Secretariat

Secretariat

It may not break any new ground in the well-worn, horse racing movie genre, but this thrilling and inspiring entertainment about the legendary, 1973 Triple Crown winning horse should have audiences standing up and cheering. Obvious comparisons to Universal's multi-Oscar nominated money maker Seabiscuit aside, this magnificent tale of a true thoroughbred champion was, according to its producer, made for a third of the price of that 2003 sleeper, and actually tops it for pure emotion and strong production values. This makes Secretariat a good bet for box office success from the same ticket buyers who not only embraced Seabiscuit but also loved last year's surprise, sports-oriented hit, that little, unheralded $250 million grossing movie that won Sandra Bullock an Oscar. In terms of feel-good, old-fashioned, crowd-pleasing filmmaking, Secretariat IS this year's Blind Side. Disney ought to hit the exacta with this one.

Director Randall Wallace (We Were Soldiers) and screenwriter Mike Rich (working from the book, Secretariat: Making Of A Champion) have indeed taken a page from The Blind Side formula book. These filmmakers have managed to make what on the surface would seem a predictable story about a well-known legend into a nail-biter about an uninitiated horse owner who bets it all on a colt that stood up the moment he was born. Smartly centering their story on the horse's owner, Penny Chenery (Diane Lane), and her partnership with down-on-his-luck trainer Lucien Laurin (John Malkovich), the filmmakers show us how Chenery risked all on the offspring of another great racer because she believed the horse could grab the Triple Crown. Should she fail on this long shot (no horse had done it in 25 years) her father's entire business would come crumbling down. Complicating matters for this mother of four and devoted wife are her brother (Dylan Baker) and husband (Dylan Walsh), who are convinced she is going down the wrong path and want to sell the horse to pay off estate debts. Although the outcome made sports history, the film remarkably manages to build mounting suspense right up to that incredible final stretch run at Belmont when Secretariat took off like the wind and won by 31 lengths.

Particularly impressive is veteran cinematographer Dean Semler's inventive cinematography that manages to put the audience right in the middle of the races like never before. Pulsating sound design by Benjamin L. Cook emphasizes the heavy breathing and the thunder of hoofs on the track. Beyond the technical innovations, Wallace stays true to biopic convention in the storytelling, turning out a solid family film that should please everyone, if not hardcore critics who may wince at the traditional trail the film takes.

As Penny Chenery, Lane is just wonderful, particularly in one-on-one scenes with the horse she calls Red and in detailing the dogged determination of a woman thrust into a male-dominated world, succeeding though her family said she wouldn't. Malkovich is terrific, stealing every scene he's in as the colorful trainer. Entourage's Kevin Connolly is sharp as a reporter. Adding warmth is Margo Martindale as Chenery's close friend and confidante, and Nelsan Ellis as the ever-optimistic stable worker who grows close with Secretariat. Otto Thorwarth plays legendary jockey Ron Turcotte close to the vest and rides in style. Veterans James Cromwell and Fred Dalton Thompson also have nice moments. Casting of the horses is flawless.

In Secretariat Disney has a fine fall entry, a truly exciting and beautifully made movie that makes a run for the heart.

Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures
Cast: Diane Lane, John Malkovich, Kevin Connolly, Margo Martindale, Dylan Walsh, Dylan Baker, Otto Thorwarth, Nelsan Ellis, Fred Dalton Thompson.
Director: Randall Wallace
Screenwriter: Mike Rich
Producers: Mark Ciardi, Gordon Gray
Genre: Drama
Rating: PG for brief mild language
Running time: 90 min
Release date: October 8, 2010

Hereafter

Hereafter

With Clint Eastwood now entering his fortieth year as a director, we have enough experience with his films to see how every frame of Hereafter is his. Marked with his characteristic widescreen tableaux, roving yet unobtrusive Steadicam, unhurried pacing, intricately separated light and dark so layered it's almost cross-hatched and a natural tendency to err on the side of understatement, Hereafter sits easily alongside Eastwood's other works. Though Hereafter has plenty to give you pause: its plot flatly insists there's an afterlife without really doing much with the matter, metaphorically or otherwise, and its tri-pronged story flattens three interesting cities (San Francisco, London, Paris) into mostly generic backdrops. In many ways, it's his silliest film since 1990's The Rookie, only without the guilty pleasures of, say, watching Charlie Sheen burn down a bar using nothing more than his natural fire-breathing talents. Box office prospects are shaky; audiences may find the material too outré to take seriously while auteurist admirers, will have a field day, and the film's certainly zippier than much of Eastwood's past decade.

San Francisco psychic George Lonegan (Matt Damon) has retired from communicating with the dead to try to attain a normal life; he fends off the attentions of those seeking his help. In London, young Marcus (Frankie McLaren) loses his twin brother to a car accident and mopes about, trying to find a psychic to keep him in touch while his mother goes through alcohol rehab and his foster parents try to cope with him. In Paris, reporter Marie LeRay (Cécile De France), survived a tsunami (an early disaster-movie highlight, with much satisfying crunching of cars and slamming of waves) and near-death experience, becomes convinced she paid a brief visit to the afterlife and is determined to write about it, wrecking her career in the process.

All three stories will eventually converge, though Eastwood's in no real hurry to get there. The strands come and go in ten-minute clumps. Damon's is the most abrasive and engaging: he's in top form, and his awkward flirtation with Melanie (Bryce Dallas Howard) is fascinatingly unresolved. All teeth and manic giggling, Melanie's function in any other film would be to come off as simperingly girlish and cute, but Howard transforms that into a manic frenzy that will take audiences genuinely off-guard once her back-story is revealed; the overused adjective "brave" applies to how little the performance offers audiences to like.

The other two stories are considerably more diffuse. Marie LeRay is boringly self-righteous and, for a political reporter, surprisingly naive about the realities of the publishing industry; her tale is also the one that focuses almost exclusively on "scientific evidence" of the afterlife, and her character is the most one-note. Frankie LeRay fares a little better, presumably because he's tasked with delivering some of the most embarrassingly amateur line readings of any mainstream film this young decade; his quest for connection, plowing through laughably phony psychics, is the film's only gesture toward skepticism.

All three plots converge in pleasingly low-key fashion at the London Book Festival, which is surely novel; Eastwood, as usual, avoids the highest highs ("I'm not going to go into a trance," Damon defensively explains at the climax), keeping things eminently watchable when they could be unbearable. Some of the material's risible: it's unclear if The Sopranos' Steve Schirippa is supposed to be playing for laughs as a stereotypically guido-ish Italian chef who does adult education classes, or if he's just cartoonish, but it's funny either way. Dicier still are invocations of 2005's London subway attacks of July 2010, here they're used for an especially dubious sequence of fantasy intervention: the context overpowers the scene.

Ultimately, Hereafter's virtues are all Eastwood's: that makes it a prime autuerist test case, which makes it a film for very specialized viewers indeed. Anyone who reads the above and finds it hard to stifle a laugh will probably want to stay away.

Distributor: Warner Bros.
Cast: Matt Damon, Cécile De France, Frankie McLaren, Jay Mohr, Bryce Dallas Howard, Thierry Neuvic and Derek Jacobi
Director: Clint Eastwood
Screenwriter: Peter Morgan
Producers: Clint Eastwood, Kathleen Kennedy and Robert Lorenz
Genre: Drama/Fantasy
Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic elements including disturbing disaster and accident images, and for brief strong language.
Running time: 129 min.
Release date: October 15 LA/NY, October 22 WIDE

Red movie review

Red

Being old isn't fun, but movies where a group of old people gather together for one last adventure can be lots of fun. Clint Eastwood's Space Cowboys and Martin Brest's 1979 comedy Going in Style, for example, are terrific. Then there's Red, in which 65 year old Helen Mirren and 73 year old Morgan Freeman play retired CIA agents who reteam after being targeted for assassination. It's gutsy to hand a modern action film to an AARP-ready cast, but if director Robert Schwentke really had guts, 56 year old John Malkovich would act 56 years old and the anemic script would find clever ways for our heroes to overcome their age disadvantage. Instead, bets are hedged with generic action and the casting of Bruce Willis, an actor whose only acknowledgments of aging have come with a wink, a nod and a forearm to the face. Red tries to have it both ways, then, and gets little of it right. Summit Entertainment should see okay theatrical numbers, followed by robust ancillary.

Red is based on a graphic novel, which doesn't mean much anymore because everything is based on a graphic novel. Someday there'll be a graphic novel based on another graphic novel and both graphic novels will result in terrible movies. Here, the Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner original is fatally compromised in the adaptation by sibling screenwriters Erich and Jon Hoeber, who also adapted the graphic novel Whiteout, making for an almost elegant circle of failure. The brothers (whose latest credit is the WTF?! adaptation of the board game Battleship) have little feel for crafting believable relationships, which becomes evident as the film's central coupling is introduced. Frank Moses (Willis) is a retired Black Ops super spy for the CIA whose only respite from loneliness is talking on the phone to far-away pension services operator Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker). Frank's boring and lonely life gets a surprise jumpstart when he's ambushed by a cadre of assassins, barely escaping to Kansas City to rescue Sarah. It's a credit to Parker that she plays her underwritten role with hushed amazement and lip-biting sexual interest when others would have played it shrill and scared. After this initial set-up, though, Schwentke almost completely neglects their blossoming love in favor of Frank and Sarah driving around the country rounding up his old CIA buddies to discover why a pensioner is suddenly marked for death.

In a better movie, you'd chuckle at the ingenuity with which a 73 year old retiree turns back his pursuers, lead by CIA whippersnapper William (a stern Karl Urban). Figuring out ingenious ways for the group to use their old school training and hard earned wisdom to avoid death is, alas, too much work for this movie. That's what guns are for, so the fight scenes are mostly point and shoot, although it's rather sweet that we're expected to deem the sight of a nice older lady like Helen Mirren firing an enormous machine gun as cool. Schwentke (Flightplan) is not above the Zach Snyder-esque visual orgasms that have become the default style of fanboy filmmaking. Yet here the effects feel tacked on, like a lame attempt to jazz up a film that lacks zip (admittedly, there's a slick moment in which Willis steps out of his car as it spins out). The real sparkle comes from Malkovich as Marvin Boggs, a conspiracy-minded paranoiac living in an underground bunker that can only be accessed through a hollowed-out car. Whatever movie Malkovich feels he's acting in is more satisfying than the one we're watching, furthering his reputation for putting a whacked-out charge into any supporting role. Mirren and Freeman add measures of grace and gravitas to counterbalance Malkovich and Willis. Mirren especially harkens back to the bad old days of Cold War double-crossing when she's forced to revisit a long-ago affair with a Russian spy (the ever-awesome Brian Cox).

