had changed. Mr. Hochstein, who used to be the Vice-Principal and was the coach of the High School basketball team. He was in charge now. I asked for a brief meeting with him that I was granted as soon as he returned to the office. Hochstein, much like his son Matt, was much nicer and easier to get along with than Shaw. No one was exactly sad to see Shaw go, but apparently according to Hochstein, the plaque and bench were one of the last things that Shaw agreed to before he left the previous year.
Hochstein called Mrs. Mehne on the phone while I was in the office and put it on speaker so I could conference and because he didn't remember the full story himself. Hochstein knew that the plaque in front of his school was bullshit and he didn't know the reason why she would take credit for something involving a kid that only the five students who attended his funeral were actually sad passed away.
She told me that she had no idea that we had planted the tree, but since the Save the Earth! Club wasn’t recognized as an official club that year and only lasted for the one year, the tree was essentially public domain and could be dedicated to anyone. She maintained that my work was completely irrelevant at this point and if I had a problem with the plaque, my gripe lies not with MADD but their corporate partner, the Laidlaw bus corporation. I asked about the bench and she said they did have trouble convincing Shaw to let them put a bench in, but she was quick to remind him that a person had just died and needed to be remembered properly with disregard for such a silly no bench policy.
Her tone of voice was so haughty and disingenuous. I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle her, her entire family, and rip their ovaries and prostates out so they could never reproduce. I despised that family when I was in school and they have made quite the living off of making the lives of the little people in the town completely miserable. I asked her if she even attended Brian’s funeral and if she wasn’t just making him a figurehead for an empty, hollow sentiment. She answered with a simple no to both counts and hung up. Our conversation was over.
I let it go. I was moving soon, anyway. It is a great town and generally a good school system with the exception of the board itself. Besides, if I went to take my tree back, I wouldn’t know where to put it, and if I tried to overturn the bench or plaque, everyone would know right away who did it.
The point, somewhat, of this long rambling entry is that sentimentality in the form of symbolic gestures is complete bullshit. I did what I did for no real reason, which is slightly bullshit, but to have it stolen from me in the name of cheap, hollow sentiment really grind my gears; especially when it came at the hands of a family who have never once done something for someone else that didn’t also reflect nicely on them.
Final Note: Laidlaw, however, was surprisingly accommodating. They said they would replace the plaque and maintain that they had nothing to do with the tree, and just the bench was in memory. I don't know if they were got around to it, but if they did, I have no problem with it.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
American: The Bill Hicks Story
American: The Bill Hicks Story opens at The Royal in Toronto in Friday, April 15th.
In every medium of art there is always at least one icon that departed the world too soon. The world quite possibly never got a chance to see the best that Plath, Basquiat, and Cobain had to offer, amongst many others. In the world of stand-up comedy, there was probably no greater wealth of untapped potential than Houston native Bill Hicks who passed away from cancer at age 32.
The new documentary American: The Bill Hicks Story chronicles the remarkably packed life of a man who some consider to be one of the best stand-up comics to ever come out of the US. While this film tells the story of Hicks' life very linearly and matter of factly (from interviews of those who knew him best), directors Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas have created an unnecessarily flashy film that sometimes dampens the impact of the film overall, especially in the film's first half.
American follows the intensely motivated Hicks from working as a high schooler performing sketches between classes to stand-up clubs. Hicks lived and breathed stand-up and would settle for nothing less than success. The film chronicles his early days when he thought he needed hallucinogenics and alcohol to bring out the bitterness a comedian needs to succeed to his later career when he sobered up and became a politically outspoken cult icon. The film does do a great job of fully illustrating just how a comedian works their personal lives into their act by giving reference points for some of his most famous routines.
Bill Hicks is a larger than life character who really did live life to the fullest, but the second half of the film which relies on footage from Hicks' act is the part that really cooks. The first half of the film, however, relies far too heavily on some pretty ugly and unconvincing motion graphics that incorporate archival photographs of the young Hicks. The people being interviewed have some genuinely interesting insights into Hicks' life, but visually the film nearly takes the viewer out of the story. Granted, the events being depicted and talked about were never filmed, but there was probably a better way of handling Hicks' early days than is done here. Despite it all, the man shines through, and in the end, that's all that really matters.
Rating (out of four stars): ***
In every medium of art there is always at least one icon that departed the world too soon. The world quite possibly never got a chance to see the best that Plath, Basquiat, and Cobain had to offer, amongst many others. In the world of stand-up comedy, there was probably no greater wealth of untapped potential than Houston native Bill Hicks who passed away from cancer at age 32.
The new documentary American: The Bill Hicks Story chronicles the remarkably packed life of a man who some consider to be one of the best stand-up comics to ever come out of the US. While this film tells the story of Hicks' life very linearly and matter of factly (from interviews of those who knew him best), directors Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas have created an unnecessarily flashy film that sometimes dampens the impact of the film overall, especially in the film's first half.
American follows the intensely motivated Hicks from working as a high schooler performing sketches between classes to stand-up clubs. Hicks lived and breathed stand-up and would settle for nothing less than success. The film chronicles his early days when he thought he needed hallucinogenics and alcohol to bring out the bitterness a comedian needs to succeed to his later career when he sobered up and became a politically outspoken cult icon. The film does do a great job of fully illustrating just how a comedian works their personal lives into their act by giving reference points for some of his most famous routines.
Bill Hicks is a larger than life character who really did live life to the fullest, but the second half of the film which relies on footage from Hicks' act is the part that really cooks. The first half of the film, however, relies far too heavily on some pretty ugly and unconvincing motion graphics that incorporate archival photographs of the young Hicks. The people being interviewed have some genuinely interesting insights into Hicks' life, but visually the film nearly takes the viewer out of the story. Granted, the events being depicted and talked about were never filmed, but there was probably a better way of handling Hicks' early days than is done here. Despite it all, the man shines through, and in the end, that's all that really matters.
Rating (out of four stars): ***
Rio
Rio opens everywhere on Friday, April 15th.
In a time when most animated films seem to be stepping up their game and offering adults and children delights in equal amounts, Rio, the latest film from the Blue Sky animation studios, really seems to be favouring the little ones. Not that there is anything wrong with pleasing the kids who will make up that core audience of Rio, but kids honestly deserve better than this repetitive and inert film.
After years of being raised in Minnesota by a book store owner (voiced by Leslie Mann), a blue Macaw from the rainforests of Brazil named Blu (obviously, voiced by Jesse Eisenberg) learns he has to return briefly to Brazil because he is the last male Macaw alive and is needed to mate with Jewel (Anne Hathaway). Naturally, upon their arrival during Carnivale, things go awry when Jewel wants nothing to do with the socially awkward Blu (who is so domesticated that he can't even fly short distances) and they are captured by smugglers and chained together at the ankle.
For the remainder of the film the plot will play out repeatedly in the ways listed below, only sometimes differing in order:
-Blu and Jewel escape from captivity or a dangerous situation
-Blu and Jewel fight
-Blu and Jewel meet a character that will take them to a pointless set piece or musical number
-Blu just missed getting back together with his former owner
-Blu and Jewel flirt
-Blu blows it with Jewel somehow
-Blu and Jewel are captured again
Just keep shuffling these elements over and over again after one is drawn from the deck, put it back in the deck, and repeat. That is the maddening structure that Rio seems to be following. Only three characters in the film have any back story, only one of those three is at all engaging, and the rest are just on hand to look cute and blend into the film's admittedly rich colour scheme. George Lopez, Jamie Foxx, and will.i.am., are all on hand as birds that occassionally accompany Blu and Jewel, but they don't do anything. Nothing they do is amusing and they never once make an impact on the plot. They simply point in directions, sing a song, offer useless advice, and Blu and Jewel just follow along blindly.
