2013’s highest caliber, most fun blockbuster releases to all frontiers today.Star Trek Into Darkness – JJ Abrams’s exceptional sequel to his surprisingly awesome Star Trek reboot – brings all the humor, spectacle, nerdiness and octane of its predecessor. In fact, it may top it, thanks in part to the director’s genuine affection for the source material, his genius for casting, and his ability to tell a story that’s as pleasantly familiar as it is excitingly surprising.
Speaking of source material, why not get set for the legendary William Shatner’s visit to Columbus next weekend and revisit 1982’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan? Beyond Ricardo Montalban’s heaving chest plate and the wolverine napping on Shatner’s head lies a solid trek less dependent on special effects than basic storytelling. You’ll find various elements from Into Darkness began with STII, and though too many trekkies got their phasers stunned by the liberties Abrams put to use, the two films can co-exist just fine.
It was rumored this week that Jack Nicholson, 76, has retired from acting. Then it was rumored that he hasn’t. Don’t tease us! One of cinema’s most ferocious performers, he’d certainly create a noticeable hole with his absence. In his nearly sixty years in film, he’s racked up a dozen Oscar nominations, three leading to wins. And while he’s certainly been a Hollywood character himself, we want to thank him for introducing us to these ten characters we won’t forget.
10. Frank Costello (The Departed)
9. Buddusky (The Last Detail)
8. Melvin Udall (As Good As It Gets)
7. George Hanson (Easy Rider)
6. Warren Schmidt (About Schmidt)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-zEwGZ56Bs
5. Garrett Breedlove (Terms of Endearment)
4. JJ Gittes (Chinatown)
3. R. P. McMurphy (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest)
That may not sound like kid stuff, but I Declare War presents an arresting mix of fantasy and reality, transporting you back to a time when counting to ten could resurrect the dead, and all that mattered was the here and now.
Co-directors Robert Wilson and Jason Lapeyre, working from Lapeyre’s script, drop us in the heat of battle right from the get go, as a group of 12 year olds is engaged in a very serious round of Capture the Flag.
To hear George’s interview with co-director Robert Wilson, click this: Robert_Wilson
General PK (Gage Munroe) is out to remain unbeaten, while across the woods, General Quinn (Aidan Gouveia) plots an upset. Both leaders must deal with dissension in the ranks, and some surprises in the field, before a winner is declared.
Wilson and Lapeyre contain the film in a glorious section of the outdoors, framing the action skillfully enough to give it an expansive, wide open feel, as if the opposing base camps were miles apart and expert cunning was required to keep from getting hopelessly lost.
Of course, putting pre-teens in violent situations where sticks suddenly become rifles and POWs are subject to enhanced interrogation will quickly bring up a host of delicate social issues. Thankfully, the filmmakers deliver their commentary with a gentle touch, utilizing a terrific young cast to craft characters who, though a bit cliched in their respective roles, don’t reek of adult romanticism.
You’ll recognize homages to Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan and more, and as you find yourself caught up in a kid’s game, you’ll recognize a phase of life that’s bursting with both anguish and wonder.
The screen fills with the sepia image of a bygone Texas. Sinewy lovers quarrel and forgive, then wait in a pick-up, planning a future with their unborn baby, until the third robber arrives. There’s a chase, a lonesome shack, a shoot out, and a compromise that sends the boy away to prison and the girl home to pine.
There’s good reason writer/director David Lowery’s romantic tragedy Ain’t Them Bodies Saints feels so confident. The breathtaking cinematography, the fittingly artistic framing, the poetry of the language and image, the heartbreaking authority of the performances – each element fits together beautifully and benefits from the artistic coordination of a maestro. It’s because the relatively unknown Lowery has honed his craft, spending time as a casting director, crewman, writer, director, sound editor, actor, producer, and cinematographer before tackling this, the culminating effort of a lifetime spent in film.
He’s blessed with a cast that embraces his understated drama. Casey Affleck animates a career full of characters with vulnerability and confused nobility, and he impresses again here as the outlaw who breaks out of prison, just like he promised, to reunite with his girl and the daughter he’s never met.
Rooney Mara’s quiet ferocity offsets Affleck’s tenderness, and the love story they create offers a poignant center to the film. Orbiting the couple is Ben Foster’s humble police officer, torn by his affection for one and duty to the other. Each actor embodies an image of lonesomeness that makes the film ache. What’s beautiful about this triangle is that neither the characters nor the filmmaker judges anyone. Lowery and his characters accept, however sadly, the motivations and actions of all involved.
The young mother also attracts the protective nature of a retired gangster/father figure played by Keith Carradine, whose presence reinforces the film’s bluesy connection to the other great, doomed Western romance, McCabe and Mrs. Miller.
The film’s one shortcoming is that it does not tell a larger tale. This beautifully told story of loneliness, devotion, love and tragedy never manages to transcend its own intimacy to speak to something universal.
But it’s a hell of an effort, and one that establishes Lowery as one of the most exciting new filmmakers to come along in decades.
