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.