No one is expected to take any of this seriously, so Schwentke keeps things light: light on big laughs, light on unique action set pieces and light on any sense that these game but retired spies are too old for this crap. And the larger the story gets (eventually the Vice President of the United States gets looped in), the further it drifts from what we should be caring about: the characters and the comedy. It's too bad. After the failure of The A-Team¸ here was an opportunity for more seasoned pros to show the kids how it's done. Schwentke blew that chance with this forgettable comedy. If he feels the need, maybe he can brag about his ability to take a stellar cast and put them in a thoroughly pedestrian film.

Distributor: Summit
Cast: Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Karl Urban, Mary-Louise Parker, Brian Cox and Richard Dreyfuss
Director: Robert Schwentke
Screenwriters: Jon Hoeber and Erich Hoeber
Producers: Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Mark Vahradian
Genre: Action/Comedy
Rated: PG-13 for intense sequences of action violence and brief strong language.
Running time: 110 min
Release date: October 15, 2010

It's Kind of a Funny Story

It's Kind of a Funny Story

The third time is charmless for writers/directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. With their adaptation of Ned Vizzini's young adult novel about a teenager's adventures in a locked mental ward, they step away from the resonant, character-driven drama of Half Nelson and Sugar into the realm of dramedy. These two most earnest of filmmakers are flummoxed by the demands of humor and despite the presence of a gifted cast headed by Keir Gilchrist and Zach Galifianakis, It's Kind of a Funny Story isn't very funny or much fun at all. Arriving in theaters a month after its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival with Focus Features' muscle behind it and the ever hotter Galifianakis' name on the marquee, this misfire may still make waves (however minor ones) at the megaplex.

It's Rocket Science meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest when stressed teen Craig (Gilchrist) gets himself committed to a locked New York mental ward after confessing to thoughts of suicide. With the adolescents' wing of the hospital under renovation, kids are thrown with the adults, so while Craig meets lovely, depressed cutter Noelle (Emma Roberts), a girl his own age, he's also thrown in with the likes of Bobby (Galifianakis) whose outward bonhomie hides a deeply troubled soul. Most of the patients are more eccentric, including a former professor (Novella Nelson) with paranoid delusions, a Hasidic acid casualty (Daniel London) and Muqtada (Bernard White), Craig's despairing and deeply antisocial new roommate. It's a week of revelations for Craig, not just because he gets to view his youthful angst in comparison to people with real problems, but also because this boy who strived to get into the prestigious Executive Pre-Professional High School discovers art and music.

Once again, Boden and Fleck prove themselves gifted when it comes to directing actors. Down to the smallest role, the performances are terrific and that could not have been easy because, given the exceptions of Craig and Bobby, the characters are pretty much caricatures. These are human cartoons with tics, not people. Also, like Craig, Boden and Fleck are strivers, this time out to pay homage to the late John Hughes, right down to a musical number plopped into the middle of the movie for no particular reason. This is the second film in less than a month to take its cues from Hughes, but where Easy A (the previous film to homage Hughes) was buoyant and assured, It's Kind of a Funny Story is leaden, its mix of comedy and drama uneasy.

Mental illness and locked wards are hard to get right in a comic setting. For every Harvey, there are far too many Crazy Peoples. It's Kind of a Funny Story is not as big a disaster as that Dudley Moore vehicle; it's heart is in the right place, at least. But with a pair of filmmakers uncomfortable with the nature of comedy and a story that works better on the page than on screen, a movie that struggles for laughs was inevitable.

Distributor: Focus Features
Cast: Keir Gilchrist, Zach Galifianakis, Emma Roberts, Viola Davis, Lauren Graham and Jim Gaffigan
Directors/Screenwriters: Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck
Producer: Ben Browning and Kevin Misher
Genre: Dramedy
Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic issues, sexual content, drug material and language.
Running time: 101 min
Release date: October 8 ltd.

I Want Your Money

I Want Your Money

If there's a lesson to be gleaned from a decade's worth of political documentaries - most of them left-wing in orientation - it is that they have virtually no impact whatsoever on the electoral process. That Michael Moore's scathing Fahrenheit 9/11 could soar to nearly $120 million on the very eve of George W. Bush's reelection effectively proves that such films do little but preach to the converted - far less effective at disseminating a message, it turns out, than the more traditional thirty-seconds of televised libel and slander with which the American electorate is traditionally more comfortable. But that hasn't dissuaded filmmaker Ray Griggs from throwing his hat into the ring, perhaps because Griggs believes that a right-wing message - especially one that aims to validate the concerns of the nascent Tea Party movement - has more persuasive power. Unfortunately, I Want Your Money amounts to little more than a Moore-style screed with a conservative bent and a less corpulent and sardonic host. Nonetheless, Freestyle Releasing should be able to squeeze solid numbers from limited screens at least through Election Day thanks to free publicity from conservative radio and television personalities.

For Griggs - an independent filmmaker best known for his universally derided 2009 narrative debut, Super Capers - the present political landscape basically boils down to a nagging left-wing contempt for the ideas of Ronald Reagan, a legacy which President Barack Obama is hell-bent on reversing. Amiable and well-spoken if not particularly charismatic, Griggs leads viewers through a methodical explication of this premise, all the while making the broader case that free market capitalism is morally right and economically vital as opposed to Obama's big government reliance on spending and social programs which, he counters, is fundamentally un-American and fiscally suicidal.

Keenly aware of the fact that the dusty details of supply-side economics are neither sexy nor particularly entertaining, Griggs relies heavily on both talking heads (conservative and libertarian standard-bearers like Mike Huckabee, Steve Forbes, economist Kate Obenshain, John Stossel and the Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore) and a handful of crudely animated CGI cartoon interludes in which Reagan endeavors to school Obama in the finer points of free market economics while a supporting cast of ex-presidents and noteworthy politicos (Nixon, Carter, Bill and Hillary Clinton, both Presidents Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nancy Pelosi and Sarah Palin) provide comic relief.

There is no doubt that Griggs has done his homework; unlike Michael Moore, whose rambling, disjointed Capitalism: A Love Story never quite seemed to grasp what capitalism actually is, Griggs goes to professorial lengths to define his terms and support his points, documenting the history of government interference in the economy from FDR to the present day with judiciously selected archival footage and statistics. The problem here - as with Moore's films - is that there are no opposing voices, no attempt to even feign the kind of objectivity that might have given the effort a semblance of real legitimacy. That's certainly not to take away from the interview subjects - Huckabee, Gingrich, Stossel, Forbes, conservative activist Andrew Breitbart and CURE President Star Parker are undeniably articulate spokespersons, but absent the kind of opposition with which gifted debaters score their most salient points, it's impossible to feel as though Griggs' film is anything but a giant Election Year puff piece. Not coincidentally, the film's most powerful and persuasive moment comes courtesy of archival footage of legendary economist Milton Friedman passionately rebutting Phil Donohue during a guest appearance on Donohue's television show in 1979 - precisely the kind of energy the rest of the film sorely lacks.

While his primary focus is Obama and his policies, it's fairly clear that Griggs is also taking aim at Moore and Capitalism: A Love Story. Several sections seem designed to specifically rebut portions of Moore's film, at one point attacking FDR's Second Bill of Rights address (which forms the climax to Capitalism) while later soliciting several interview subjects to make a religious case for free market capitalism (rebutting Moore's view that Capitalism is inherently un-Christian). Just as those sections were already tangential and ill conceived in Moore's film, so are they here.

It's the animated sequences, however, that most severely handicap the picture's ambitions - needlessly larded with unfunny jokes, forced parody and obscure references, they end up having precisely the opposite of their intended effect, distracting from the message at hand and reinforcing, rather than undermining, the stereotype of conservatives as stodgy, dusty and uncool.
Not that any of this will much matter to Griggs' target audience; like Moore, he means for his film to be polemical and one-sided. I Want Your Money is a call to arms for like-minded conservatives to take to the polls on November 2 in hopes of putting the nation back on the path of the ideals of Ronald Reagan. To this end, he has no trouble throwing the likes of George W. Bush and Richard Nixon under the bus - counterfeit conservatives need not apply. Neither, it seems, should anyone but the Fox News faithful; and that's a pity because it's a topic well worth debating.

Distributor: Freestyle Releasing
Director: Ray Griggs
Screenwriter: Randall Norman Desoto & Ray Griggs
Producers: Doug Stebleton
Genre: Documentary
Rating: PG for thematic elements, brief language and smoking.
Running time: 92 min
Release date: October 15 ltd.

Inside Job movie

Inside Job

Despite the high drama of the financial crisis, this documentary, which is full of talking heads, could have been as dry as a balance sheet. It's quite the reverse: funny, sardonic, investigative and gripping. With the added bonus of Matt Damon's dulcet tones providing the narration, this should have appeal way beyond the denizens of Wall Street.

Even Gordon Gekko would have a hard time fathoming exactly what was going when the meltdown spread across the globe in 2008. And he would have baulked at the sheer audacity and greed displayed by companies such as Goldman Sachs who sold their clients completely worthless products and then hedged their bets to make a profit.

Charles Ferguson cast his acerbic eye and camera over the whole business, demonstrating clearly the conflicts of interest between the worlds of high finance and government. And now some of those have crossed the line from financial services to take high office in governmental advisory posts, a trend that doesn't give the populace much cause for confidence.

Although there is a welter of information to take on board, Ferguson manages to keep the message crystal clear as he talks to the whole gamut of players, from hedge fund managers to Justice Department officials and (from the sidelines) the Madame of a brothel and a therapist.

It all might seem on the surface to be some ghastly game gone rampantly wrong, until you recall the salutary effects of the crisis with millions losing jobs and homes. The world is still struggling to recover.

Inside Job neatly makes its appearance on the coat tails of the Wall Street sequel, which is the perfect accompaniment and wake-up call.

Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
Director: Charles Ferguson
Screenwriters: Chad Beck and Adam Bolt
Producer: Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs
Genre: Documentary
Rating: PG-13 for some drug and sex-related material.
Running time: 120 min
Release date: October 8 LA/NY

GhettoPhysics movie review

GhettoPhysics

Part movie, part documentary, all dialectical diatribe, GhettoPhysics is one of the most entertaining movie watching experiences one is likely to have in any context. If this film is nothing else (and it may be nothing else) it's funny and (ironically) fundamentally true. What certainly isn't true is what it purports to be, which is a legitimate course of study that analyzes the historic, international, socio-cultural, economic and psychological relationships between individuals, governments and corporations through the prism of physics and what has been loosely called metaphysics. GhettoPhysics has no more relationship with actual physics than producer William H. Arntz' popular, quasi-science-based documentary, What The #$*! Do We (K)now!?; another movie as correct in its basic supposition as it is wholly wrong in its analogies to real science. Arntz serves as co-director, producer and pontificator for GhettoPhysics, appearing in the "documentary" asides the film uses when not engaged in a quasi-narrative storyline set in the "GhettoPhysics" course of what is apparently a historically black college. Box office prospects are as elusive as the film's metaphysics.

Co-director E. Raymond Brown ostensibly plays himself in the film. He represents both a "character," acting as a GhettoPhysics professor in scenes with actors playing students, and as his actual self, E. Raymond Brown, author of the 2003 book Ghetto Physics: Will The Real Pimps and Hos Please Stand UP! (a real book which he actually wrote). He is not an actual professor so far as one can discern. As characters play scenes in various settings -- a morning radio program, a television talk show and the lecture of "Professor" Brown -- all of the underlying notions of E. Raymond Brown's book are brought to bear. Said notions are as follows: the pimp/ho dynamic is the fundamental relationship of the universe. Everybody on the planet is either a pimp or a ho. This is played out most obviously in the literal pimp/ho dynamic as seen between actual pimps and hos (the documentary portions of the film supply us with many examples), but is nevertheless true of everyone and all relationships, everyday, everywhere. According to the narrative and documentary exposition of the film, the Pope is a Pimp while all Catholics are hos; Mother Theresa (also a pimp) raised $5 billion from her many charitable hos over 60 years of benevolent pimping. Harvard is a pimp; those who long to attend are hos with pimp-aspirations. All corporations are pimps, to which we are all "bottom rung" hos.

Never has a truer notion been expounded upon in any film of any genre in the history of filmmaking -- ever.

Finally, the film extends the notion that we are all in fact both Pimps and Hos, and the sooner we recognized this basic dynamic in all of our relationships and decisions the better we will exploit the ying-yang of our own pimp/ho existence.

Lending legitimacy to these notions are the likes of Dr. Cornel West, Ice-T, Norman Lear, Former U.S. Representative Cynthia McKinney, South African Freedom Fighter and Poet Sonia Barrett, Ishmael Tetteh, Hip-Hop Artist and Activist KRS-One, Economics Author John Perkins, Byron Katie, Gangsta Hip-Hop Artist Too $hort and a number of actual Pimps and Hos, including Fillmore Slim (American Pimp), Candy, Hook da Crook, Loreal, Mac Breed and Lo Da Show.

As for the science -- we think not.

Distributor: Samuel Goldwyn Films
Cast: E. Raymond Brown, William H. Arntz, Sabrina Revelle, Mike Foy, Nina Daniels, Dr. Cornel West, Ice-T, Norman Lear, Cynthia McKinney, John Perkins, Too $hort, Hook da Crook, Mac Breed, Lo Da Show and Fillmore Slim
Director/Screenwriter: William Arntz, E. Raymond Brown
Producers: Scott Altomare, William Arntz and E. Raymond Brown
Genre: Docudrama
Rating: R for language including some sexual references.
Running time: 94 min
Release date: October 8 ltd.

Vision: From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen

Vision: From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen (Vision - Aus dem Leben der Hildegard von Bingen)

It should come as no surprise that a 12th-century German nun could inspire a contemporary filmmaker, particularly when the director is feminist trailblazer Margarethe von Trotta and the sister is charismatic polymath Hildegard von Bingen. Cast von Trotta's frequent collaborator Barbara Sukowa in the role and you have a piece made in celluloid heaven. Hildegard's musical compositions and mystical writings, plus the lush film's authentic settings, provide ample adornment and atmosphere for this complex portrait. And although its claims about Hildegard's modernity and relevancy should be taken with a grain of salt, one readily imagines Vision attracting a cross-section of the curious, not limited to feminist cinephiles and true believers.

Gifted to the Benedictine convent of St. Disibod by her noble parents at the age of eight ("You are now His little bride."), Hildegard (1098-1179) was raised by Sister Jutta von Sponheim along with another nun-to-be named Jutta. After showing a few incidents in their young lives, most notably a lesson contrasting the ugliness of envy with the power of love, von Trotta fast-forwards thirty years to their mentor's death. Hildegard is selected to take over as Magistra of the convent, but not before standing up to the Abbot and insisting her fellow nuns vote her in.

Sickly and frail, Hildegard's body may be weak, but her iron spirit more than compensates. She studies the natural world and advocates the healing properties of both herbs and music. One day, she confides in Brother Volmar (Heino Ferch) that she's had visions all her life and a seer is born. After much to-and-fro with the local hierarchy (including the Abbot with whom she butts heads throughout), Hildegard writes to Bernard of Clairvaux who intercedes with the Pope so she can be authorized to speak in public and allowed to publish the content of her visions. Volmar becomes her most loyal friend and unwavering ally, undertaking the job of transcribing her visions and contemplations.

Soon, Richardis (Hannah Herzsprung), the 16 year old daughter of a noblewoman, arrives at the convent. A precocious brunette with piercing blue eyes, Richardis is infatuated with Hildegard and the feeling is mutual. She takes the veil and becomes Hildegard's secretary. Meanwhile, another young nun in the community gets pregnant, which contributes to Hildegard's decision to petition for the right to establish her own convent near the Rhine. This leads to dissension within the sisterhood, and much grappling over money and land. The emotional climax of Vision involves an interpersonal schism.

In von Trotta's eyes, Hildegard is an iconoclast who chafes against ecclesiastical authority when it impedes her goals - but she never breaks her vows. Her fame and celebrity status give her much more leeway than most male clerics of the period. Von Trotta never pretends to circumscribe her or offer a definitive biography. Hildegard emerges as tireless and multifaceted - a contemplative character, always in motion, armed with a full range of moods and a powerful intellect. She's a New Age matron, championing holistic medicine and women's rights; she's a playwright, teacher and musician empowered by the certainty she has an open channel to God. She refers to her visions as the "living light" and, wisely, von Trotta refrains from trying to depict them in too much detail.

In Vision, a cloistered existence is the opposite of a dull and dreary retreat from the real world. Here, it's a positive, life-affirming choice available only to the best educated and, hence, the richest (albeit never for the eldest children). Alex Block's energetic cinematography, which makes fantastic use of candle and torch light, goes a long way toward highlighting this dynamism, as does Sukowa's intense performance. Furthermore, the degree to which the aristocracy and religious orders are intertwined has major political and religious implications, influencing worldly power relations and making suggestions about the meaning of obedience in the era.

Vision argues that the physical and the spiritual are intimately bound up. No doubt, von Trotta takes liberties in this regard, imposing a contemporary perspective on monastic life. Nonetheless, it feels authentic - once you get over your puritanical surprise at seeing the characters kiss on the lips. It also fits with the goal of dramatizing the raw emotions and suffering Hildegard experienced.

Those viewers seeking to be scandalized will likley complain that von Trotta's Vision downplays the religious ecstasy; in other words, that the director doesn't delve deeply enough into Hildegard's faith. For all this sister's relevancy and potential to be a modern, secular role model - combined with von Trotta's reluctance to portray her as saintly in any conventional sense - there's no getting around the fact Hildegard was driven by religious ardor. Ultimately, it's not possible to sidestep or bracket her religious beliefs, and so how one views her hinges on, and is limited by, one's own faith - or lack thereof.

Distributor: Zeitgeist
Cast: Barbara Sukowa, Heino Ferch, Hannah Herzsprung, Lena Stolze, Sunnyi Melles, Paula Kalenberg and Mareile Blendl
Director/Screenwriter: Margarethe von Trotta
Producer: Markus Zimmer
Genre: Biography/Drama/History; German-language, subtitled
Rating: Unrated
Running time: 111 min
Release date: October 13 NY

My Soul to Take movie review

My Soul to Take

Veteran horror writer/director Wes Craven borrows scares from his classic chiller A Nightmare on Elm Street as well as numerous other horror franchises for My Soul to Take, his first feature since 2005's Red Eye and his first stab in the popular 3D horror trend. Craven, 71, has earned the right to borrow liberally from other horror movies. After all, three of his fan favorites, Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes and A Nightmare on Elm Street have been remade recently. Still, by piecing together jolts from past fan favorites including Elm Street, the I Know What You Did Last Summer movies, Candyman and the Scream series, Craven's big-screen return, the tale of a group of teens battling a serial killer back from the dead, turns out to be a huge disappointment. My Soul to Take lacks quality 3D and the one, standout, never-seen-before scare necessary to get horror fans spreading the word to fellow scary movie buffs.

My Soul to Take is entering a very crowded multiplex, with Let Me In enjoying critical praise, Buried promoting its Hitchcock-like inspirations to beguile the non-horror fans and Saw 3D and Paranormal Activity 2 just around the corner. Rogue and producers Relativity Media and Corvus Corax will struggle to attract the young male fan base in sizable numbers on opening weekend and will experience dramatic fallout once the horror competition heats up in late October.

The best scares occur at the very beginning. Mild-mannered husband and father Abel (Raúl Esparza) finds a switchblade on his basement workbench that triggers his hidden personality, the Riverton Ripper, a serial killer that's been terrorizing the small Massachusetts town. After attacking his pregnant wife and young daughter, Abel battles the police and his psychiatrist in a brutal standoff. Just when Abel appears subdued and headed to the hospital, he leaps to life just before a fiery crash.

Abel's possible survival triggers the bloody legend of the Riverton Ripper. 16 years later, seven local kids, including shy Adam "Bug" Hellerman (Max Thieriot), his best friend and fellow outcast Alex (John Magaro), pretty Brittany (Paulina Olszynski), school bully Brandon (Nick Lashaway) and the conservative and paranoid Penelope (Zena Grey), face what they believe is the Ripper brought back to life

Craven's many fans will leave disappointed that the creator of Freddy Krueger fails to capitalize more on the Riverton Ripper and the many secrets surrounding the nervous teen nicknamed "Bug" and his peers.

Still, with strong production values from cinematographer Petra Korner (The Wackness), who makes spooky use of an abandoned railway bridge; production designer Adam Stockhausen, who captures small-town life beautifully; and composer Marco Beltrami (The Hurt Locker), who accents the drama with a creepy score, My Soul to Take shows that Craven remains as skilled a filmmaker as ever.

