A Fine Reason to Interrupt Shark Week

 

by George Wolf

 

If a trip to Sea World is still on your late summer agenda, Blackfish will most likely make you reconsider.

That’s not meant to be flippant. Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite has constructed a searing indictment against keeping killer whales captive for human amusement. She has an agenda, and she’s damn effective at getting it across.

She bases the film around Tilikum, a trained whale currently at Sea World in Orlando that has been responsible for three fatalities. Cowperthwaite is able to trace “Tilly”’s history back to the day he was first taken from his mother in the wild, a memory that still evokes tears from at least one man who was involved in the capture.

Interviews with former trainers, whale researchers and animal rights activists, along with a hefty amount of video from marine amusement parks, paint a picture with precious little gray area. Though no one from Sea World agreed to participate, it becomes increasingly hard to imagine any solid rebuttal.

Blackfish makes it clear that holding killer whales in captivity should be doubly offensive. A cruel practice against a highly intelligent and emotional species, it also poses a very real threat to humans, a threat that has been downplayed for years.

That threat made headlines in 2010 after the gruesome death of a star trainer. A resulting court case brought new restrictions for whale interaction (which Sea World is currently appealing).

One viewing of Blackfish, and it’s case closed.

 

Verdict-4-0-Stars

 

 

 

Asia Extreme! House

House (Hausu) (1977)

by Hope Madden

For a weirdly Japanese take on haunted houses, sneak a gander at Hausu. Think of it as something like Pee-wee’s Playhouse of Carnage.

A spoof of sorts, Hausu tells the story of six uniform-clad high school girls named Gorgeous, Fantasy, Sweet, Melody, Kung Fu, and Mac. The nomenclature alone should clue you in on the film’s lunacy.

The giggling sextet spend spring break at an aunt’s spooky house – or, in fact, a cheaply made set of an aunt’s spooky house. Not a single thing that follows makes sense, nor is it really meant to.

Expect puppets, random musical sequences, remarkably bad backdrops, slapstick humor, a demonic cat, a man-eating piano, and an amazingly sunny disposition given the sheer volume of human dismemberment.

The trippy nonsense wears a bit thin eventually. Luckily director Nobuhiko Obayashi’s film clocks in at under 90 minutes, so the screen goes dark before the novelty wears off.

 

 

Hausu screens at midnight Thursday (8/8). You can also see:

7:30 PM: Blood C: The Last Dark

10:30 PM: Battle Royale

Countdown: Saving Your Summer

After Earth, The Lone Ranger, Pacific Rim – it’s hard not to see the summer of 2013 as a moviegoing bust. But if you think it’s been a weak season, it probably just means you missed the shiniest gems of the year.  Voila: The countdown meant to save your summer movie experience. Here are the top 5 best of the season’s movies. You may have missed these, but you might still have time to catch them.

5. Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus

A mind expanding road trip works better than expected, as does this mostly improvised, funny and insightful flick.

4. The Way, Way Back

Sam Rockwell steals this one as the Bill Murray-esque role model to an awkward teen going through a tough time. Smart, uproariously funny and brimming with excellent performances, this is a true summer movie, and one not to be missed.

 

3. Much Ado about Nothing

Joss Whedon gives another reason for nerds to rejoice. He mines the Bard for the humor he intended, and puts together a house party that looks like an absolute blasts.

2. Stories We Tell

Sarah Polley directs a documentary that unveils a family secret, and in doing so provides fascinating insights into how families work, and how we all – including filmmakers – rework reality to suit our needs.

1. Fruitvale Station

Newcomer Ryan Coogler astonishes with his feature directorial debut, witnessing the devastating true story of Oscar Grant. We predict Oscars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtBPTARJcLo

A Powerful Kick in the Gut

by George Wolf

 

If you don’t already know the true story behind Fruitvale Station, just make it a point to see this touching, powerful, superbly acted film, and read no further.

It concerns the tragic death of Oscar Grant, shot dead at the age of 22 by Bay Area transit police on the first day of 2009. A sad and needless incident, it arrives on the screen as a remarkably assured feature debut from writer/director Ryan Coogler.

Himself a native of the Bay Area, Coogler strikes the perfect tone to tell Grant’s story, eschewing easy grandstanding in favor of a personal, intensely intimate approach. Shot on location in Oakland, much of the film has a verite feel, presenting Grant as a flawed, dimensional character, a real human being living a life we just happen to drop into.

Coogler’s storytelling is so casual and free of pretension that it could have backfired, failing to hold an audience’s attention. His genius move is to open the film with (be warned) the shocking cell phone video of Grant’s actual shooting, thus giving the dramatic narrative that follows it a quiet sense of foreboding, as each minute takes us closer to the unfortunate turn of events that took Grant’s life.