The film does have two aces up it's sleeve, and they are quite likely the only things anyone over the age of 8 will find funny. Jermaine Clement provides the voice of a villainous bird employed by the smuggling ring. This character used to be an action star, is seemingly modelled after Hans Gruber, eats chicken (effectively making him a cannibal), and has his own Flight of the Conchords style musical number. The other ace comes late in the film in the form of Tracy Morgan voicing a slobbering bulldog. It is a character that really only serves one purpose, but much like Clement, Morgan rises above the material and is able to put his own spin on things.
Rio isn't terrible by any stretch. It is just thoroughly underwhelming. Instead of striving for excellence, the film seems perfectly content with being merely adequate. It is lazy and repetitive, with few laughs for adults (one of which is an off-handed reference to the long forgotten film White Nights), but the core 4-8 demographic will find plenty to enjoy in the silly voices and lavish colours.
Side note: Rio is preceded by a short featuring Scrat from the Ice Age films. This short is funnier and more bizarre than all of Rio. Also, if watching in a 3D house, the short looks great in 3D. The same can not be said for Rio which doesn't have anything added to it at all by being in 3D. Much like this year's Green Hornet, you can take your glasses off for long stretches and it would look virtually the same (and it wouldn't drown out all those great colours).
Rating (out of four stars): **1/2 (the extra half is honestly for the short)
In a time when most animated films seem to be stepping up their game and offering adults and children delights in equal amounts, Rio, the latest film from the Blue Sky animation studios, really seems to be favouring the little ones. Not that there is anything wrong with pleasing the kids who will make up that core audience of Rio, but kids honestly deserve better than this repetitive and inert film.
After years of being raised in Minnesota by a book store owner (voiced by Leslie Mann), a blue Macaw from the rainforests of Brazil named Blu (obviously, voiced by Jesse Eisenberg) learns he has to return briefly to Brazil because he is the last male Macaw alive and is needed to mate with Jewel (Anne Hathaway). Naturally, upon their arrival during Carnivale, things go awry when Jewel wants nothing to do with the socially awkward Blu (who is so domesticated that he can't even fly short distances) and they are captured by smugglers and chained together at the ankle.
For the remainder of the film the plot will play out repeatedly in the ways listed below, only sometimes differing in order:
-Blu and Jewel escape from captivity or a dangerous situation
-Blu and Jewel fight
-Blu and Jewel meet a character that will take them to a pointless set piece or musical number
-Blu just missed getting back together with his former owner
-Blu and Jewel flirt
-Blu blows it with Jewel somehow
-Blu and Jewel are captured again
Just keep shuffling these elements over and over again after one is drawn from the deck, put it back in the deck, and repeat. That is the maddening structure that Rio seems to be following. Only three characters in the film have any back story, only one of those three is at all engaging, and the rest are just on hand to look cute and blend into the film's admittedly rich colour scheme. George Lopez, Jamie Foxx, and will.i.am., are all on hand as birds that occassionally accompany Blu and Jewel, but they don't do anything. Nothing they do is amusing and they never once make an impact on the plot. They simply point in directions, sing a song, offer useless advice, and Blu and Jewel just follow along blindly.
The film does have two aces up it's sleeve, and they are quite likely the only things anyone over the age of 8 will find funny. Jermaine Clement provides the voice of a villainous bird employed by the smuggling ring. This character used to be an action star, is seemingly modelled after Hans Gruber, eats chicken (effectively making him a cannibal), and has his own Flight of the Conchords style musical number. The other ace comes late in the film in the form of Tracy Morgan voicing a slobbering bulldog. It is a character that really only serves one purpose, but much like Clement, Morgan rises above the material and is able to put his own spin on things.
Rio isn't terrible by any stretch. It is just thoroughly underwhelming. Instead of striving for excellence, the film seems perfectly content with being merely adequate. It is lazy and repetitive, with few laughs for adults (one of which is an off-handed reference to the long forgotten film White Nights), but the core 4-8 demographic will find plenty to enjoy in the silly voices and lavish colours.
Side note: Rio is preceded by a short featuring Scrat from the Ice Age films. This short is funnier and more bizarre than all of Rio. Also, if watching in a 3D house, the short looks great in 3D. The same can not be said for Rio which doesn't have anything added to it at all by being in 3D. Much like this year's Green Hornet, you can take your glasses off for long stretches and it would look virtually the same (and it wouldn't drown out all those great colours).
Rating (out of four stars): **1/2 (the extra half is honestly for the short)
Monday, April 11, 2011
Daydream Nation
Daydream Nation opens in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver on Friday, April 15th.
Ugh. Whatever. You know? Life in the suburbs is so hard. I mean, it's like none of us have our own identities and stuff and we all lurch about in some sort of grand existential funk in a search for any sort of meaning in our lives, you know? We turn to drugs and sex to numb the pain away because it is all we know and because it is all we can do. Deep down, we all hate ourselves in the suburbs. This is the movie about that summer where those things happened that made an impact in all our lives, for better or for worse, both here and in the greater scheme of the universe.
I could, you know, tell you the plot of the film, but it's all like, whatever, go away, I hate hearing the sound of my old voice and I am getting tired just talking to you, you know? It's about this girl (Kat Dennings) who is branded a slut by the rest of the school for no reason even though she is sleeping with her hottie English teacher (Josh Lucas). There's also this boy (Reece Thompson) that has a crush on this girl and he is suuuuuuuuuuuuuper cute, but like, suuuuuuuuuuper awkward because his best friend died in a car accident and he tries to get high off of a bunch of household cleaners and junk, but like, totally a nice guy, unlike that teacher that is just stringing her along and doesn't really know what he wants. But, ugh, no one really cares, except for maybe cutie boy's doting mother (Andie MacDowell). Certainly not that girl's dad (Ted Whittall) because no one knows what is going on in his head. Oh, and there is this serial killer going around! Yeah, he wears an all white suit like he is some sort of emissary from God or something.
I almost don't have the energy to go on I'm so booooooooooored. Life in Daydream Nation sucks so much, you know? It's, like, worse than an Atom Egoyan film. You know, that filmmaker that the movie references because it is a Canadian production set in the US? Yup, we need to lay the quirk on pretty thick around here to make any of this fly because we are just working so hard at conveying just how bored we are. We all do a great job of being bored here in Daydream Nation, but I don't think you would want to join us. You aren't cool enough to be bored with us so unless you can be all like, "Yeah, whatever" then just don't bother even trying. Try smoking some Lysol and Vim out of boredom and pain and then get back to us about how bad YOUR life is, eh? You just don't get it, do you? Whatever. But like, we got cool music (We live in a movie named after a Sonic Youth song guys! Because that totally speaks to who we are as teenagers and adults living in the suburbs today!) and stuff and there is usually alcohol and weed, so if you change your mind...
Rating (out of four stars): Whatever.
Arbitrary Star Designation: *
Ugh. Whatever. You know? Life in the suburbs is so hard. I mean, it's like none of us have our own identities and stuff and we all lurch about in some sort of grand existential funk in a search for any sort of meaning in our lives, you know? We turn to drugs and sex to numb the pain away because it is all we know and because it is all we can do. Deep down, we all hate ourselves in the suburbs. This is the movie about that summer where those things happened that made an impact in all our lives, for better or for worse, both here and in the greater scheme of the universe.