For Craven, the crippling, stumbling blocks are a derivative script and a lackluster use of post-production 3D. A clever animated credits sequence at the end of the movie suggests that some 3D specific production did occur after the choice to push to 3D.

Genre fans in search of good horror will wait for Paranormal Activity 2 and the promise of killer 3D on Saw 3D. With regards to Craven's reputation as a Master of Terror, he reunites with scriptwriter Kevin Williamson for Scream 4, the highly anticipated reboot of the hit horror franchise.

Horror fans, the majority of whom will likely catch My Soul to Take on DVD, will accept this copycat tale of the Riverton Ripper as a brief stumble before Craven comes back to life with Scream 4.


Distributor: Universal
Cast: Max Thieriot, John Magaro, Denzel Whitaker, Zena Grey, Nick Lashaway, Paulina Olszynski, Jeremy Chu, Emily Meade, Frank Grillo and Danai Gurira
Director/Screenwriter: Wes Craven
Producers: Wes Craven, Anthony Katagas and Iya Labunka
Genre: Horror
Rating: R for strong bloody violence, and pervasive language including sexual references.
Running time: 108 min
Release date: October 8, 2010

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

The incredibly popular franchise constructed by the late Stieg Larsson takes another minor eternity to play itself out in The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest, which continues its predecessors low standards without all the previously involved technology. Whereas the first two films alternated between painful violence and long, loving close-ups of computer screens processing all manner of less-than-fascinating information, Hornet's Nest sees girl hero Lisbeth Salander largely deprived of technology, leading to many lackluster dialogue exchanges about information already largely known to the audience. Despite the general lack of excitement, audiences - addicted as they are to the original books - will probably make this another arthouse hit, as they did the previous, equally bad installments.

Taking off exactly where The Girl Who Played With Fire left off, Hornet's opens with battered, bruised Salander (Noomi Rapace) being ferried to a hospital after she was nearly killed by her father. As criminal investigations swirl around her head, journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) - still pining for Lisbeth and firmly convinced of her evidence - continues investigating how Lisbeth came to be so messed up and who did this to her. The evidence, unsurprisingly, points towards a rogue cell within the government. No matter the threats against him, Mikael and his plucky journalists straggle on. All comes to head in the least fascinating courtroom trial in recent memory.

Fans will presumably get what they came for; what anyone else gets out of it is hard to say. As ever, the series is indifferently staged and edited. Most scenes consist of people exchanging information that may or may not be known to the audience; in either case, dramatic irony or suspense never enters the equation. You can see why David Fincher - a master at this kind of thing, as shown in Zodiac and The Social Network - would be drawn to the material for the inevitable planned American remakes; director Daniel Alfredson, however, isn't up to much. Villains range from elderly Swedish men who listen to string quartets as they burn vital papers to one guy (Micke Spreitz) who resembles "Jaws" from Moonraker.

Despite the original series' title, Men Who Hate Women, the series' insistence on playing footage of Salander being raped in each and every film is disquieting. Here, though, even the repugnant violence of the first two films is gone, in favor of a wrapping-up-loose-ends approach that leads to a supremely underwhelming conspiracy; suffice it to say the blame-the-Soviets approach is way less fleshed out here than this summer's Salt. As a whole, the trilogy's mix of total silliness (Neo-Nazis! Giants who feel no pain!) and its utter lack of glee in said silliness remains a benchmark in dourness and dullness. No more please, even if Larsson's estate allows his unfinished fourth book out into public light.

Distributor: Music Box Films
Cast: Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, Lena Endre, Annika Hallin, Jacob Ericksson, Sofia Ledarp, Anders Ahlborn and Mikael Spraetz
Director: Daniel Alfredson
Screenwriters: Jonas Frykberg and Ulf Ryberg
Producers: Søren Stærmose
Genre: Drama/Thriller; Swedish-language, subtitled
Rating: Rated R for strong violence, some sexual material, and brief language.
Running time: 136 min.
Release date: October 29 ltd.

Terkel in Trouble

Terkel in Trouble

Though the main character in this animated Danish comedy is in seventh grade, Terkel in Trouble is geared towards an older audience. This film about an unhappy childhood is amusingly full of odd behavior, violence, profanity and a decapitation or two. The story is based on characters created by stand-up comedian Anders Matthesen that are well known in Europe. The directors, Kresten Vestbjerg Andersen, Randolph Kret and Thorbjørn Christoffersen said that the style of the film was inspired by The Muppet Show, The Simpsons and South Park, but Terkel has its own singular look. If word of mouth is given enough time to build, the subtitled theatrical version has the potential to be a cult favorite. The DVD version, featuring extra footage, will be dubbed into English and could widen the audience.

The bizarreness starts at the beginning with scenes from Terkel's home life. His parents are constantly arguing: his mother (Kim Mattheson) smokes continually at the breakfast table, even dropping ashes in his cereal bowl, while his mostly silent father rarely peeks his face out from behind his newspaper. Terkel can't stand his little sister, Rita, who regularly falls down steps or gets her face slammed in doors without much concern from others in the household. His best friend, Jason (Mattheson), carries an iron pipe in his pocket, because "you never know when you're gonna need an iron pipe." Jason's words turn out to be prophetic for Terkel.

Two schoolmates, Sten and Saki (both voiced by Mattheson), incessantly bully Terkel. The threat of injury is present on every level, but so is vengefulness. The twisted humor of the film continues with the sadistic treatment of the desensitized young children who cheer when they hear their teacher "didn't make it" through an accident.

The animated characters have a unique look: oversized heads with large eyes and long stretching arms. The visual imagination extends into the varied backgrounds, both in the everyday surroundings and the fantasy scenes.

Anders Matthesen creates a variety of distinctive voices for characters including Terkel, Jason and Saki, ably capturing the intense and confused emotions of childhood. The other voice cast members are also good choices. Offbeat characters include Uncle Stewart who beats Terkel's tormenters and Gunnar, the new teacher with a possum on his shoulder.

Outrageous humor keeps the film entertaining and VERY politically incorrect, as the children's experiences grow more extreme. After Terkel spurns a girl nicknamed Fat Doris her despair ends with spurted blood. After a nightmare in which his head is cut off Terkel sees a threatening message written on his bedroom wall. A class camping trip becomes dangerous. Terkel in Trouble remains unconventional and a welcome change from the typical animated film about children. Fake bloopers are an added bonus.


Distributor: Indican Pictures
Cast: Anders Matthesen, Randolph Kret, Mike Pearson and Marlise Garba Wright
Directors: Kresten Vestbjerg Andersen, Randolph Kret, Thorbjørn Christoffersen
Screenwriter: Mette Heeno
Producers: Thomas Heinesen and Trine Heidagaard
Genre: Animation/Comedy; Danish-language, subtitled
Running time: 77 min
Release date: October 15 Chicago/Dalla

Unstoppable

Unstoppable

So the runaway train bit feels a bit familiar, huh? And it seems like just a year ago Denzel Washington and director Tony Scott were caught up in a sort of similar subway train movie? None of this matters because the pair is back on screen with the wildest ride of 2010, a runaway train loaded with hazardous chemicals that threatens to derail an entire city unless two engineers can find a way to stop it. Washington and co-star Chris Pine are great together, and up to the task for the unbelievably intense action, pulse-pounding excitement and pure adrenaline high this movie delivers. Audiences looking for real escapism in their fall movie fix will line up for what should be a runaway hit.

The similarities to the afore referenced The Taking Of Pelham 1 2 3, along with any number of B movies and TV flicks quickly dissipate as this nail-biting tale, "inspired" by true events, takes hold. When an engineer (Ethan Suplee) puts a train on high-speed cruise control and then ditches the vehicle altogether, his female supervisor, Connie Hooper (a solidly convincing Rosario Dawson) stands in a control booth and tries to bring calm to the growing disaster. Connie is simultaneously tasked with handling corporate politics in the form of her boss (Kevin Dunn) and an inspector (Kevin Corrigan) as this train flies nearly off the tracks. The real action, however, is centered on another train, where Washington and Pine soon find themselves on a collision course with fate and the speeding freight; it's their easy camaraderie and chemistry that keeps this thing on track. Eventually their heroics take center stage but the somewhat implausible and breathtaking action does not overwhelm the narrative or the human element that Scott and screenwriter Mark Bomback have created. With all sorts of obstacles, explosions and predicaments in their way there's no room for the audience to relax once the loco gets motivated. Intercut with all of this in almost documentary fashion are running news reports courtesy of Fox News of course—you didn't think 20th Century Fox was going to pass up an opportunity for built-in synergy did you?—and that just adds to the urgency and dramatic tension Scott so masterfully at develops.

All tech credits, from Ben Seresin's vivid cinematography and Chris Lebenzon and Robert Duffy's tightly knit editing, to outstanding visual effects and sound work really make this thing cook. It's visceral filmmaking at its popcorn best. Washington doesn't break any ground here with his laconic portrayal of a grizzled vet of the tracks but Washington fits the bill perfectly even while letting Pine carry the heavy load. Pine again proves he is an action star, really making us root for his character as his own domestic problems are slowly revealed. Climb on board for the ride.

Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Cast: Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario Dawson, Kevin Dunn, Kevin Corrigan and Ethan Suplee.
Director: Tony Scott
Screenwriter: Mark Bomback
Producers: Julie Yorn, Tony Scott, Mimi Rogers, Eric McLeod and Alex Young
Genre: Action
Rating: PG 13 for sequences of action and peril and some language
Running Time: 98 min
Release date: November 12, 2010

Casino Jack

Casino Jack

Casino Jack is a refreshing take on the political crime drama. Part thriller, part comedy and very much a biopic, this complex film chronicles the rise and fall of Jack Abramoff, the most powerful lobbyist in Washington during the latter part of the previous century. Director George Hickenlooper displays a level of flamboyance second only to Abramoff's, as the director reveals the lobbyist's delusions and manipulations, providing insight into how this seasoned artisan (or charlatan?) spun his aspirations past some of the most powerful figures in recent history. Kevin Spacey's virtuoso performance is pitch perfect in this elaborate rondo: with him at the center of this tour de force, it'll draw a healthy and diverse crowd.

Kevin Spacey is a powerhouse as the eponymous Casino Jack, the high class hustler who managed to convince his victims that he was actually saving them as he stole everything out from underneath them. Shameless political wheeling and dealing and an attempt to defraud both the Feds and the Native peoples of America were the seemingly incompatible meeting points in his bizarre plan to establish a casino empire. But in Jack's world everything made sense - even a Hebrew day school funded by illegal proceeds.