In the lead role, Michael B. Jordan (The Wire) is simply a revelation. His nuanced performance shows us Grant’s soul, making it nearly impossible not to be moved by his fate. The supporting cast, most notably Melonie Diaz as Grant’s girlfriend and Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer (The Help) as his mother, matches Jordan in equally heartbreaking fashion. The entire ensemble, top to bottom, is first rate.

A sure contender this upcoming awards season, Fruitvale Station becomes so eloquently universal precisely by remaining so personal. Though indeed an account of a young black man gunned down by a white security officer, the film’s only agenda is to tell Grant’s story, not manufacture a martyr.

In doing so, an impressive new filmmaker has delivered an important kick to the gut that you won’t shake for days.

 

Verdict-4-5-Stars

 

 

 

 

Michael Cera Says No to Dirty Hippies, Yes to Drugs

Crystal Fairy & The Magic Cactus

by Hope Madden

One of this summer’s brightest surprises comes by way of Michael Cera’s drug-fueled road trip picture Crystal Fairy & The Magical Cactus.  Loosely scripted and casually filmed, the flick follows the journey of a group of youngsters in search of some mind expansion in Chile. What evolves is a quietly, subversively brilliant character study.

Cera plays Jamie, a displaced American anxious for the experiences available in drug use. He’s insecure, adopts a handful of pseudo-hippie-isms, and looks to really experience life through mind alteration. He meets his match in Crystal Fairy – a modern day freak Jamie invites on the trip.

Crystal Fairy is played by a positively fearless Gaby Hoffman. “Fearless” being the film critic vernacular for “willing to do full frontal.” There is a true fearlessness in that act, particularly if the shocking display of vulnerability it is used properly, as it so definitely is in this work.

Road trips offer such undiluted community experiences that we all want to mock, smack, maybe even abandon one or two co-travelers every now and then. At least that’s the memory I have of Madden family trips.

A little mescaline might have helped, actually.

Regardless, writer/director Sebastian Silva plumbs the situation for touching, comic, and strangely familiar moments. Those who saw his magnificently naturalistic The Maid will recognize the filmmaker’s contagious fascination with common moments. Silva’s screenplay – handled with grace and humanity by the ensemble – never stoops to easy jokes, although the entire picture beams with humor. Characters develop multiple dimensions, and the mostly improvised conversations take charmingly human paths.

The portrayal is deceptively well structured, though. It may feel for all the world like one profoundly uncomfortable journey meandering for a couple of hours, showcasing two pushy Americans who embarrass themselves in front of three lovely Chilean brothers. But Silva has a more satisfying and definite aim than that.

You should give it a try.

I mean the movie, not the mescaline.

Verdict-3-5-Stars

Asia Extreme! Ju-on

Ju-on (2002)

by Hope Madden

Before cashing in on Hollywood’s J-horror remake madness, Japanese writer/director Takashi Shimizu captured his own nation’s imagination with this low-budget tale of one tough to rent house. Its previous tenants don’t just scare you away, they follow you home. Ghosts never die, you see, but apparently interlopers do. Just visiting the house once is enough to saddle you with tag along spirits who will kill you and then stack you up in the attic.

Shimizu’s first effort in the series that spawned the American remake The Grudge and sequels on both sides of the Pacific is basically just a story about some nice people trying to do the right thing. Idiots!

The picture does not rely on sustained suspense, or even the hope of escape or salvation. The narrative is simply a non-sequential look at a handful of lives irreversibly damaged by contact with the house. There may be a total of half a dozen scenes in the entire film without a specific shock or scare. And most of the scares are pretty creepy.

The bigger budget of the Hollywood counterpart helped Shimizu create a richer, more atmospheric nightmare, but the limited funds of the original effort required more strategizing. With his unique pacing, inventive sound editing and use of shadow he creates a sense of something always on the periphery.

 

Ju-On: The Grudge screens at 4:30 PM on Saturday (8/10). You can also see:

1:30 PM: Ringu

7:30 PM: Horror Stories

10:30 PM: IP Man: The Final Fight

12:0 AM: The Slit Mouthed Woman

Asia Extreme! A Tale of Two Sisters

A Tale of Two Sisters (2003)

by Hope Madden

A lurid Korean fairy tale of sorts – replete with dreamy cottage and evil stepmother – Kim Jee-Woon‘s A Tale of Two Sisters is saturated with bold colors and family troubles.

Kim would go on to direct the also outstanding, although entirely different, I Saw the Devil, but where Devil breathes masculinity, Tale of Two Sisters is a deep, murky, and intensely female horror.