I could, you know, tell you the plot of the film, but it's all like, whatever, go away, I hate hearing the sound of my old voice and I am getting tired just talking to you, you know? It's about this girl (Kat Dennings) who is branded a slut by the rest of the school for no reason even though she is sleeping with her hottie English teacher (Josh Lucas). There's also this boy (Reece Thompson) that has a crush on this girl and he is suuuuuuuuuuuuuper cute, but like, suuuuuuuuuuper awkward because his best friend died in a car accident and he tries to get high off of a bunch of household cleaners and junk, but like, totally a nice guy, unlike that teacher that is just stringing her along and doesn't really know what he wants. But, ugh, no one really cares, except for maybe cutie boy's doting mother (Andie MacDowell). Certainly not that girl's dad (Ted Whittall) because no one knows what is going on in his head. Oh, and there is this serial killer going around! Yeah, he wears an all white suit like he is some sort of emissary from God or something.
I almost don't have the energy to go on I'm so booooooooooored. Life in Daydream Nation sucks so much, you know? It's, like, worse than an Atom Egoyan film. You know, that filmmaker that the movie references because it is a Canadian production set in the US? Yup, we need to lay the quirk on pretty thick around here to make any of this fly because we are just working so hard at conveying just how bored we are. We all do a great job of being bored here in Daydream Nation, but I don't think you would want to join us. You aren't cool enough to be bored with us so unless you can be all like, "Yeah, whatever" then just don't bother even trying. Try smoking some Lysol and Vim out of boredom and pain and then get back to us about how bad YOUR life is, eh? You just don't get it, do you? Whatever. But like, we got cool music (We live in a movie named after a Sonic Youth song guys! Because that totally speaks to who we are as teenagers and adults living in the suburbs today!) and stuff and there is usually alcohol and weed, so if you change your mind...
Rating (out of four stars): Whatever.
Arbitrary Star Designation: *
Scream 4
Scream 4 opens in theatres everywhere on Friday, April 15th.
Coming after not only a ten year hiatus, but also after the rise of torture porn, remakes, and reboots, Scream 4 is almost a breath of fresh air. Series creators Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson (who's absence from the third film in the series was wholly apparent) are back with yet another entry in the lucrative, yet entertaining franchise with a bit more material to chew on this time around. It is very hard to talk about a film that is part of a franchise as a stand alone film, especially when dealing with horror films, but to break it down into terms genre fans like the characters in the film will understand, Scream 4 matches the intensity of the original, the wit of the second film (as evidenced by a really clever opening sequence), and quite sadly, the plot structuring of the third film.
Returning to the sleepy hamlet of Woodsboro after a prolonged absence and getting caught up in two further killing sprees, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) heads home as part of a promotional blitz for a self help book she has just written. Her sweet friend and guardian Dewey (David Arquette) is also back home and promoted to sheriff, while his wife, former news reporter Gail Weathers (Courtney Cox) is stuck at home with a crippling case of writer's block. At just about the same moment that the old friends are reunited bodies start piling up again and the creepy phone calls start pouring in (made easier by the fact that there just so happens to be a Ghostface app for the numerous iPhones scattered throughout the film). All signs point to the killer targeting Sidney's somewhat estranged remaining family, including her cousin Jill (Emma Roberts) and her aunt (Mary McDonnell). The killer in this film seems to be aiming for an almost straight remake of the original incident (or of the original Stab films within the Scream series). It helps that many of the people in Jill's life aren't that far off from the people who went through the original massacre from the best friend (Hayden Panettiere) to the no good ex-boyfriend who sneaks in and out of Jill's window (Nico Tortorella) to not one, but two film nerds (Rory Culkin and Eric Knudsen).
Despite an occasionally wonky script, Scream 4 is more enjoyable than the previous entry in the series and far better than most horror films that have flooded the market in recent years. Craven and Williamson seem to get how inherently ridiculous it is that the same characters get caught in the same situations over and over again and that sense of playfulness serves the film well. Craven shows once again that he is the master of the cat and mouse sequence and manages to match the tension of the original film at least on a visual level. Craven also seems to be playing a prank on the viewer with the number of jump scares in the film. It might be the first time a film ever intentionally loads the film with scenes of things jumping out at characters. Much like how a good joke can get repeated over and over again and become funny through sheer repetition, the jump scares in this film actually loop back on themselves and become scary again.
The performances are great across the board especially from Roberts, Panettiere, and oddly enough, Arquette, who does his best work of the series here (probably because Dewey is a bit less of a joke this time around). There are some great small supporting turns from Marley Shelton, Adam Brody, and Anthony Anderson as Dewey's deputies and especially from Community's Alison Brie who steals every scene she is in as Sidney's incredibly greedy PR rep. The only person with curiously little to do is Cox, who it seems was given the attribute of a stumped writer because Williamson just didn't know what to do with her character this time around.
The biggest problem with Scream 4, however, is the all important final act, which is satisfying, but curiously drawn out to include a societal message that doesn't quite take hold. Also, unlike the first two films, the ending doesn't quite add up when held up for close scrutiny. It makes sense in terms of character motivations and in terms of resolving the plot, but in terms of spacial relations and sheer laws of physics, it manages to defy everything that came in the film before it. It's not something to be discussed here, but upon viewing the finale it might be kind of obvious why the big reveal could never happen the way the plot sets things up.
The message at the end of Scream 4 is hammered home by an undeniably powerful final shot which feels curiously like a finale to the series. If Craven and Williamson stopped here, it is doubtful viewers would hold it against them. This is a more fitting bookend to the series than the previous entry, but even after taking a decade long break, this series is still a little long in the tooth.
Rating (out of four stars): ***
Coming after not only a ten year hiatus, but also after the rise of torture porn, remakes, and reboots, Scream 4 is almost a breath of fresh air. Series creators Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson (who's absence from the third film in the series was wholly apparent) are back with yet another entry in the lucrative, yet entertaining franchise with a bit more material to chew on this time around. It is very hard to talk about a film that is part of a franchise as a stand alone film, especially when dealing with horror films, but to break it down into terms genre fans like the characters in the film will understand, Scream 4 matches the intensity of the original, the wit of the second film (as evidenced by a really clever opening sequence), and quite sadly, the plot structuring of the third film.
Returning to the sleepy hamlet of Woodsboro after a prolonged absence and getting caught up in two further killing sprees, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) heads home as part of a promotional blitz for a self help book she has just written. Her sweet friend and guardian Dewey (David Arquette) is also back home and promoted to sheriff, while his wife, former news reporter Gail Weathers (Courtney Cox) is stuck at home with a crippling case of writer's block. At just about the same moment that the old friends are reunited bodies start piling up again and the creepy phone calls start pouring in (made easier by the fact that there just so happens to be a Ghostface app for the numerous iPhones scattered throughout the film). All signs point to the killer targeting Sidney's somewhat estranged remaining family, including her cousin Jill (Emma Roberts) and her aunt (Mary McDonnell). The killer in this film seems to be aiming for an almost straight remake of the original incident (or of the original Stab films within the Scream series). It helps that many of the people in Jill's life aren't that far off from the people who went through the original massacre from the best friend (Hayden Panettiere) to the no good ex-boyfriend who sneaks in and out of Jill's window (Nico Tortorella) to not one, but two film nerds (Rory Culkin and Eric Knudsen).
Despite an occasionally wonky script, Scream 4 is more enjoyable than the previous entry in the series and far better than most horror films that have flooded the market in recent years. Craven and Williamson seem to get how inherently ridiculous it is that the same characters get caught in the same situations over and over again and that sense of playfulness serves the film well. Craven shows once again that he is the master of the cat and mouse sequence and manages to match the tension of the original film at least on a visual level. Craven also seems to be playing a prank on the viewer with the number of jump scares in the film. It might be the first time a film ever intentionally loads the film with scenes of things jumping out at characters. Much like how a good joke can get repeated over and over again and become funny through sheer repetition, the jump scares in this film actually loop back on themselves and become scary again.