Not even US presidents escape unscathed. Jack Abramoff was the most powerful lobbyist of his time, with a bevy of political bigwigs in the palm of his hand. Hickenlooper's strategy of letting his leading man drive the narrative is brilliant and adds to the film's charm. He lets Spacey take over the way Jack would, steamrolling everything and everyone in pursuit of his dreams. Hickenlooper sets the right tone and the perfect pitch with roaming cameras and sweeping crane shots - everything is on as grand a scale as Abramoff would have himself demanded.

The character that remains Jack Abramoff, in all his flaky, power-hungry madness, defies logic. Spacey presents the man as brash, off-putting but also sympathetic. Jon Lovitz as Adam Kidan is the perfect foil for Spacey, bursting at the seams with raw, untamed ambition but not so much as a touch of class; he remains delightfully unapologetic. The distasteful Kidan actually makes Abramoff more palatable. In a classic scene, he shows up at Jack's mansion, guzzling an open beer from the six pack he's carrying.


Casino Jack is partly a morality story, but it's also a modern fairy tale that plays like a disturbing prescription for the good life: go after it in whichever way you can. It's a hyper-real, fantasy and when we see Abramoff's thoughts and actions unfold at manic speeds it's reasonable to assume that he's so successful because he can feel some fundamental rhythm—the rate of the American dream. Jack's high on the power he's building and, like an addict, just keeps going after more. Abramoff had the time of his life ripping us off, and like every modern anti-hero we (can you believe it?) cheer him on.

Distributor: IDP/Samuel Goldwyn
Cast: Kevin Spacey, Kelly Preston, Jon Lovitz and Barry Pepper
Director: George Hickenlooper
Screenwriter: Norman Snider
Producers: Gary Howsam, Bill Marks and George Zakk
Genre: Political Thriller/Biopic/Comedy
Rating: R for pervasive language, some violence and brief nudity.
Running time: 108 min
Release date: December 17 ltd.

 

The Tempest

The Tempest

Julie Taymor and Dame Helen Mirren essay Shakespeare's last and arguably most cinematic play, switching the gender of the exiled Duke Prospero (now Prospera) without offering a novel interpretation or conjuring a brave new world on screen. Compact if not cohesive, this is an Age of Aquarius-meets-Mamma Mia! distillation of The Tempest. Making a robust haul unlikely, movie lovers and theater buffs will pass each other in the night, the former more curious about Taymor's upcoming Spider-Man musical on Broadway and the latter darkening the entrance to multiplexes mostly out of loyalty.

Perhaps conscious of a major knock on her prolix adaptation of Titus Andronicus back in 1999, Taymor makes too many concessions to short attention spans, condensing this five-act opus to the point it's difficult to acclimate oneself to the characters or the plot. She's so concerned about moving things along and rendering the action sufficiently cinematic that she never lets the story breath. The result is cacophonous.

Along with rather severe editorial abridgment, the film's hectic rhythm and lack of focus stems from an imbalance between its aural and visual components. The soundtrack frequently overwhelms the verse and eye candy. Too often it's impossible to hear what's being spoken over the din, especially though most understandably during the precipitating shipwreck. Later, when Prospera's wretched slave Caliban (Djimon Hounsou) warns castaways Trinculo (Russell Brand) and Stephano (Alfred Molina) that the "island is full of sounds," he's not exaggerating. You savor the handful of moments when the characters converse without any aural accompaniment.

Not only is the sound mixing off and the movie over-scored by composer Elliot Goldenthal, but the musical offerings themselves are woeful. Music is the food of love according to Twelfth Night's Duke Orsino; here it's an emetic. Hearing frequent blasts of quasi-modernist, heavy-metalish noise, you half expect to see a live band in the wings—long-haired teens dressed all in black pounding on drums and torturing the electric bass and rhythm guitar as if they're accompanying a high-school production of Pippin circa 1976. The ditty that princely Ferdinand (Reeve Carney) sings to Prospera's daughter, Miranda (Felicity Jones), is likewise excruciating. Musicals may be Taymor's specialty, but in Across the Universe she had the good sense to riff on the Beatles catalog. A desert island loop of "Hakuna Matata" would be preferable to this score.

As for the visual effects, they're sometimes cheesy—fruit of a hippy hangover—and occasionally pretty cool. Taymor overindulges in showing Prospera's now-male sprite Ariel (Ben Whishaw) flitting about and taking various animal forms. The sequence representing the wedding masque Prospera gives to the young lovebirds incorporates astrological signs and Da Vinci-esque drawings. The movie's terrific setting offsets any design deficiencies. The volcanic terrain on the Hawaiian island of Lanai, where most of film was shot, provides an ideal natural landscape, even allowing for the distracting and inevitable light fluctuations.

Turning Prospero into a woman and tweaking the language accordingly doesn't make a huge difference to the major motifs of the play: dominion, enslavement, freedom and forgiveness. That can be read as a sign of success, as a tribute to Taymor's dramaturgical prowess and The Bard's flexibility. Still, if you're seeking an ardently feminist interpretation of the text you can't count this Tempest a huge success. The casting primarily colors Prospera's interaction with Ariel (an androgynous creature with alabaster skin and breasts that swell when he's in the act of "dispiriting" Prospera's enemies), turning it into a borderline kinky mother-son relationship. It also gives the master-slave dynamic with Caliban more sexual overtones. But there's no time to expand these ideas.

More tender than imperiously mercurial, Mirren's performance is fine and her supporting cast ably delivers. While she never waivers vocally, there are times when she seems physically dwarfed by her surroundings, hence she's mostly shot from the neck up. Luckily, Prospera has her magic staff and after she gets her swift revenge against those who stole her Duchy and sent her into exile, she gains temporal gravitas courtesy of the black leather, zipper-lined costumes Sandy Powell designed for the Milanese contingent.

Notwithstanding The Tempest's shortcomings and her lack of rivals, Julie Taymor has to be considered a leading expositor of Shakespeare on film. She deserves praise for even trying and let's hope she never stops practicing her craft on screen. It'd be a shame if she abandoned the medium the way Prospera shatters her magic staff before quitting the island and sailing back to Milan.

Distributor: Disney
Cast: Helen Mirren, Russell Brand, Alfred Molina, Djimon Hounsou, David Strathairn, Chris Cooper, Alan Cumming, Ben Whishaw, Reeve Carney, Felicity Jones and Tom Conti
Director/Screenwriter: Julie Taymor
Producers: Robert Chartoff, Lynn Hendee, Julia Taylor-Stanley, Jason K. Lau and Julie Taymor
Genre: Comedy/Romance
Rating: PG-13 for some nudity, suggestive content and scary images.
Running time: 110 min
Release date: December 10 Ltd.

I'm Still Here movie

I'm Still Here

Is it real or is it a hoax? Did Joaquin Phoenix really retire from acting to take up hip hop music in 2008 or is it all part of an elaborate prank cooked up by the two-time Oscar nominee and his brother-in-law Casey Affleck in service to mockumentary "truth?" Smart money is on the latter option. As a piece of performance art, I'm Still Here is brilliant, often hilarious, but like so much performance art, also kind of annoying. Screening at the Toronto International Film Festival the same day it opens in the United States, the film is a riveting piece of cinematic theater that satirizes artistic pretension and celebrity culture. This is not exactly the Phoenix of Walk the Line and it's probably too insular to garner broad appeal, but it should attract a dedicated cult following.

The film begins with Phoenix complaining about his lot in life as an actor, a self-proclaimed "puppet," serving other artists' creativity. Slightly overweight and sporting an uncombed shock of hair and a full beard, the puppet analogy seems apt--since he resembles a Muppet. It isn't long after that bit of self-identification he announces to an Extra reporter at a San Francisco benefit that he is finished with acting. He is serious, he insists, about his music and he begins a quixotic quest to start a career, appearing at a few clubs where the reception is less than warm and trying to enlist Sean "P. Diddy" Combs to produce his record. (Diddy's response: "You're not ready to record with me.")

At the same time all of this is happening, Phoenix's "last" film, James Gray's Two Lovers is about to come out. Phoenix reluctantly attends to his promotional duties, confronting befuddled journalists during a press junket and making an infamous appearance on the David Letterman Show that led the host to comment, "Joaquin, I'm sorry you couldn't be here tonight."

Two Lovers went on to bomb at the box office despite a warm critical reception and you have to wonder how much of Phoenix's antics played into that? Phoenix, along with Affleck, is credited as a writer on I'm Still Here, and if he has any vanity, it is not in making himself look good. This is movie star as scary monster, ordering up whores and doing blow for the benefit of his brother-in-law's camera, making ridiculous demands of his ever-present flunkies (including insisting that one join him in making snow angels) and harboring seemingly endless wells of narcissism, insecurity and paranoia while demonstrating a commensurate lack of talent in his new musical endeavor.

The version of Phoenix put forth here is downright insufferable, and yet very, very funny. As a character he is extreme, a grandiose wild man who manages to be irritating and ingratiating at the exact same time. It is a performance that is both absurd and committed and ranks among his best. Do he and Affleck actually expect anyone to receive their movie as truth? They named their production company "They Are Going to Kill Us Productions," so we're guessing not. I'm Still Here does leave us with one big question mark: What will Phoenix do next? How will he top such a flamboyant caper?

Distributor: Magnolia Pictures
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix
Director: Casey Affleck
Producers: Geoff Koch and Amanda White
Genre: Documentary
Rating: Unrated
Running time: 108 min
Release date: September 10 ltd., September 17 exp.

Last Train Home movie

Last Train Home

Documentary subjects do not get bigger than this. Every year throughout China, 130 million migrant workers leave the large coastal cities and the factories that employ them and travel home to their rural villages for the New Year's holiday. For his documentary Last Train Home, Chinese-Canadian director Lixin Fan sifts through the massive human migration effort and sets his camera on garment factory worker Changhua Zhang and his wife Sugin Chen. The couple journey via train, bus and boat from their factory jobs in Guangzhou 2100 kilometers northwest to their Sichuan Province home for a brief reunion with their teenage daughter, Qin Zhang and young son Yang Zhang. Last Train Home, which New York-based specialty distributor Zeitgeist Films plans to release in early September, is a riveting and big picture look at the social phenomenon unique to modern-day China and its rise as a capitalist power. Yet, Fan finds the delicate balance between broad socio-political themes and a single family torn between centuries-old traditions and the desire to succeed in the capitalist world.

