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Summer Exam Period
Due to the extreme busyness and stress of these
few weeks, I only got a chance to write full-length reviews of a handful
of movies. Here are short summaries of the rest...
2 Fast 2 Furious (*** out of
****)
Pretty much a retread of the original formula,
with whitebread bitchass Paul Walker blacking it up and doing a lot of
street-racing in souped-up cars, in order to go undercover and bust a criminal
mastermind. The first movie has become a favourite of guys obsessed with
cars because of dick size paranoia, but to be fair, it was one helluva ride,
with its overwhelming pop-rap and metal soundtrack, good-looking motors and
outrageously loud action sequences. The sequel is lacking some of the features
that made the last picture special; there's no Vin Diesel, none of the drama
involved in Walker being an honest cop seduced by the wrong side of the law,
and the dialogue is less tough, as Walker forms a goofy partnership with
one of his old buddies (Tyrese Gibson) and engages in a lot of joking around
that falls flat, often intentionally. The movie is not going to bring many
new fans to the following, but hey -- it gots colour, speed, sparks, an amusingly
shameless array of racial types designed 2 appeal 2 all demographics, and
sexy people in tight tops.
IMDb
info
Anger Management (*1/2 out of
****)
Here's an Adam Sandler movie I was actually looking
forward to, thanks to a cool-looking trailer. The Sandman plays a wimpy office
worker who is arrested on a misunderstanding and has to spend a month with
Jack Nicholson, an anger management therapist whose nutty methods include
sleeping with our hero in the nude and making the guy watch as he combs his
hair with electric mace. There's an ending that explains why Sandler has
been put in this position, but that doesn't matter when we're watching the
main parts -- it's not funny to watch him being put upon by Nicholson, even
though their scenes are acted with a nice rhythm, because we're too frustrated
for him, and it doesn't seem particularly therapeutic to be shouted at for
a month and ordered to do such plain weird stuff as beating up a monk. The
supporting characters are not as funny as they should have been, even though
they're played by terrific actors like John Leguizamo, Luis Guzman, Woody
Harrelson and Heather Graham. As in most Happy Madison productions, they're
nicely conceived but played at too zany a pitch.
IMDb info
Antwone Fisher (*** out of
****)
In what must probably count as one of the most
self-obsessed screenplays ever written, a security guard named Antwone Fisher
wrote a spec script called "Antwone Fisher", all about the hard upbringing
of U.S. Navy man Antwone Fisher and how he pushed past obstacles with the
help of a pretty girl and darn good therapist. The kid's life plays suspiciously
similar to the "Good Will Hunting" formula, and its dramatisation ends with
a speech that builds to, "I'm a good man, momma!"
I could get sarcastic about all this, but you
know what? On the basis of this film, Antwone Fisher did lead a hard life,
and I am happy that he struggled through, refusing to stay beaten down. There
is a possibility that he could now go too far the other way, and become an
arrogant prick... but that's for me to point out, rather than make a final
judgement on. The film is soupy and sentimental, but it has an underlying
belief in itself that keeps the rhythm constant and just about manages to
reach the gut. It's the directorial debut of Denzel Washington, who handles
widescreen compositions and long heavy scenes of one-on-one talking with
steady confidence. Derek Luke has a powerful, unashamedly emotional presence
in the lead role.
IMDb
info
Full Frontal (**1/2 out of
****)
Steven Soderbergh's new experimental effort has
nothing about it worth praising, but I sort of enjoyed it. The movie -- or,
I should say, this assembly of footage -- depicts a feature film starring
Julia Roberts and Blair Underwood as a reporter and a movie star falling
in love. It also uses grainy 16mm and digital video material to show the
making of that film, and various interlocking characters around it. The trailers
make like this is going to be a satirical exposé of Hollywood, the
movie plays amateurish and doesn't tell us anything new. There are neurotic
artists, actors with impressions of themselves that have gotten too damn
big, executives who have forgotten how to feel… and they're shown to
us in scenes where everyone grapples desperately to think up funny body ticks
and ironic lines. In spite of that, the presence of good actors makes the
mess fascinating, or at least keeps it from being boring. David Duchovny,
Catherine Keener and the great Mary McCormack struggle through as best they
can, and only Nicky Katt is a severe embarrassment.