The performances are great across the board especially from Roberts, Panettiere, and oddly enough, Arquette, who does his best work of the series here (probably because Dewey is a bit less of a joke this time around). There are some great small supporting turns from Marley Shelton, Adam Brody, and Anthony Anderson as Dewey's deputies and especially from Community's Alison Brie who steals every scene she is in as Sidney's incredibly greedy PR rep. The only person with curiously little to do is Cox, who it seems was given the attribute of a stumped writer because Williamson just didn't know what to do with her character this time around.
The biggest problem with Scream 4, however, is the all important final act, which is satisfying, but curiously drawn out to include a societal message that doesn't quite take hold. Also, unlike the first two films, the ending doesn't quite add up when held up for close scrutiny. It makes sense in terms of character motivations and in terms of resolving the plot, but in terms of spacial relations and sheer laws of physics, it manages to defy everything that came in the film before it. It's not something to be discussed here, but upon viewing the finale it might be kind of obvious why the big reveal could never happen the way the plot sets things up.
The message at the end of Scream 4 is hammered home by an undeniably powerful final shot which feels curiously like a finale to the series. If Craven and Williamson stopped here, it is doubtful viewers would hold it against them. This is a more fitting bookend to the series than the previous entry, but even after taking a decade long break, this series is still a little long in the tooth.
Rating (out of four stars): ***
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Careerology #2: Wes Craven
The name Wes Craven can often be found on many lists of the best horror and suspense directors of all time. His body of work shows arguably more consistency than many of his peers and his background as a former university English professor belies a more erudite person than his films can let on when looked at simply as "slasher films". Craven has not only made slasher films, as this list will show you. He has also dabbled in drama, action, comedy, and television work. Of course, not everything the man has made has been a winner, but he hits more often than he tends to miss. In anticipation of his latest, Scream 4 (review here on Thursday), let's look at the career of one of the undisputed masters of horror.
The Good
1. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) - Aside from creating one of the most memorable horror movie villains of all time in Freddy Kruger, A Nightmare on Elm Street is quite possibly the most genre defying film of the 1980s. A sadistic assault on the senses from which there is no escape, Craven managed to create the ultimate suburban nightmare full of interesting subtext and a great document of it's time. Craven had dabbled the theme of the breakdown of the family in his earlier work and he would continue in this vein with mixed success, but his vision truly gels together here.
2. Scream (1996) - Often wrongly categorized as a parody of the slasher genre he unwittingly set out to create, Scream functions more as an homage to classic whodunits and horror films than as something that is actually derisive of the genre. Craven and writer Kevin Williamson knew better than to talk down to the audience and creates a film that was the most intense mainstream filmgoing experience of the decade next to David Fincher's Seven. The plot is intricate and dutifully constructed and Craven doesn't waste a single frame of film in the telling of the story.
3. Red Eye (2005) - Largely unremarked upon despite being a modest hit, Red Eye is one of the best post-9/11 films to deal with American terrorist fears. The opening 20 minutes of the film are positively Hitchcockian in nature (in that it lures the audience into a real false sense of security) before switching gears to being a low-key psychological thriller with wonderful performances from Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy and then ending with a genuinely cathartic action sequence. Combining such diseparate elements often leads to a mishmash of ideas and themes, but Craven puts it all together in a knock out package that only lasts a scant 85 minutes.
4. The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988) - This may be Craven's most outwardly academic film, but the smarts in no way detract from the amount of scares on screen. This story about an anthropologist (Bill Pullman) sent to Haiti to confirm the existence of a voodoo based "zombie drug" was a real labour of love for Craven and is based in part on a true story (written by Wade Davis). It has the requisite scares that 1980s horror conventions dictated such a film would have (it was, after all, a major studio production), but on a subtler level there is quite a lot going on about the nature of corporations, displacement of the poor in the name of progress, and the question of when life truly begins and ends. Not as fast paced as some of Craven's films, but it really isn't meant to be.
5. Scream 2 (1997) - If one was to make a rushed into production sequel to a film that was a blockbuster only the year before, this is how it should be made. Craven re-teamed with writer Kevin Williamson to create a film that takes all of the surviving characters from the first film and places them into a new situation where they are all out of their element. Williamson's script juggles a lot of new characters in addition to the returning ones in a great balancing act. A much more conventional film than the original, but keep in mind that the point of any sequel is to deliver the goods. The fact that Scream 2 bucks convention more times than not makes it a worth follow-up to the original.
6. The Last House on the Left (1972) - Craven's first official production as a filmmaker also remains one of his most unsettling and definitely his most gritty. Ostensibly a remake of Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring, Last House rises above typical grindhouse "rape revenge" fare by including what would become one of his most famous calling card: the reaction of a family to a tragedy. It is all very sleazy, but the intention was never high art despite the source material. In terms of sheer intensity and discomfort, this might have been the peak of his career, but as a film it isn't as well made as the ones that came before it on this list.
7. Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994) - By 1994 the slasher craze was dead and Scream was still two years away. As a product of it's time, New Nightmare shows just how desperate film studios must have felt to create a new franchise for audiences that were sick of seeing the same thing over and over again. This sort of meta-fiction leads to all the real life participants getting back together to make a new Freddy Kruger film from within a Freddy Kruger film. A must see for film fans and undoubtedly one of the best films in the Elm Street franchise, Craven injects the film with equal parts wit and scares. Still one of his best, but definitely overlong and sporting a conclusion that isn't entirely satisfying and overblown considering everything that previously happened in the film.
Honourable mentions:
The Script for A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors - Craven agreed to come back and work on a treatment of what would end up being the best of the proper Elm Street sequels alongside Dream Warriors director Chuck Russell (Eraser, The Mask) and Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Mist). This is the film that should have followed the original Elm Street and sadly the franchise would only go downhill from here.
Paris, je t'aime: Pere-Lachaise - In just over five minutes, Craven's segment for this anthology film is the best non-genre work he has committed to film. A simply and witty interplay between two angry lovers (Rufus Sewell and Emily Mortimer) comes to a head directly in front of the grave of Oscar Wilde. It is all pretty obvious, but it is a charming short film with good performances.
The Twilight Zone: Shatterday, A Little Peace and Quiet, Dealer's Choice - Craven was called in to direct several segments of the mid 1980s re-boot of The Twilight Zone. The first episode of this reboot was actually comprised of two Craven helmed pieces. The first was Shatterday, starring a young Bruce Willis, as a man who accidentally calls his own home to find his alter-ego conversing with him on the other line. It is worth watching for Willis alone as he pulls off the dual role quite nicely, but the second half is the better of the two stories.
A Little Peace and Quiet centres around a severely overworked housewife who one day finds a golden stopwatch in her backyard that can allow her to freeze time. While the idea of stopping time is not a new one, Craven creates a short film that is very much of it's time and says something profound and touching about the escalating mid-1980s arms race.
Craven would direct a handful of other segments with middling success, but a real standout would have to be Dealer's Choice. A short about a bunch of guys playing cards with a mysterious ringer in their midst. Craven doesn't have anything to do on a visual level here, but he is working with what might have been the greatest cast of his career. The friends are played by Garret Morris, M. Emmit Walsh, and Morgan Freeman. Yes, that Morgan Freeman. And the mysterious stranger is played by Dan Hedaya, who gets to showcase a bit of understatement against his normally manic persona.
The Mediocre
8. Music of the Heart (1999) - Before returning to the Scream franchise for a third instalment, Wes Craven told Harvey Weinstein that he wanted to make a more prestigious picture than just making another genre exercise for his brother Bob. Harvey abliged and gave him the chance to direct a film with no less a luminary than Meryl Streep playing a music teacher in Harlem. A film about a teacher, directed by a former teacher (and even written by the film's real life inspiration Pamela Gray) and starring arguably the most prestigious actor in Hollywood, male or female, sounds like a can't miss proposition. And it doesn't. Entirely. The film works, but it still reeks of "inspirational teacher" cliches that really make the film nothing all that special. It is well made, but nothing audiences haven't seen before.