Fan shows firm command of the story's epic scope in the film's opening scenes as he wades with his camera through the massive crowds at Guangzhou's train station while mobs of people try to board trains home. What pushes Last Train Home above other docs, what stays in one's heart and mind, are the intimate and personal struggles Fan reveals about the Zhang family.

The Zhangs are a soft-spoken couple and Fan capitalizes on their quiet demeanor by making a film that's a poetic extension of their shy, somewhat humble personalities. Some of their awkwardness towards their children revolves around the fact that they have not seen their children regularly since leaving to work in a far-away factory. Another factor is that they are both uneducated. As Changhua admits to his daughter during one of their New Year's reunions, he's not sure how to talk to her.

Working alongside camera operator Shaoguang Sun, Fan immerses audiences into the vast crowds waiting outside the train station. He also punctuates the urban noise with scenes of pastoral beauty and stunning aerial footage of the Zhang's rural home. Composer Olivier Alary matches the scenes perfectly with a beautifully subtle score.

Fan learned about the New Year's migration first-hand while working for Chinese broadcaster CCTV, but Last Train Home is still a courageous and challenging project to tackle as one's debut feature film. It's a timely topic as China continues its rise as one of the world's leading economies. Still, Fan keeps it personal and emotionally riveting by focusing on the Zhangs, whose frustrations grow as Qin rebels against her absentee parents by dropping out of school to work in a nearby factory. She wants to earn money like her parents but they're devastated because they're convinced that education is the only way to a better life for their kids.

Produced by the Montreal-based company EyeSteelFilm and distributed by Zeitgeist Films, the same companies behind the 2008 Chinese documentary Up the Yangtze (Fan worked as an associate producer on the film), Last Train Home will likely best the modest box office of Yangzte thanks to positive word of mouth, strong outreach to Chinese-American communities and growing interest in Chinese affairs. While its box office will be determined by the scale of its platform release as well as its limitations as a Mandarin Chinese film with English subtitles, Zeitgeist can expect Last Train Home to become one of the year's top performing specialty docs. For Fan, who is making his filmmaking debut, he could not hope for a better introduction to North American specialty film audiences.

Distributor: Zeitgeist Films
Cast: Changua Zhang, Sugin Zhang, Qin Zhang, Yang Zhang and Tingsui Tang
Director: Lixin Fan
Producers: Daniel Cross and Mila Aung-Thwin
Genre: Documentary; Mandarin-language, subtitled
Rating: Unrated
Running time: 87 min
Release date: September 3, NY

The Freebie

The Freebie

With a premise better suited to comedy than drama, The Freebie is more somber and less stimulating than expected, though anyone nearing the proverbial seven-year speed-bump in their marriage will feel queasiness mixed with boredom watching a man and a woman attempt to reignite their union by allowing each other a one one-night stand. Writer-director-costar Katie Aselton's talky piece has brevity to recommend it. And yet, paradoxically, lots more could and should be said--for the screen couple's sake if not the viewer's. Putting a damper on sexual healing, in or out of matrimony, amounts to throwing a wet blanket on headliner Dax Shepard and, thereby, the movie's earning potential.

Annie (Aselton) and Darren (Shepard) are thirtysomething Angelinos (the Silver Lake nabe, by the looks of it) whose marriage has hit an erotic dull patch. They can't remember the last time they had sex. Although emotionally committed and lovingly compatible, they get their kicks by seeing who can finish crossword puzzles first. A dinner party conversation triggers a frank examination of their relationship, during which Darren assures Annie he still finds her physically attractive and jokingly confesses to often getting "major snuggle boners." Following a string of more serious tête-à-têtes, their plan for sanctioned straying emerges. The ground rules are few and the logistical headaches are barely mentioned.

As somnolent as things are in the bedroom, Annie and Darren are extremely affectionate physically; they're often shown smooching and cuddling. Only about halfway through the movie does it become clear that Aselton is presenting certain scenes out of chronological order. To further keep us on our toes and demonstrate her cleverness, she chooses to be elliptical by omitting key parts of their negotiation, including who first floated the idea, as well as the extent of what transpires on the adulterous night in question. The effect is to trivialize without adding levity or originality. The film's tagline reads "a one night experiment in infidelity," and yet very little experimentation goes on in the story or in its presentation. There's not enough conflict, lightness or naughtiness. As best I could tell, the main problem with the marriage is that Annie and Darren spend way too much time together alone. Neither appears to have a job. And, with a biological child unlikely to materialize under the circumstances, what about a dog to break the monotony?

While more Humpday than Zack and Miri Make a Porno, The Freebie skimps on the sly observational humor of the former and (only somewhat mercifully) lacks Kevin Smith's brand of raunchy, discursive wit. If nothing else, the situation these two characters put themselves in should generate some cheap excitement. Shepard's charm (speaking of puppies) does bubble over occasionally, but the scenario is low on scintillation. The most electric moments are provided by the up-and-coming young actress Frankie Shaw, playing an eager barista.

Comparisons with Humpday, in which two heterosexual male friends dare to have sex with each other, extend beyond The Freebie's general concept. Executive producer Mark Duplass played one of the leads in Humpday and the movies share a cinematographer and an editor. Thanks to their respective talents, the shoestring production is slickly compact. Its twangy, ballad-filled score alone tags it as a Sundance Institute product, and it premiered at the Utah fest earlier this year.

In her effort to channel Lisa Cholodenko and Humpday helmer Lynn Shelton, Aselton has left out key ingredients, specifically the good, juicy parts that would make The Freebie fresh or revelatory. Straining to be insightful, sensitive and "real," she's concocted something borderline dreary. The only thing everyone on screen (or off) can agree upon is that Darren and Annie have come up with a stupid idea. When all is said and done (or not done), the movie boils down to one cliché: "There's no such thing as a free fuck."

Distributor: Phase 4 Films
Cast: Dax Shepard, Katie Aselton, Sean Nelson, Frankie Shaw, Ross Partridge and Bellamy Young
Director/Screenwriter: Katie Aselton
Producer: Adele Romanski
Genre: Drama/Romance
Rating: R for language and sexual content.
Running time: 80 min
Release date: September 17 NY, October 1 LA

The Virginity Hit

The Virginity Hit

A visually rough retreading of Superbad territory with a slightly more treacherous journey, The Virginity Hit has a surprisingly softer ethical edge than you'd expect. Four high school friends ritualize the end of their virginities with a hit from a kitschy, she-devil bong-it's a bong bought specifically to commemorate the boy's entries into "manhood," the goofy satanic reference potentially standing in for the scariness of it all. The final virgin of the group, Matt (Matt Bennett), is about to have sex with his sweetheart of two years, until drunken rumors fly and the team of young men recruit a parade of sordid options to help get the brokenhearted virgin deflowered. The Virginity Hit is backed by the comic muscle of producers Adam McKay and Will Ferrell, who follow in the funnyordie.com ethos with this feature length comedy built of ready-for-YouTube moments; it kind of is its own marketing device. The planned platforming of this film is an oddity: it will see select theaters in a few Heartland cities beginning the 10th of September, first only showing at select times (9:30pm for example) and then expanding the next week to another few cities, and the next week to another handful; the social media marketing push for this title seems built for a slow build and numbers should be strong.

More a casual documenter than an aspiring filmmaker, Zach (Zach Pearlman) likes to record the day-to-day events of his life and friends, Jacob (Jacob Davitz) and Justin (Justin Kline), and his adoptive brother Matt. They're upper middle class kids in New Orleans, in a context that seems to give them a lot of room to drink and debauch; meanwhile, they do the dirty work germane to high school seniors and grapple with their values. When Matt's girlfriend is naively manipulated into a moment of drunken nudity with a frat boy, Matt launches a full media assault on this heartbreaking viper, thus proving the greatest cruelties in this world of bikinis and accidental skin-play still revolves around vulnerability. What follows is a rehashing and inversion of this crime of the heart: Matt's humiliating breakup becomes a meme and he's found online by a willing temptress whose sexuality exists exclusively for the Internet, then his favorite porn star (a woman's whose sexuality looks to be the property of all) explains the preciousness of relationships to him. The conclusions of the film are as muddled and messy as the conflicts, but the interpersonal principles are kind and warm and perfectly unassailable.

Insofar as the film follows a sort of "first person shooter" principle of direction, the story gives us a significant enough number of excuses for the camera's presence, but of course there are a few cheats. The question of who's to blame for what happens to the characters is repeatedly shared with the camera--as if to suggest that half the cause of bad judgments, indiscretions, or innocent mistakes can be pinned on the person who exposed the humiliation; the initial embarrassments are part of life, the YouTube fame, less so. A gorgeous scene following a moment of online fame/shame brings vandals to Matt's house who litter the lawn with big-breasted blow-up dolls. Zach's mom takes her scissors and hits the wet yard to aggressively deflate them; the rain creates a wet T-shirt situation for her, thus showing off her size against the plastic nippled-balloons she's destroying, all the while she's befuddled "but why blow up dolls?!" (Why not ask "but why DDs?") This follows a scene of abject humiliation that will later be called "Matt's own fault," even if it was a mix of guilelessness and low self-esteem that spawned it. Inexperience and knowledge butt heads ever-presently in Virginity Hit, and the way we see these kids endure vulnerability and exposure is part of the harsh impact suggested by the title, but ultimately the characters and their shared intimacies are less than dangerous and all that too-casual comingling incrementally appears less like threatening exposure and more like the activities inside the protected circle of safe friends. That's both the point and the redemptive value of any adventure between four guys in high school, she-devil bong notwithstanding.


Distributor: Sony
Cast: Matt Bennett, Zach Pearlman
Directors/Screenwriters: Andrew Gurland, Huck Botko
Producers: Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, Paul Young, Chris Henchy and Peter Principato
Genre: Comedy
Rating: R for strong crude and sexual content, nudity, pervasive language, drug and alcohol use.
Running time: 88 min
Release date: September 10 ltd., September 17 exp.

black swan movie

Black Swan

Bringing psychological horror to the twisted world of an artistically obsessed prima ballerina, director Darren Aronofsky has followed up his remarkable The Wrestler (2008) with another bruising study of physical pain and endurance in the pursuit of a dream. With Natalie Portman dominating the action and exhibiting a new screen maturity, this Grand Guignol melodrama boasts enough blood, sweat and tears (emphasis on the blood) to score beyond the ballet crowd. With its not-so-subtle sexual undercurrents and a hot "fantasy" lesbian love scene between Portman and co-star Mila Kunis, Black Swan is a handsome and frightening bravura piece of filmmaking and should do some nice business initially among the curiosity-seekers, and with any luck at all see an bump come awards time where Portman is sure to be a strong contender.