IMDb
info
The Happiness of the Katakuris (** out of
****)
The director Takashi Miike is best known over
here for "Audition", the horror film from two years ago that everyone seems
to agree has put them off acupuncture for life. That movie was wonderful
for its merciless precision and control -- of pace, visuals, acting styles,
everything. So the surprise here is not just that "Katakuris" is a failure,
but a project that tanks through its messiness. It follows a family who have
just opened a guest house in rural Japan; they're hard-working, polite and
dedicated, and you can tell that the success of this business means much
to their personal pride. When visitors finally do arrive, they all end up
committing suicide or dying in inexplicable ways, so the Katakuris go through
the painful process of burying person after person in the garden. Aside from
that, there are musical numbers, moments of heightened visual style, random
bits of gory clay animation and a subplot involving a lame conman who falls
in love with the Katakuri daughter and convinces her that he is the nephew
of Queen Elizabeth. If the main story were taken seriously, the craziness
might have played, but it's shot and acted in a way that's hastily, amateurishly
theatrical, through digital photography that tries to look beautiful but
just plain can't. So the core of the film is embarrassing, and all the rest
seems thrown in, with too much going on for us to focus on anything. I admired
the ambition of the piece, but watching it gave me a headache.
IMDb
info
Hope Springs (*1/2 out of
****)
Here's the deal: Colin Firth is a sketch artist
from London, who runs off to a small American town called Hope after his
fiancée (Minnie Driver) announces her intention to marry another man.
Firth is sad, but he hooks up with a local girl (Heather Graham), who teaches
him all about keeping a smile on the face and doing things in bed that involve
the non-innocent kind of nakedness.
The film was written and directed by Mark Herman,
who observed his characters with sharpness and charm in "Brassed Off" and
"Little Voice". This effort is closer in its quality to his "Purely Belter"
and "Blame It On the Bellboy"; Herman plugs the actors into a stupid romantic
formula loaded with obvious symbolism, and doesn't give them decent enough
personalities to hide the story joins. Firth is a vocally self-pitying schmuck,
and Graham is so random and high-strung that you can only imagine her as
a potential girlfriend for anyone because she has nice tits. Between the
two of them, we see a relationship that doesn't seem to have any reason for
being, or even any joy. Driver is supposed to be the villain, but is actually
the only character of interest; she's honest about her unlikeability, and
her dialogue cuts through the sappy delusions of everyone else to end up
hinting at the truth -- Firth doesn't belong with Graham, and when he goes
back to her at the end, it seems less out of affection and respect than a
desire to have good sex and prove things to himself about his tolerance for
the theory of how opposites attract.
There are a few funny moments, but the whole thing
should have worked better. The main characters are conceived wrong-headedly,
and the supporting characters are supposed to provide running jokes through
their quirkiness, but often they don't work either -- look at how hopelessly
the wonderful Mary Steenburgen is miscast, as a hotel manageress who is sometimes
soft and folksy, at other times speaks in the loud squeaky tones of an eccentric
hairdresser, and is supposed to be both wise and a figure of fun, sometimes
in the same scene.
IMDb
info
Identity (**1/2 out of
****)
James Mangold could be a terrific director if
he didn't waste time on projects that a journeyman could put together, like
"Kate & Leopold", "Girl Interrupted" and this enjoyably silly piece of
pulp fiction. Darkly atmospheric and rainy, the movie assembles a terrific
cast, including John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Ray Liotta, Alfred Molina, Clea
DuVall, Pruitt Taylor Vince and an unrecognisable Rebecca DeMornay, and strands
their characters in a creepy motel as they discover they all have hidden
connections and are being killed off one by one. A twist in the third act
gives the movie an excuse for being over the top and methodical, but it doesn't
change the nature of audience involvement -- this isn't an investigation
of psychology, it's a whodunit-slasher with a smartass approach. Written
by Michael Cooney, whose main influence is undoubtedly Donald Kaufman, if
you know what I mean.