9. The People Under the Stairs (1991) - One of Craven's two stops to the inner city is this tale of a boy named Fool who gets trapped in the house of the creepy people next door. The People Under the Stairs is a decent enough horror film with some pretty classic sequences and lines (some courtesy of a then relatively unknown Ving Rhames), but the economic and sociological subtext on display here is so heavy handed and unsubtle that it is hard for an objective viewer to shut their mind off and just have a good time. Brandon Quintin Adams is also terrific in the lead.
10. Scream 3 (2000) - Remember when I praised Scream 2 moments ago for being able to keep track of numerous new and old characters while still moving the plot forward? Everything that I said Scream 2 got right, is what Scream 3 manages to get wrong. While the original Scream can't quite be called a parody, Scream 3 most certainly can since the characters have all been shoehorned (somewhat unconvincingly) into a situation where they are watching a movie being made about them. Essentially just a grafting of New Nightmare onto the Scream template, the film is not without it's charm or clever scenes, but there just isn't enough momentum to sustain the film to it's conclusion. Whereas the first two films had a genuine sense of pacing, this one feels curiously inert. The blame for that can't fully fall to Craven, who does great work here, but to the fact that Ehren Kruger (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Reindeer Games) is not the writer that Kevin Williamson is. The intent is there, but the passion is missing.
11. Shocker (1989) - Shocker was Craven's attempt to create an all new franchise that he would have sole control over following a falling out with New Line over Nightmare on Elm Street profits. His latest creation was Horace Pinker (a delightfully batshit crazy Mitch Pileggi), a convicted killer who thanks to a botched execution can now manifest himself within anything electrical. While one can be relatively sure that Craven was attempting to make something as commercial as possible, this is all very silly and over the top stuff drawn out to an almost unbearably long length. Craven's love for humourous references ("Hey, look, it's Dr. Timothy Leary over here!") nearly sinks some great action sequences and great performances from Pileggi and a young Peter Berg as the film's protagonist.
12. The Hills Have Eyes (1977) - While not as psychologically disturbing as Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes manages to be nastier and more gruesome. This doesn't really work to the film's advantage, as this tale of a family trapped in their camper by murderous inbred cannibals is really just mean for the sake of being mean. There is not much to this film other than a real sense of tension and Craven's direction. It is effective and not a cheesy film, but there just isn't that much to like about it.
13. Vampire in Brooklyn (1995) - This film is a perfect case of something that can be looked back more kindly upon through the lens of history. Vampire in Brooklyn is a film that was a failed horror comedy with a few decent scares and laughs that was made by a bunch of people who all wanted to do something different. Following the failure of Beverly Hills Cop 3, Eddie Murphy wanted to make a serious and scary horror film. Wes Craven wanted to work with some better actors and make something a bit lighter than his usual fare. The studio (Paramount) wanted another laugh-a-minute Eddie Murphy film. The results are really uneven, but that is probably due to having so many writing credits on the script. Craven does typically good work and Murphy's performance (playing multiple roles yet again) is fully realized and entertaining to watch. This is far from the debacle it was made out to be.
14. My Soul to Take (2010) - A film that Craven really only has himself to blame for (he wrote the script, as well), My Soul to Take is easily the most forgettable of all of Craven's cinematic outings. My Soul to Take feels like a film someone might have stumbled across while flipping through the channels at 4pm in 1986 right before Halloween rather than a film that was released last year. Relatively sanitized and not scary in the slightest, Craven seems content to just aping his own previous work here by incorporating elements of Scream and Shocker with neither good or bad results. Instead of trying for anything better than what it is, the film seems just barely content enough to exist.
Mediocre Mentions
Nightmare Cafe (1992) - Wes Craven was no stranger to television, but this was his first chance to create an entire show. Craven acted as Executive Producer of this show about two people who died on the same night( Jack Coleman and Lindsay Frost), mysteriously finding themselves as workers in a shady diner run by a mysterious man (played by Robert Englund). Calling the show uneven is a bit of a low blow. The show attempted to blend horror, sci-fi, comedy, and Americana in equal parts, but it really seemed to be building to a genuine payoff. Sadly, the show was cancelled by NBC after only 6 episodes, the last of which was helmed and written by Craven himself.
Dracula 2000 (a.k.a. Wes Craven Presents: Dracula 2000): Another wonderful rush job from the Weinstein brothers (who greenlit this production in September of 2000 for release by Christmas the same year), Craven actually had a heavily active role as a producer on this project as an assistant to Scream editor and first time director Patrick Lussier (Drive Angry). Unlike Wishmaster, which he barely had anything to do with despite appearing over the title, Craven oversaw rewrites and made casting decisions for the already stressed out Lussier (including the casting of Gerard Butler as Dracula). The movie is enjoyable silliness and could have turned out far worse.
The Bad
15. Cursed (2005) - It seemed like there was a time when the Weinstein's would do anything in their power to destroy a movie. They were notorious for editing films without the knowledge of the directors and demanding somewhat pointless reshoots before deciding to shelve a film almost indefinitely. Well, that happened to Cursed to some extent, but only after Craven had filmed an entirely different film (courtesy of Scream scribe Kevin Williamson) that was scrapped, recast, and reshot almost entirely. What remains is a werewolf film (starring Christina Ricci and Jesse Eisenberg as siblings) that feels like it was ripped to shreds in the middle of an open field and reassembled by an ADD addled 12 year old. Was Cursed really that bad to begin with that it deserved this? Audiences may never know, but one thing is for certain: Cursed is terrible.
16. Invitation to Hell (1984)/Chiller (1985) - It makes more sense just lumping these two made-for-TV Craven efforts together since they would have come back to back on this list, anyway, and because what one film manages to get right, the other film manages to get wrong.
Invitation to Hell is pure 1980s cheese about a family moving to a new town where they know absolutely no one. The head of the family (Robert Urich!) is a rising tech wizard which leads to the local country club taking notice and wanting to make him a member. Unfortunately, the country club turns people evil, and the head of the club (Susan Lucci!) is an emissary of Satan. Invitation to Hell is so over the top that it feels like it just directs itself. In the first 30 seconds of the film Lucci is hit by a car and then makes the driver's face melt. It could be described as being so bad, it's funny, but that still makes it bad.
Chiller, on the other hand, is a failed collaboration between Craven and the creators of the successful Salem's Lot miniseries that offers little in the way of fun. It is the story of a wealthy man who is cryogenically frozen but is awakened too early and comes back as an unstoppable killing machine that only his mother can stop. Worth it only for Craven completists and for appearances by Paul Sorvino (as a reverend) and genre vet Jill Schoelen, but this is all really dull and dry stuff that is a chore to sit through. Better made than Invitation to Hell, but not as much fun.
17. Deadly Blessing (1981) - A horror film set in Amish country with Ernest Borgnine and Sharon Stone about the coming of the incubus. It is just as cheesy as it sounds. If Craven ever made a film that would conform to the more outlandish views people have of what a grindhouse film is, this is it. Wholly unbelievable and wildly overacted by an entire cast, Deadly Blessing, is a great movie to get drunk to with friends and should be a cult classic amongst bad movie buffs.
18. Deadly Friend (1986) - I think we have been over this.
19. Swamp Thing (1982) - A good indicator of how much a viewer will like this film will come down to one simple question: "What do you think of star wipes as an editing decision?" If the viewer replies yes, then a great deal of enjoyment can be found in Craven's adaptation of the comic series Swamp Thing. The film aims for pure camp appeal all the way (right down to the casting of Adrienne Barbeau), but camp is something that Craven just can't pull off. It is a comic book movie that looks like a comic book come to life in a visual sense, but there is no consistent tone. Attempts to actually make the film serious at the end of the second act are bewildering and maddening. Just simply frustrating to watch.