Nina (Natalie Portman) is a one-note wonder, a sexually innocent, completely devoted ballerina bent on taking it to the next level by landing the lead role in a Lincoln Center re-imagining of Swan Lake. While the character of the White Swan suits her, the lead role requires she also play the Black Swan, a role she can't snag until she proves she can travel to her dark side. This is no easy task and her demons are haunting her every effort along with destructive forces in the form of her incredibly controlling mother (Barbara Hershey) and the French artistic director (Vincent Cassel) who tosses his former protégée (Winona Ryder) aside in favor of his new "conquest" Nina. Threatened by jealous competitors and falsely befriended by a less-experienced troupe member, Lily (Mila Kunis), Nina's undying efforts at pure unbridled perfection lead to doom as startling events begin to unfold in her life, making her (rightly) question her own sanity in the pursuit of excellence on stage.

Aronofsky was originally interested in doing a new take on Dostoevsky's The Double and when he saw a production of Swan Lake he knew he was onto something. The director, working from a screenplay by Mark Heyman, Andrew Heinz and John McLaughlin, has crafted a totally original look at a quest for nearly unachievable artistic expression and performance; in the process he has finally made sense out of the incoherent plot line of the classic ballet. Portman pulls off the difficult dancing with aplomb and infuses it with the confusion of a very mixed up young woman. Aronofsky conjures memories of everything from Repulsion to The Red Shoes to All About Eve and Mommie Dearest to Whatever Happened To Baby Jane—it's a gorgeous and macabre mind trip.

Portman, showing the benefits of years of dance training and a ten month training period, becomes a leading Oscar contender, but is matched every step of the way by the lively Kunis, a commanding and intense Cassel and a domineering and self-possessed Hershey. Ryder is in briefly but effectively as the booted ballet diva. Clint Mansell's score and re-orchestration of Swan Lake is top notch as is the extraordinary hand held camera work of Matthew Libatique, which gives ballet a cinematic reason to live for the first time.

Rated a hard R for its not-so-subtle erotic subtext (including a particularly strong lesbian sex scene), Black Swan is never predictable nor anything less than thrilling.

Distributor: Fox Searchlight Pictures
Cast: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey, Vincent Cassel, Winona Ryder.
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Screenwriters: Mark Heyman, Andrew Heinz, John McLaughlin
Producers: Mike Medavoy, Arnold W. Messer, Brian Oliver, Scott Franklin
Genre: Drama
Rating: R for strong sexual content, disturbing violent images, language and some drug use
Running time: 106 min
Release date: December 1, 2010

127 Hours movie review

127 Hours

Just two years after his surprise box office smash, the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire, director Danny Boyle takes a different tack and adapts canyoneer Aron Ralston's harrowing account of the 127 hours he spent trapped in a narrow cave in 2003. With a tour-de-force performance from James Franco and an imaginative shooting style that relies on two cameras and inventive angles, what could have been static and deadly dull comes blazingly to life in this powerful and compelling story of one man's will to survive. Although the story is one that can appeal to most audiences, a youthful, adventurous audience is most likely to turn this into a sizable hit. Though it's doubtful it will reach Slumdog heights, Fox Searchlight won't be complaining. Boyle's on to something fresh here.

Boyle and his Slumdog screenwriter Simon Beaufoy have cleverly adapted Ralston's memoir, Between A Rock And A Hard Place, by taking what was very much an interior dialogue and opening it up with flashbacks; Boyle's direction packs a sense of urgency into every frame and fast-paced editing by Jon Harris is strong. Ralston (Franco) was climbing in a mountainous area alone one day when a large boulder rolled loose and trapped him in a deep but very narrow cave; his arm was virtually nailed to the wall by the big rock. Trying everything imaginable to extract his right arm from this predicament he becomes delirious, drinks his own urine and records his very deterioration with his strategically placed video camera. The careless, self-centered attitude that landed the daredevil in this situation slowly earns our empathy as this fearless young guy displays a will to live at any price, and in this case that "price" could well be the loss of his arm. Boyle employed two cinematographers, Anthony Dod Mantle and Enrique Chediak, to capture this action and keep it from becoming monotonous or too claustrophobic, even if much of the movie was shot in the same severely confined crevice in which the real event actually took place. Starting out the picture with some lively mountain bike footage, featuring split screens and a cool soundtrack, the film wastes little time after hooking Aron up with a couple of girl hikers (Kate Mara and Amber Tamblyn) for a brief interlude before they become separated and he begins his ordeal. Other than brief appearances in his dream-like state, most of the other players are just wallpaper compared to Franco's constant screen presence and commanding grip on the human toll this misadventure takes on Ralston. Like Tom Hanks in Cast Away or Spencer Tracy in The Old Man And The Sea (1958), this is a story of one man against the elements and Franco delivers on all counts. Boyle and Harris' jazzy efforts notwithstanding, this is a one-man show and Franco brings in an Oscar worthy turn taking his own impressive young career on a new acting challenge and succeeding brilliantly.

The key sequence where he takes matters into his own hands is bloody and not for the squeamish but at just 95 minutes 127 Hours flies by and has pertinent things to say about human endurance and the triumph of the spirit.

Distributor: Fox Searchlight Pictures
Cast: James Franco, Amber Tamblyn, Kate Mara, Treat Williams, Kate Burton, Clémence Poésy
Director: Danny Boyle
Screenwriters: Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy
Producers: Christian Colson, Danny Boyle, John Smithson
Genre: Drama
Rating: R for language and some disturbing violent content/bloody images.
Running time: 95 min
Release date: November 5, 2010

Picture Me: A Model's Diary

Picture Me: A Model's Diary

Sara Ziff is presently one of the more notable young women on the international supermodel circuit. If you've been in a major city anywhere in the world in the last few years you've likely seen her sinewy form and lovely visage staring down at you from building sized billboards, selling anything from haute couture to skinny jeans. As she began the journey to becoming a top model, Sara and her boyfriend, filmmaking student Ole Schell, began documenting her life as a blossoming model. The result is a rather revealing film, not only about Sara and the choices she's made, but about the industry itself, with its contrasting pleasures and pressures. While there's nothing revealed here that one has not heard before (e.g. models make a lot of money, occasionally use drugs, experience sexual harassment and don't eat much) it's nevertheless a captivating document, revealing once again the vicissitudes of a business so many (mostly) young woman clamor to join. The same audience that attracts America's Top Model will want to see this, but it will find a broader audience on DVD.

Though she began modeling at the age of 14, Sara did not take up the profession full time until she became 18 years old. It was also around this time her long time boyfriend graduated from NYU film school. Then, what had previously been the videotaping of Sara's adventures for family and friends began to reveal the makings of a real film. This process of documentation eventually lead to Sara taking up a camera herself, so that she could include her directorial perspective in the film. She later hands cameras over to several models to diversify the voices and inform the material even more deeply. The result is a film rife with the wonderful contradictions of real life, and thus a film that rings true. Picture Me is not the work of filmmakers with a bone to pick or filmmakers who are uncritical. These are filmmakers who live in and thus know the subject of their movie. They allow sincere reflection on the concerns of fashion models, including the adoration of youth and beauty (including their own youth and beauty) and the unreasonable expectation of eternal youth and all its characteristics. Collectively the result is a fairly astute look at the world of high end modeling that reveals it as potentially lucrative, occasionally dangerous, often boring and sometimes physically and psychologically debilitating--yet always a choice that one can walk away from.

Sara Ziff continues to model while not studying fashion at Columbia University.

Distributor: Strand Releasing
Director: Ole Schell and Sara Ziff
Producer: James Lefkowitz
Genre: Documentary
Rating: Unrated
Running time: 80 min
Release date: September 17 NY, September 24 LA

Easy A movie

Easy A

From the looks of things at Ojai North High School, not much has changed in the centuries since Hester Prynne scandalized her neighbors in Nathanial Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. At least that's what one student discovers in Will Gluck's pointed teen comedy when the rumor mill transforms her from one of the invisible kids to a notorious slut in about the time it takes to send a text. That the Toronto International Film Festival selected the film as one of its Special Presentations points to its quality. Overflowing with charm and wit, this satirical take on that special hell known as high school has plenty to appeal to teens and adults alike.

The Scarlet Letter just happens to be what Olive (Emma Stone) is reading for English class when a little white lie she tells her best friend about a date spins out of control. When Marianne (Amanda Bynes), the pious head of the Cross Your Heart Club, a Christian student group, overhears the conversation, she assumes the worst and starts dishing the dirt. Not one to shy away from controversy, Olive answers all the gossip by embracing her inner bad girl, at least outwardly; she adopts a sexy wardrobe and personally embroiders each piece with a bold, red "A." Her only pressing concern about her new reputation is what her favorite teacher, Mr. Griffith (Thomas Haden Church), and her classmate and old friend, Todd (Penn Badgely), might think of her.

This is one of those movies in which the lead character is so self-possessed, wise, well spoken and witty, that she sounds far too adult to be a teenager. To screenwriter Bert V. Royal's credit, he acknowledges in a flashback sequence when the 8th grade Todd (Braeden Lemasters) accuses the 8th grade Olive (Juliette Goglia) of sounding like a grownup. Olive agrees, but adds, "I'm not really as smart as I think I am." To make the preciousness more plausible still, Royal has also given her madcap parents, Rosemary (Patricia Clarkson) and Dill (Stanley Tucci), who serve up bon mots along with breakfast.

The Scarlet Letter parody is fresh and funny, but even better is the way Easy A pays homage to teen movies of yore, with a special emphasis on the cinema of John Hughes and a nod to Cameron Crowe. "Whatever happened to chivalry?" wonders Olive when her new rep attracts the wrong kind of attention. In her mind, Sir Lancelot's got nothing on the big-hearted, always true blue boys who populate movies like Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Say Anything. "I want my life to be like an '80s movie, preferably one with an awesome musical number for no apparent reason," Olive declares at one point.

Stone's voiceover animates much of Easy A, and that narration adds another layer, helping the actress create a full-bodied, extremely likable character in Olive. Clarkson, Tucci, Church and Badgely offer similarly complete performances. In the movie's one real weakness, the rest of the cast is stuck playing shallow stereotypes. Bynes and the rest of the Cross Your Heart Club, in particular, are ill-served by material that reduces their characters to cartoons. There is so much else to like about the film, though, that it is easy to overlook the flaws. This is a movie that is going to hang around in theaters for a while and seems destined to join the John Hughes' oeuvre in having a long, home video shelf life.