IMDb
info
Kangaroo Jack (*1/2 out of
****)
Well, the buzz had prepared me for a film so
excruciating that the hairs on the back of my neck would grow out, coil around
and strangle me to double-death. It's a caper comedy for kids, with Jerry
O'Connell and Anthony Anderson goofing around Australia in search of the
funky kangaroo that stole the $50,000 they were supposed to deliver to the
mob. Yeah, the two lead characters are stupid, and sure, the soundtrack is
full of painfully obvious tracks like Men At Work's "Down Under", and of
course, the screenplay seems to think that the locals have to be grizzled
and kooky and unable to speak in anything but native slang. But the movie
is easy to sit through -- it's full of hyperactive editing for the braindead,
and the kangaroo special effects and location shots of the outback provide
gorgeous eye candy. (So does Estella Warren.) The movie is shit, but no more
so than you'd expect from something with "Kangaroo Jack" on the title card
and Jerry Bruckheimer's name under the producer credit.
IMDb
info
The Last Great Wilderness (*** out of
****)
Alastair Mackenzie is driving to Scotland to get
revenge on his ex-wife and her lover, when he finds himself hooking up with
Jonny Phillips, a weirdo who makes his money pretending to be an Italian
gigolo and is currently being stalked by gangsters. The pair end up at a
remote motel, whose inhabitants include a frigid widow, a sex addict, an
ex-paedophile and their priestly leader. There seems to be a ghost around
too. The movie starts as a road picture, but as has been pointed out by several
reviewers, there ain't much road in Britain. By the time we get to the boarding
house, we have no idea whether "The Last Great Wilderness" is going to turn
into a zombie flick, a philosophical black comedy, a chase film, an experimental
piece of weirdness or all/none of the above. And that's the gift of Mackenzie,
who wrote the screenplay, and his brother David, who directed. They keep
subverting our expectations, while balancing absurdity and naturalism in
their individual scenes so as to hold our attention. The movie is gripping,
and even though it has been filmed on video, the compositions are strong,
and commanding a cinema-sized canvas was obviously always in
mind.
There are too many people making independent films
on home equipment these days, who seem to think that when they've got enough
footage for feature length, they've got a movie. They should take a look
at "The Last Great Wilderness", which is a terrific example of how to make
real cinema on a low budget. The guys behind this thing are going places,
while so many other wannabes are just pissing in the wind and kidding themselves
about it.
IMDb
info
Nowhere in Africa (*** out of
****)
This year's Oscar-winner for Foreign Language
Film, based on a true story and beautifully directed by German director Caroline
Link, is told through the eyes of a little Jewish girl whose family moved
to Kenya to avoid the dangerous climate of the Nazi rise to power. It's a
bit frustrating at first -- we never find out why the lawyer father decided
to go and run an African farm, instead of moving somewhere easier like America,
and the movie's jumps ahead in time disrupt the flow of action instead of
making us feel like the years are passing by naturally. But the effect makes
sense, capturing the feeling of a young person's scattered memories. It's
poignant, with a remarkable atmosphere created by the blinding sunlight in
Gernot Roll's photography and the evocative score by Niki Reiser, which mixes
European orchestral rhythms with traditional tribal influence.
IMDb
info
Pure (*** out of ****)
This one's got quite the manipulative premise,
being as its story revolves around a nice little boy on a London council
estate whose mother is addicted to heroin. She calls it her "medicine" and
warns the kid to never touch it, but he's beginning to realise what's going
on, and the filmmakers make us wince real good as he watches her shoot up,
offers to try it himself as a way of scaring her off and has to sit by as
the flash local dealer keeps worming his way into their family life. The
movie is involving, though. Gilles MacKinnon, who also directed "Small Faces"
and "Hideous Kinky", moves things along slickly and gives us colourful, perfectly
composed but nonetheless unsettling shots. Harry Eden is the kid, Molly Parker
the mum, Vinnie Hunter the pusher and Keira Knightley a young lady with the
same connections -- talented performers, effectively dramatic.