20. The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 (1985) - This is the only film that Wes Craven has outwardly disowned. He did it for the money and nothing more. It really shows, since this film is one of the most incomprehensible pieces of trash ever assembled. Lazily assembled and nonsensical, The Hills Have Eyes 2 might set the record for most flashbacks in a single film. Dead characters even have flashbacks. Dogs have flashbacks. Nothing makes sense and the film is dull and worthless. Of course, given the original, it probably wasn't necessary to begin with.
Dishonourable mentions
Craven provided credited rewrites and script work for the dreadful J-horror remake Pulse (2006) and (almost inexplicably) for the remake/reboot/sequel/resequel/what-the-fuck-ever The Hills Have Eyes 2.
Unseen and unremarked upon
The Fireworks Woman (1975) - An X-rated incest based drama (made under the pseudonym Abe Snake) about a man struggling between the love he has for his sister and becoming a priest.
Stranger in Our House (a.k.a. Wes Craven's Summer of Fear, 1978) - A made for TV flick with Linda Blair as a teenager who suspects her cousin is a witch.
Casebusters (1986) - A made for TV family film about a brother and sister who help their grandfather (Pat Hingle) operate a detective agency.
Night Visions (1990) - A made for TV buddy cop drama about a cop joining forces with a psychic to track down a serial killer.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Beeswax
Beeswax plays at the Royal Cinema in Toronto on Saturday, April 9th at 9:30pm, Sunday, April 10th at 7:45pm, and Wednesday, April 13th at 7:00pm.
Not every low key independent film needs to have a quirky cast of characters going through quirky situations while set to a quirky and irreverent soundtrack. Writer-director Andrew Bujalski (Funny Ha Ha) seems to grasp this concept quite well and his latest film, Beeswax (finally coming to Toronto after a two year delay), is refreshingly devoid of quirk or any superfluous subtext. A lot of interesting things happen in this focused, yet plotless, film, but Bujalski doesn't try to make mountains out of molehills. This is a film about people living their lives that never once acknowledges that there is even an audience watching the film.
Beeswax follows the lives of twin sisters Jeannie (Tilly Hatcher) and Lauren (Maggie Hatcher) as they live out their mid-twenties in Austin, Texas with various complications. Jeannie is stuck in a bit of a rut at her vintage clothing store (which thankfully isn't played for any sort of hipsterish irony) due to an inattentive business partner (Anne Douglas) who is dangling an unspoken threat of a lawsuit over her head. The fact that Jeannie is still professional despite her job is a nice touch that many lesser films would choose to overlook. The fact that the film doesn't make a big deal out of the fact that Jeannie needs a wheelchair is practically revolutionary these days. It occasionally causes minor annoyance, but it is never made into any sort of plot point.
Lauren, on the other hand, is a little more aimless and scatterbrained, but no less intelligent than her sister. After dumping her boyfriend, she is still trying to find a job as a teacher with the help of her ex's brother. She also seems confused around men and is more openly flirtatious than her sister (which extends to her occasionally making googly eyes at Jeannie's pseudo-boyfriend-slash-legal-counsel, played by Alex Karpovsky).
The relationship between the sisters is a loving and carefree one. The only real moment of conflict or tension between the two of them comes in the second to last shot of the film, and it is handled wordlessly, with a single glance. It is so understated, yet so true to life, that the entire movie gels together with a single shot.
It is far to easy to bemoan the state of American "independent" films, but Bujaski is a writer and director with a definite voice and vision. Beeswax does not feel like a fictional film. Instead, it feels more like a documentary that could have been made by the Maysley brothers in their prime. At the same time, the film has a tight script that never loses a linear focus and the great performances across the board further ground the film in a sense of reality.
The title of the film feels like it is referring to the old saying that people should mind their own "beeswax." There are many key details that are never directly spelled out for the audience and the film is honestly better off without them. Bujaski simply wants the audience to know that they are in the company of generally good people living their lives with the same frustrations everyone can face on a day to day basis. The specifics are in no way more important than the characters or their situations. It is all very compelling and it might leave the viewer wanting more, but in the end it was really never any of our business to begin with.
Rating (out of four stars): ***1/2
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Your Highness
Your Highness opens everywhere Friday, April 8th.
The greatest joke that Your Highness can muster is the fact that it was ever made at all. It is pretty much just an inside joke perpetrated by the entire cast and crew and it all feels oddly experimental. This means that Your Highness is probably not an easily likable film that will be embraced by audiences as a comedy classic. For as much enjoyment as I was able to get from the film, and admittedly there was quite a bit, this is just one of those films that a large part of the audience won't "get" or will "get" for all the wrong reasons. Your Highness is quite possibly the best piss take on a genre disguised as a credible film ever made. The fact that it is making jokes at the expense of two types of movies I almost always dislike (stoner comedies and medieval epics) means my mileage out of this film was considerable. The mileage of the average viewer will probably vary quite a bit.
Lazy layabout Thadeous (Danny McBride) wants to do nothing more than get ripped all day and lounge around his father's castle while his brother Fabious (James Franco) goes questing to slay dragons and maintain the good name of the royal family. Upon returning from a quest to rescue a damsel in distress (Zooey Deschanel) from the evil wizard Leezar (Justin Theroux), Fabious decides to wed the beautiful young woman. Thadeous can't even be bothered to go to his brother's wedding (where he was scheduled to be the best man) and decides to get high with a drifter beside the river instead. Upon his return to the castle he finds Leezar had returned for the girl (which he hopes to impregnate with a dragon) and Fabious about to go off on another quest to save the woman he loves. The king (Charles Dance) sees this as the last straw and orders the woefully unequipped Thadeous to follow his brother on this quest or face banishment from the kingdom. With his trusty man servant (Rasmus Hardiker) in tow and with the help of a warrior woman with unclear motives (Natalie Portman), Thadeous and Fabious attempt to restore order to the kingdom and save it from certain doom.
Before getting in to the humour at the heart of why so many people will love or hate Your Highness, it has to be said that director David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express, All the Real Girls, George Washington) knows how to make an incredibly good looking film. The sets on display in Your Highness are some of the best looking sets committed to film in recent memory. Green films everything in an unironic fashion and plays things perfectly straight behind the camera. The shots of mountainsides and forests pop with an actual sense of wonder that offsets the silliness of the whole affair quite nicely. The action sequences are also small wonders, the biggest highlight being a wagon chase through the forest that manages to feel almost like it belongs in an Indiana Jones film.
The two central jokes at the heart of the film are that medieval epics are stoic, stodgy, and wholly predictable affairs almost devoid of any sense of humour and that nothing new ever happens in stoner buddy comedies. If a film is going to have knights questing about there are a certain number of conventions that film has to adhere to. The knights have to meet creepy people who dole out sage advice, they have to be lured to their deaths through mysterious forces, they will be betrayed by one of their own, they will have to wrestle with their own self doubt. All these things happen in Your Highness, but they are done with an almost gleeful derision of the genre. Since nothing new ever happens in a medieval questing epic, why not just graft these plot conventions onto the stoner comedy where innovation often comes only in small doses to begin with?
Everyone in the film sports a purposely terrible British accent and spouts anachronistic, foul mouthed dialog, but they still play it perfectly straight because that is exactly how an actor in a "serious" epic would have delivered similarly worded lines. No one in the film is better at this than Franco, who seems to be having a great time breaking down such a self important character. McBride is suitably obnoxious and quick witted and Portman acts as a convincing aid and foil to the boys. They all very clearly get the joke the film is based around. Your Highness really is a one joke movie that will probably go over the heads of many viewers, but a certain amount of admiration is due because someone was actually able to get this film made in the first place. Even if audiences don't get the central joke, the potty mouths of the leads and numerous weed references will keep the core audience of the stars engaged to the end.