A tight-lipped father returns home with his daughter after her prolonged hospital stay. Her sister has missed her; her stepmother has not. Or so it all would seem, although jealousy, dream sequences, ghosts, a nonlinear timeframe, and confused identity keep you from ever fully articulating what is going on. The film takes on an unreliable point of view, subverting expectations and keeping the audience off balance. But that’s just one of the reasons it works.

The director’s use of space, the composition of his frame, the set decoration, and the disturbing and constant anxiety he creates about what’s just beyond the edge of the frame wrings tensions and heightens chills. The composite effect disturbs more then it horrifies, but it stays with you either way.

Tale masters the slow reveal in large and small ways. Whether you’ve begun to unravel the big mystery or not, Tale always has something else up its sleeve. Or, under its table.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQV7ejqpbPc

 

A Tale of Two Sisters screens Friday, (8/9) at 10:30 PM. You can also see:

1:30 PM: Mother

4:30 PM: I Saw the Devil

7:30 PM Doomsday Book

12:00 AM: The Host

Asia Extreme! The Host

The Host (2006)

by Hope Madden

Japan may have left its monster movie past behind it, preferring circuitous tales where ghosts and technology intertwine, but in 2006, Korea took its own shot at the Godzilla fable. The sci-fi import The Host, which tells the tale of a giant mutant monster terrorizing Seoul, has all the thumbprints of the old Godzilla movies: military blunder, resultant angry monster, terrorized metropolis. Writer/director Joon-ho Bong updates the idea, though, and not solely with CGI.

The film opens in a military lab hospital in 2000. A clearly insane American doctor, repulsed by the dust coating formaldehyde bottles, orders a Korean subordinate to empty it all into the sink. Soon the contents of hundreds of bottles of formaldehyde find its way through the Korean sewer system and into the Han River. This event – allegedly based on fact – eventually leads, not surprisingly, to some pretty gamey drinking water.  And also a 25 foot cross between Alien and a giant squid.

Said monster – let’s call him Paul – exits the river one bright afternoon in 2006 to run amuck in a very impressive outdoor-chaos-and-bloodshed scene. A dimwitted foodstand clerk witnesses his daughter’s abduction by the beast, and the stage is set.

What follows, rather than a military attack on a marauding Paul, is actually one small, unhappy, bickering family’s quest to find and save the little girl. Their journey takes them to poorly organized quarantines, botched security check points, misguided military/Red Cross posts, and through Seoul’s sewer system, all leading to a climactic battle even more impressive than the earlier scene of afternoon chaos.

The film’s decidedly comedic tone gives the film a quirky charm, but seriously diminishes its ability to frighten. Host does generate real, claustrophobic dread when it focuses on the missing child, though. Along with its endearing characters, well-paced plot, and excellent climax, it makes for a film that may be no Alien, but it’s a hell of a lot better than Godzilla.

 

 

The Host screens midnight Friday (8/9). You can also see:

1:30 PM: Mother

4:30 PM: I Saw the Devil

7:30 PM: Doomsday Book

10:30 PM: A Tale of two Sisters

2 Cool

 

by George Wolf

 

Last year, director Baltasar Kormakur and star Mark Wahlberg managed to make the heist thriller Contraband a good bit better than it probably should have been.

This year they up the ante, utilizing a snappy script, one Mr. Denzel Washington and a solid ensemble cast to make 2 Guns one of the most entertaining films of the summer.

Granted, it may be forgotten by fall, but right now, as a weak film season winds down, this type of stylish fun is welcome. And it’s all rooted in the undeniable chemistry of the two leads.

Wahlberg is “Stig,” an undercover naval intelligence officer, and Denzel is Bobby, an undercover DEA agent. Though they’re working together to infiltrate a drug cartel, neither knows the other is one of the good guys.

A few double crosses later, and they’ve got a ruthless drug lord (Edward James Olmos), a sleazy CIA boss (Bill Paxton, gleefully over the top) and a crooked navy officer (James Marsden)  threatening to kill them both unless they can hand over a massive load of stolen cash.

Kormakur sets the hook with a taut, mysterious opening, then maintains a crisp pace full of flashbacks, callbacks, and impressively staged action. Based on a series of graphic novels, the script from Blake Masters is witty but not overly comedic, and elaborate but not convoluted, while also managing to land a few jabs on U.S.- Mexican relations.  Nicely done.

Wahlberg’s performances always seem to reflect the level of talent around him, and he is very effective here, relishing the chance to be the comic relief side of a badass duo. Washington seems equally engaged, letting you feel the wheels turning as Bobby coolly  figures out what’s what. Their fun is contagious, to the audience as well as their fellow actors.

An engaging mix of buddy cop caper, spy thriller and Wild West shoot em up, 2 Guns is just the kick in the pants this movie summer needs.

 

Verdict-3-5-Stars