IMDb
info
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (**1/2 out of
****)
I guess Chan-wook Park's movie is supposed to
be a deconstruction of the action-revenge picture; like "Bankok Dangerous",
it has a deaf and dumb lead character, and like that and pretty much every
movie that seems to make money in Asia these days, it's a bloodbath about
angry young men doing violent things in stylish ways. Instead of operatic
gunplay or a lot of crazy editing techniques, though, "Sympathy for Mr.
Vengeance" is slow and meditative -- the photography has strong colours and
the characters look like they come from comic books, but the movie is more
interested in showing them sitting around doing anguish brooding than souping
them up MTV-style.
The plot involves the mute trying to find a kidney
donor for his dying sister, and to get the necessary money, he and his girlfriend
kidnap the daughter of a successful local businessman. The girl dies in an
accident, and so does the hero's sister, after the small-time organ dealers
don't come through with what they owe. Everyone ends up getting revenge on
everyone, and Park sits back and views the mess with a strong sense of morality.
Yes, there is sympathy, what with us understanding where the characters are
coming from. There's also a sense of sadness at the pointlessness of violence
and how its collateral damage justifies further violence. Everyone is in
the right, and just as much in the wrong.
The film should be powerful, but some of its lingering
shots play like unintentional black comedy, and others seem to go on for
the sake of it. There's no flow or rhythm -- the slow, distressed moments
would be more effective if every scene didn't run long, and while sometimes
the narrative spells everything out, at other times it feels like there are
scenes missing, and we jump ahead and are expected to fill things in for
ourselves without any sense of context. A gripping, impressive failure.
IMDb
info
Welcome to Collinwood (*** out of
****)
A fun heist farce based on "Big Deal on Madonna
Street", written and directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, two talented newcomers
discovered by Steven Soderbergh. Set in 'the Beirut of Cleveland', the movie
stars William H. Macy, Isiah Washington, Sam Rockwell and Michael Jeter as
a bunch of raggedy no-hopers trying to dodge around crummy streets and plan
the robbery of a safe that somebody left in the wall of a little old lady's
apartment. The film looks and sounds bright and bouncy, and it's full of
reliable old comic devices like characters absurdly repeating themselves
and asking incredulous questions. It also has its own made-up lingo, already
sort of famous among film geeks -- a 'Bellini" being a criminal opportunity
too sweet to pass up, a 'Malinski' being a fall guy, and so on and so forth
and whaddya whaddya. The cool supporting cast includes Luis Guzman, Patricia
Clarkson and George Clooney.
IMDb
info
X2: X-Men United (***1/2 out of
****)
In this first sequel to the brilliant comic-book
blockbuster of three years ago, a militant attack on the President of the
United States inspires a fat grey-haired advisor with a grudge to step up
the federal government's attacks on mutants. The parallels to September 11,
John Ashcroft, the Patriot Act and all the rest of the Bush administration's
racist thuggery are obvious, and the movie creates a stirring, resonant tide
of activist force. We need movies like this to remind us that we're not imagining
the insanity of the current American climate, but it's terrific entertainment,
too, with its crowd-pleasing mixture of tension, drama and humour, its
mind-bendingly creative and colourful action sequences, and its kooky array
of characters. Hugh Jackman, Anna Paquin, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen,
Halle Berry, Famke Janssen and the rest of the original cast returns; new
players include Alan Cumming as the perverse but touching Nightcrawler and
the great Brian Cox as John A--um, I mean, Colonel William
Striker.
The movie has been a huge hit in the United States,
and yet it doesn't seem to have caused much controversy or inspired a debate
about the Nazification of the country's government. In fact, the loudest
complaints have come from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee,
who have been going on about some symbol on a ring worn by the Cox character
and claiming that the filmmakers are being discriminatory against Muslims.
Further evidence, I guess, that no matter how obviously you make a point,
people find a way of either missing it, drawing idiotically wrong conclusions,
or, in this case, both.
One complaint: The movie sort of drags towards
the end. And yes, I know I thought the first "X-Men" was too short, but that's
just the way it goes.
IMDb
info
COPYRIGHT©
2003 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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