Rating (out of four stars): ***
The greatest joke that Your Highness can muster is the fact that it was ever made at all. It is pretty much just an inside joke perpetrated by the entire cast and crew and it all feels oddly experimental. This means that Your Highness is probably not an easily likable film that will be embraced by audiences as a comedy classic. For as much enjoyment as I was able to get from the film, and admittedly there was quite a bit, this is just one of those films that a large part of the audience won't "get" or will "get" for all the wrong reasons. Your Highness is quite possibly the best piss take on a genre disguised as a credible film ever made. The fact that it is making jokes at the expense of two types of movies I almost always dislike (stoner comedies and medieval epics) means my mileage out of this film was considerable. The mileage of the average viewer will probably vary quite a bit.
Lazy layabout Thadeous (Danny McBride) wants to do nothing more than get ripped all day and lounge around his father's castle while his brother Fabious (James Franco) goes questing to slay dragons and maintain the good name of the royal family. Upon returning from a quest to rescue a damsel in distress (Zooey Deschanel) from the evil wizard Leezar (Justin Theroux), Fabious decides to wed the beautiful young woman. Thadeous can't even be bothered to go to his brother's wedding (where he was scheduled to be the best man) and decides to get high with a drifter beside the river instead. Upon his return to the castle he finds Leezar had returned for the girl (which he hopes to impregnate with a dragon) and Fabious about to go off on another quest to save the woman he loves. The king (Charles Dance) sees this as the last straw and orders the woefully unequipped Thadeous to follow his brother on this quest or face banishment from the kingdom. With his trusty man servant (Rasmus Hardiker) in tow and with the help of a warrior woman with unclear motives (Natalie Portman), Thadeous and Fabious attempt to restore order to the kingdom and save it from certain doom.
Before getting in to the humour at the heart of why so many people will love or hate Your Highness, it has to be said that director David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express, All the Real Girls, George Washington) knows how to make an incredibly good looking film. The sets on display in Your Highness are some of the best looking sets committed to film in recent memory. Green films everything in an unironic fashion and plays things perfectly straight behind the camera. The shots of mountainsides and forests pop with an actual sense of wonder that offsets the silliness of the whole affair quite nicely. The action sequences are also small wonders, the biggest highlight being a wagon chase through the forest that manages to feel almost like it belongs in an Indiana Jones film.
The two central jokes at the heart of the film are that medieval epics are stoic, stodgy, and wholly predictable affairs almost devoid of any sense of humour and that nothing new ever happens in stoner buddy comedies. If a film is going to have knights questing about there are a certain number of conventions that film has to adhere to. The knights have to meet creepy people who dole out sage advice, they have to be lured to their deaths through mysterious forces, they will be betrayed by one of their own, they will have to wrestle with their own self doubt. All these things happen in Your Highness, but they are done with an almost gleeful derision of the genre. Since nothing new ever happens in a medieval questing epic, why not just graft these plot conventions onto the stoner comedy where innovation often comes only in small doses to begin with?
Everyone in the film sports a purposely terrible British accent and spouts anachronistic, foul mouthed dialog, but they still play it perfectly straight because that is exactly how an actor in a "serious" epic would have delivered similarly worded lines. No one in the film is better at this than Franco, who seems to be having a great time breaking down such a self important character. McBride is suitably obnoxious and quick witted and Portman acts as a convincing aid and foil to the boys. They all very clearly get the joke the film is based around. Your Highness really is a one joke movie that will probably go over the heads of many viewers, but a certain amount of admiration is due because someone was actually able to get this film made in the first place. Even if audiences don't get the central joke, the potty mouths of the leads and numerous weed references will keep the core audience of the stars engaged to the end.
Rating (out of four stars): ***
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Arthur
Arthur opens everywhere on Friday, April 8th.
Much like the original Arthur with Dudley Moore from 1980, director Jason Winner's Russell Brand starring remake is a film perfectly befitting of it's main character. It is a film that coasts by so effortlessly on the charm and wit of the actor at the centre of it that it is a hard film to dislike. It also really isn't that great of a film, and much like the billionaire, alcoholic playboy at the heart of the film, it has a lot of problems that are either never addressed or are dealt with too late in the film to have much of an impact. It isn't word for word like the original, which is fine since the original is a classic only because of Dudley Moore and John Geilgud, but the updating doesn't do a heck of a lot for the film in the plus column.
After getting arrested for drunkenly joyriding around New York City in the Joel Schumacher era Batmobile, Arthur (Brand) is given an ultimatum by his mother (Geraldine James): marry her business partner/his ex-girlfriend (Jennifer Garner) to save the face of her investment funds or lose out on his almost one billion dollar inheritance. Complications arise when Arthur has a random encounter with an illegal NYC tour guide and aspiring kiddie author (Greta Gerwig) and he becomes smitten. Arthur attempts to prove to everyone that he can make it in the world on his own with absolutely no work or real world experience, but he can't stop drinking long enough to hold a single thought for five minutes, let alone a job. Assisting him in his day to day operations as a drunken layabout are his nanny/butler Hobson (Helen Mirren) and his driver Bitterman (Luis Guzman).
Speaking of holding a thought for five minutes, now would be a good time to say that I rarely take notes during movies. I will take notes on a film that I think is somewhat deep or complex, but Arthur is decidedly not one of those films. In hindsight, I wish I had at least taken stock of some of the jokes because I do remember laughing quite heartily at several of them. Five minutes after leaving the theatre, I couldn't remember a single one. I vaguely recalled a few situations and happenings in the film, but I couldn't for the life of me remember why any of them were funny. The wit on display in Arthur is (somewhat appropriately) drunken party wit; the kind of jokes that are funny when mildly intoxicated but are looked back upon only as "that one time that funny thing happened."
Further souring the case for Arthur is some grossly incompetent direction from Winner. Scenes are always being cut abruptly short to the point where they almost go nowhere at all, followed by a transitioning shot of the same skyscraper. The exterior of Arthur's apartment building is glimpsed at least a dozen times for no reason other than to remind the audience that they are going back to the apartment. Winner also has a real love for random insert shots of items that have no real purpose and one can't help but wonder how none of this ended up on the cutting room floor.
But if there is one reason to see the film it is Brand, who singlehandedly carries the film on his back even when it is at it's worst. As the titular playboy who is easy to love and hard to hate, he also makes the film hard to outwardly hate as a result. Mirren fares well, but her character has been so botched in translation from the original film that by the time the audience has to care about what happens to Hobson, she has already acted so outwardly and irredeemably bitchy that there is no way to transition the audience for the tonal shift. At least Brand and Mirren play well off each other. Gerwig does a fine job in the role made famous by Liza Minelli, but again, the character has been neutered to the point of just being another "manic pixie dream girl." Garner gets to show her comedic chops in one fairly memorable sequence involving a magnetic bed and two bottles of wine, but her character is mostly just a superfluous waste for the sake of having a villain with a face. There will be no comment made about how terrible Nick Nolte is in a small role as Garner's father. Words just can't describe how little that man gives a fuck about being in this film.
To a less discerning viewer who doesn't really pay close attention to what is going on and simply wants to watch Russell Brand act like a fool for 110 minutes, Arthur is positively intoxicating. Please be reminded that too much, however, can leave behind a nasty hangover. Thankfully, Arthur seems to quit while it is moderately ahead. Brand makes it work when not much else in it does. I will toast to him for pulling it off, but I would need the booze in the glass to make it through the film a second time.