Distributor: Screen Gems
Cast: Emma Stone, Penn Badgely, Amanda Bynes, Alyson Michalka, Thomas Haden Church, Stanley Tucci, Patricia Clarkson, Malcolm McDowell
Director: Will Gluck
Screenwriter: Bert V. Royal
Producer: Zanne Devine and Will Gluck
Genre: Comedy
Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic elements involving teen sexuality, language and some drug material.
Running time: 93 min
Release date: September 17, 2010

Kings of Pastry movie

Kings of Pastry

Documentarians Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker engross viewers in a pins-and-needles odyssey into mythical kitchens, where master pastry chefs dare to reach for immortality. The snowball drama of what goes on beyond the stove will compel auds to dig for something deeper than the last Milk Dud in their single-serving yellow box.

Chicago-based chef Jacquy Pfeiffer is at the top of his field. He collaborates with fellow pastry chef Sebastien Canonne to run a school centered solely on rearing sweet-toothed artisans. In his sights is a title to which few humans dare aspire: a French contest conducted every four years that pits the best pastry chefs in the world against each other in a battle royale of sorts. Known as the M.O.F. (short for Meilleurs Ouvriers de France), winning this competition is akin to winning Olympic medals in multiple sports or scoring a game-ending goal in the World Cup finals. It's one mofo of a competition.

A Baker's dozen count of edible haute couture hotshots (all men for whatever reason) come to Lyon to conquer the most esteemed prize: the blue, white and red stripes worn on the neckline of the cook's white uniform. This emblem guarantees the chef will never have to fry chips for pennies ever again. One chef emphasized that if a fraudulent chef were to don the M.O.F. colors he'd be arrested. As the brutal competition assembles, Chef Canonne, who has already won the confectioner's prize, acts as Pfeiffer's coach. He opines, "Those guys are all good. They're not there by chance."

From Chicago to France, Pfeiffer leaves his family to tackle the impossible. It should be known these cooks are doing more than whisking icing or licking custard off their thumbs, they are glassblowing phenoms who stretch and sculpt sugar. Additionally, the three-day marathon features daunting hurdles. The contestants are charged with making uncanny blown sugar vessels engineered to carry the weight of a cake, and required to build a dessert tray of sinful concoctions, taste-tested by discerning M.O.F. chefs. The pressure cooker is amplified with the M.O.F.s snooping, gawking and poking at pupils' work (even their trash) as they swish and blowtorch sugared butterfly wings.

So much drama mounts days leading up to the cook-off, and the competition is no relief. You want every cook to be crowned king. The work crescendos to such epic levels that the viewer is not going to know how this thing ends until the very, very end. The characters wear blinders. They go on about "exploding coconut flour" and bitch about how "humidity is sugar's worst enemy." You see the mistakes and the incredible nanosecond finishes made. Virile men become gushing fire hydrants of tears. Even the president of the competition (himself an M.O.F. after three tries!) loses it when he announces the winners and (silently) the losers.

When things don't go right with the ex-pat Pfeiffer, he wears his humble pie face dignity. And there are surprises with some of the other cooks, some of whom define what a winner is by not giving up. The work is a brutal rite of passage that will click with anybody who has put it all out there and lost once, twice or thrice. And still got up to face the music again.

Distributor: First Run Features
Directors: Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker
Producer: Frazer Pennebaker
Genre: Documentary
Rating: Unrated
Running time: 84 min
Release date: September 15 NY

A Woman, a Gun, and a Noodle Shop (San Qiang Pai an Jing Qi) movie

A Woman, a Gun, and a Noodle Shop (San Qiang Pai an Jing Qi)

Playing more like a technical exercise than a serious storytelling effort, A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop (previously titled A Simple Noodle Story and The First Gun) can scarcely be ranked among Zhang Yimou's very best labors. At the same time it may be the most glaringly, if unintentionally, personal film that Zhang has made since 1994's To Live. In remaking the Coen Brothers' 1984 debut picture, Blood Simple, the great lion of modern Chinese cinema reveals himself at a Truffaldian crossroads, artistically unmoored and searching for renewed inspiration as he enters what should be the most creative and productive years of his life. Superficial merits notwithstanding, the film is likely to give distributor Sony Pictures Classics (no stranger to marketing Yimou's work) substantial marketing headaches. If Zhang is really questioning his own relevance, it's no stretch to imagine that audiences may, too.

Transporting the Coen's present-day American noir to rural China somewhere between the 12th and 15th centuries, Zhang finds unexpectedly compelling parallels for the original film's characters amid the ragtag denizens of a remote desert inn and noodle cafe. The owner, Wang (Ni Dahong), is a vicious and domineering miser whose deeply unhappy wife of ten years (Yan Ni) has just purchased a newfangled three-shot pistol from a passing Persian salesman (Julien Gaudfroy), very possibly the key to her liberation and a happy future with her true love, the inn's handsome but neurotic young cook (Xiao Shen-Yang). Carefully observing from the periphery is the less-than-competent wait staff (Cheng Ye and Mao Mao), who insinuate themselves into the proceedings in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern fashion, ever alert to the drama unfolding around them, keen to any opening that might prove advantageous.

This already complicated chamber comedy grows even more complicated after the local police arrive to investigate the sound of a canon blast (courtesy of the Persian); thus introducing audiences to the rogue police lieutenant, Zhang (Sun Honglei), who will shortly become the catalyst for virtually every major twist that ensues.

To their credit, Zhang and his writers (Xu Zhengchao and Shi Jianquan) have left the Coen's nimble web of intrigue, double-crosses, triple-crosses, fumbled plans and mistaken conclusions largely unaltered, the whole package transplanting with impressive aplomb to the Chinese period setting. Still, it's impossible not to be acutely aware of Zhang's behind-the-scenes manipulation, the film's concluding third, played virtually free of dialogue, is virtuoso visual filmmaking minus the virtuoso storytelling that was once a hallmark of Zhang's work. Similar criticisms, of course, have followed the Coens since the release of Blood Simple, but for a filmmaker as skilled as Zhang, who has never lacked the ability to elicit powerful emotional responses, to so completely fumble the one area where he might have claimed the tale as his own? There seems no satisfactory explanation but that some sort of deep existential crisis besets the director.

That may seem like a pretentious and presumptuous stretch, but closer examination reveals a film that is less a creative remake than a calculated pastiche of two diametrically opposed genres--one American, the other Chinese. Like most global cineastes, Zhang has always confessed to a plurality of influences, but by grafting the plot of Blood Simple onto the style and setting of Taiwanese legend King Hu's famed 1966 period drama Dragon Gate Inn (capably remade by Tsui Hark as 1992's Dragon Inn) he reveals himself not simply a student of world cinema but a restless poet looking for his long-lost muse where last he abandoned her decades ago.

That Zhang stages the story as a broad, absurdist comedy, as opposed to the Coens' dark, brooding drama, is another telling point of departure. Where the Coens sought to reinvent classic American noir archetypes, Zhang seeks to resurrect classic Chinese comedy archetypes of the sort contemporary Hong Kong directors like Wong Jing have already turned into household jokes (e.g. the evil husband and his beleaguered wife, the spineless young lover/scholar, the buck-toothed fool). For fans of the genres in question, or for those with no point of reference, such choices will seem either benign or charming. From a filmmaker of Zhang's magnitude, however, they are undeniably jarring, like mismatched fragments of older, better movies combining to form the backbone of a frustratingly competent mutt of a picture that never disappoints, yet never truly enthralls.

With the exception of but a handful of experimental detours (Operation Cougar, Keep Cool), Zhang's career can be broken down into three phases: an initial burst of powerful, poetic and vaguely allegorical assaults on the system he faulted for the horrors of the Cultural Revolution (all starring then companion Gong Li), followed by a series of unapologetically sentimental parables rooted in a seemingly newfound faith in a brighter Chinese future (following his breakup with Li), segueing into an unexpectedly exhilarating embrace of classical Wuxia-style martial arts filmmaking. However gradual the progression, it seems eminently clear that Zhang's augmenting fame and success have increasingly distanced him from the pain and alienation that informed his devastatingly powerful early work. With A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop Zhang seems to have hit the proverbial wall, ever the skilled technician but wholly lacking in the passion that once defined him. That he is primarily dabbling in borrowed passion here could herald either stagnation or rebirth; only time will tell. What seems undeniable is that Zhang, for the first time in his career, is confronting the demons of artistic indecision.

Such career trajectories are certainly nothing new in the arts, particularly in cinema. But the parallels between Zhang's career and that of Francois Truffaut, whose own role as poet laureate of France's "New Wave" closely mirrors Zhang's similar stature among his "Fifth Generation" colleagues, are particularly striking and help shed light on where Zhang could go from here. At the time, it seemed unthinkable that the impassioned director of such personal and revolutionary films as The 400 Blows and Jules and Jim could go on to make films in Hollywood (Fahrenheit 451), emulate Hollywood models (The Bride Wore Black) and even wax sympathetic for the bourgeois trappings of Hollywood (Day for Night), the latter proving too much for even his longtime friend and colleague, Jean-Luc Godard, who quite famously terminated their friendship in the wake of its release. But few present-day historians would necessarily support the notion that Truffaut ever stopped being the filmmaker he always was, as The Last Metro would so magnificently prove. In the end, his struggles and stylistic detours served only to sharpen his skills and strengthen his connections to his past, enabling him to deliver some of his very best work in his final years.

Not that such analogies will mean much to any but Zhang's most ardent devotees; didactic navel-gazing rarely gains much traction outside the realm of film school semiotics. When all is said and done, A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop will rise or fall on its own merits. Those looking further down the line, however, hoping for a return of the man who once pierced their souls with such classics as Ju Dou and Raise the Red Lantern, can take guarded solace in knowing that a period of long-overdue self-reflection is finally at hand.


Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
Cast: Sun Honglei, Ni Dahong, Yan Ni, Xiao Shen-Yang, Cheng Ye and Mao Mao
Director: Zhang Yimou
Screenwriters: Shang Jing and Shi Jianquan
Producers: William Kong and Weiping Zhang
Genre: Period comedy; Mandarin-language, subtitled
Rating: R for some violence.
Running time: 95 min
Release date: September 3, 2010