Rating (out of four stars): **
Much like the original Arthur with Dudley Moore from 1980, director Jason Winner's Russell Brand starring remake is a film perfectly befitting of it's main character. It is a film that coasts by so effortlessly on the charm and wit of the actor at the centre of it that it is a hard film to dislike. It also really isn't that great of a film, and much like the billionaire, alcoholic playboy at the heart of the film, it has a lot of problems that are either never addressed or are dealt with too late in the film to have much of an impact. It isn't word for word like the original, which is fine since the original is a classic only because of Dudley Moore and John Geilgud, but the updating doesn't do a heck of a lot for the film in the plus column.
After getting arrested for drunkenly joyriding around New York City in the Joel Schumacher era Batmobile, Arthur (Brand) is given an ultimatum by his mother (Geraldine James): marry her business partner/his ex-girlfriend (Jennifer Garner) to save the face of her investment funds or lose out on his almost one billion dollar inheritance. Complications arise when Arthur has a random encounter with an illegal NYC tour guide and aspiring kiddie author (Greta Gerwig) and he becomes smitten. Arthur attempts to prove to everyone that he can make it in the world on his own with absolutely no work or real world experience, but he can't stop drinking long enough to hold a single thought for five minutes, let alone a job. Assisting him in his day to day operations as a drunken layabout are his nanny/butler Hobson (Helen Mirren) and his driver Bitterman (Luis Guzman).
Speaking of holding a thought for five minutes, now would be a good time to say that I rarely take notes during movies. I will take notes on a film that I think is somewhat deep or complex, but Arthur is decidedly not one of those films. In hindsight, I wish I had at least taken stock of some of the jokes because I do remember laughing quite heartily at several of them. Five minutes after leaving the theatre, I couldn't remember a single one. I vaguely recalled a few situations and happenings in the film, but I couldn't for the life of me remember why any of them were funny. The wit on display in Arthur is (somewhat appropriately) drunken party wit; the kind of jokes that are funny when mildly intoxicated but are looked back upon only as "that one time that funny thing happened."
Further souring the case for Arthur is some grossly incompetent direction from Winner. Scenes are always being cut abruptly short to the point where they almost go nowhere at all, followed by a transitioning shot of the same skyscraper. The exterior of Arthur's apartment building is glimpsed at least a dozen times for no reason other than to remind the audience that they are going back to the apartment. Winner also has a real love for random insert shots of items that have no real purpose and one can't help but wonder how none of this ended up on the cutting room floor.
But if there is one reason to see the film it is Brand, who singlehandedly carries the film on his back even when it is at it's worst. As the titular playboy who is easy to love and hard to hate, he also makes the film hard to outwardly hate as a result. Mirren fares well, but her character has been so botched in translation from the original film that by the time the audience has to care about what happens to Hobson, she has already acted so outwardly and irredeemably bitchy that there is no way to transition the audience for the tonal shift. At least Brand and Mirren play well off each other. Gerwig does a fine job in the role made famous by Liza Minelli, but again, the character has been neutered to the point of just being another "manic pixie dream girl." Garner gets to show her comedic chops in one fairly memorable sequence involving a magnetic bed and two bottles of wine, but her character is mostly just a superfluous waste for the sake of having a villain with a face. There will be no comment made about how terrible Nick Nolte is in a small role as Garner's father. Words just can't describe how little that man gives a fuck about being in this film.
To a less discerning viewer who doesn't really pay close attention to what is going on and simply wants to watch Russell Brand act like a fool for 110 minutes, Arthur is positively intoxicating. Please be reminded that too much, however, can leave behind a nasty hangover. Thankfully, Arthur seems to quit while it is moderately ahead. Brand makes it work when not much else in it does. I will toast to him for pulling it off, but I would need the booze in the glass to make it through the film a second time.
Rating (out of four stars): **
Born to Be Wild 3D
Born to Be Wild 3D opens exclusively in IMAX theatres on Friday, April 8th.
Born to Be Wild 3D is what IMAX 3D is all about. It is a perfect example of the capabilities of the best large format film presentation currently available, and thanks to the use of newer digital cameras (being used for the first time ever) it looks better than ever. Forget for a moment all of the films that have been blown up and converted to fit IMAX screens over the past few years with varying degrees of improvement. Born to Be Wild 3D is an experience that will put almost all of them to shame and it manages more wonder and emotion in a little less than one hour than most IMAX converted features could muster in two.
Veteran IMAX feature director David Lickley follows two remarkable women as they attempt to rehabilitate orphaned animals in two separate parts of the world. Doctor Daphne Sheldrick bases herself just outside Nairobi, Kenya and watches over young elephants, social animals who have watched their families become victims of poaching. Doctor Birute Mary Galdikas stations herself in Borneo to watch over orphaned orangutans who have had their homes and families taken away by overcrowding and the clearing of land for lucrative palm oil plantations. Both employ a large number of people to help these animals learn the social skills they need to survive in the wild in the absence of parents and community.
Narrated by Morgan Freeman, Born to Be Wild 3D is more than just a stuffy nature documentary. It is a genuinely moving tale about two women who are trying to rebuild families in spite of overwhelming odds against them. Time is running out for these animals in more than one way. Not only are the animals not mentally equipped to survive in either the wild or in captivity, but they also might not have a home to go back to in the near future. To say what Sheldrick and Galdikas do is a labour of love would be an understatement and Lickley more than adequately shows just how difficult their jobs are.
The main attraction for any viewer young or old would have to be the animals interacting with their environments. The elephants and orangutans are just so gosh darn cute that their playfulness is infectious. Taking young children to see this film would be a more entertaining and more humane option than taking them to the zoo (and despite the premium price of an IMAX ticket, still probably cheaper). Thanks to IMAX technology, the film really is an immersive experience. Thankfully, it is also an emotional and informative one for audiences young and old.
Rating (out of 4 stars): ***1/2
Born to Be Wild 3D is what IMAX 3D is all about. It is a perfect example of the capabilities of the best large format film presentation currently available, and thanks to the use of newer digital cameras (being used for the first time ever) it looks better than ever. Forget for a moment all of the films that have been blown up and converted to fit IMAX screens over the past few years with varying degrees of improvement. Born to Be Wild 3D is an experience that will put almost all of them to shame and it manages more wonder and emotion in a little less than one hour than most IMAX converted features could muster in two.
Veteran IMAX feature director David Lickley follows two remarkable women as they attempt to rehabilitate orphaned animals in two separate parts of the world. Doctor Daphne Sheldrick bases herself just outside Nairobi, Kenya and watches over young elephants, social animals who have watched their families become victims of poaching. Doctor Birute Mary Galdikas stations herself in Borneo to watch over orphaned orangutans who have had their homes and families taken away by overcrowding and the clearing of land for lucrative palm oil plantations. Both employ a large number of people to help these animals learn the social skills they need to survive in the wild in the absence of parents and community.
Narrated by Morgan Freeman, Born to Be Wild 3D is more than just a stuffy nature documentary. It is a genuinely moving tale about two women who are trying to rebuild families in spite of overwhelming odds against them. Time is running out for these animals in more than one way. Not only are the animals not mentally equipped to survive in either the wild or in captivity, but they also might not have a home to go back to in the near future. To say what Sheldrick and Galdikas do is a labour of love would be an understatement and Lickley more than adequately shows just how difficult their jobs are.
The main attraction for any viewer young or old would have to be the animals interacting with their environments. The elephants and orangutans are just so gosh darn cute that their playfulness is infectious. Taking young children to see this film would be a more entertaining and more humane option than taking them to the zoo (and despite the premium price of an IMAX ticket, still probably cheaper). Thanks to IMAX technology, the film really is an immersive experience. Thankfully, it is also an emotional and informative one for audiences young and old.
Rating (out of 4 stars): ***1/2
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