There’s something both familiar and weirdly backwards about the film Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me, a documentary that follows the path of a talented, promising rock band as it hurtles toward obscurity.
This is a film about a band so indie only the indiest of indie bands even know them; a band so underground that they inspired nearly every seminal act of the Eighties and Nineties alt rock movement; a band so obscure that they spun off into other bands that opened for punk acts you probably never heard of at CBGB’s. But, you totally know the That Seventies Show theme song, which is an obscure Cheap Trick cover of a Big Star song. So it’s not like they’re make believe.
The doc follows the career of Alex Chilton – you know, like from that Replacements song – and his Memphis band Big Star, who changed the foundation of rock music without ever really being heard by more than a few hundred people at a time.
Chilton charted a #1 song in his teens, singing “The Letter” with the Box Tops. By 1970, the Memphis youngster joined up with local musician/songwriter/budding producer Chris Bell and his buddies. They took advantage of a fruitful situation with local label Ardent Records, and the stage was set for what might have become the city’s next Sun Records-style phenomenon.
Over the next couple years, with a little band reshuffling, Big Star recorded two more albums with Ardent – all three of which landed in Rolling Stone Magazine’s list of the 500 best albums of all time.
Of all time.
I’m sorry – who are these people?
When you talk about the seminal Memphis acts, Big Star might not outshine Elvis, Aretha Franklin, B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, or even Jeff Buckley – so why spend two hours with their music? Well, that’s not always entirely clear. The doc plays only enough snippets of the band’s work to pique interest, while its focus meanders to the point of frustration.
Still, filmmakers Drew DeNicola and Olivia Mori seek not only to clue you in on the greatest band you never heard of, but also to cast a glance at a little known revolution in Memphis music, one that came and went before its time, but impressed every music critic of the era and laid the groundwork for what we now know as alternative music.
We can’t bring ourselves to pair up a new release with a similarly wonderful backlist title because two awesome films are released to DVD today: The Iceman and Stories We Tell. You’ll just have to watch two new ones.
The Iceman showcases the range of genius character actor Michael Shannon. Director Ariel Vromen makes the most of Shannon’s physical presence as well as his ability to oscillate between steely calm and touching vulnerability. It’s a tour de force from one of this generation’s most impressive performers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHZ6dxR2EiQ
Meanwhile, Sarah Polley continues to impress with her skills behind the camera with Stories We Tell. The Canadian writer/director/actor becomes her own documentarian, sharing family secrets in a poignant, fascinating and impeccably crafted look at how all families shape and reshape their own histories.
It’s Labor Day Weekend, and we’ve decided to take a mo and celebrate the hardest labor of all. The pregnant kind. Here are our five favorite pregnant lady flicks.
5. Knocked Up (2007)
The Judd Apatow brand extends to films he simply produced, so he may be getting more creative credit than he deserves, but he had back to back writing/directing/comic gems with 2005’s Forty Year Old Virgin and this Pregnant Beauty and the Beast. Better for its ensemble than its leads, the flick boasts dead-on genius work from Leslie Mann, hilarious support from Paul Rudd, Jonah Hill, Jason Segel, Jay Baruchel and Kristin Wiig, and it introduced the world to the now constant comic presence of Ken Jeong. At least he kept his pants on for this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR4sXcMf_5o
4. Juno (2007)
Jason Reitman, Diablo Cody, Jason Bateman, Michael Cera and Ellen Page enraptured us all with this quick witted, brilliantly cast, endlessly quotable comedy about a pregnant teen. Reitman and Cody would pair up again with the nearly flawless Young Adult, but their first collaboration remains fresher and funnier than you think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwv12d85u7A
3. Waitress (2007)
Soulful and funny, gorgeously filmed and perfectly cast, Waitress is the list’s underseen joy. Pie baking phenom Kerri Russell squirrels away money so she can quit her waitressing job and leave her husband, then finds herself pregnant and attracted to her new doctor. Writer/director Adrienne Shelly’s film offers a pitch-perfect supporting cast, a cleverly crafted script, and the remarkable ability to make you want to eat pie right now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cQ0WwcKCLk
2. Inside (2007)
Holy shit. Inside is not for the squeamish. This French horror flick pits a merciless villain against an enormous expecting mother. Though the film goes wildly out of control by the third act, it is a 2/3 brilliant effort, a study in tension wherein one woman will do whatever it takes, with whatever utensils are available, to get at the baby still firmly inside another woman’s body.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOk5tiAkEdA
1. Rosemary’s Baby
If you’re going to see only one pregnant lady horror flick, make it Rosemary’s Baby. It remains a disturbing, elegant, and fascinating tale, and Mia Farrow’s embodiment of defenselessness joins forces with William Fraker’s skillful camerawork to cast a spell. Yes, that crazy pederast Roman Polanski sure can spin a yarn about violated, vulnerable females.
Surreal, perverse, curious and horrifying, The Act of Killing demands to be seen as much as any film in recent memory.
It is anchored in the atrocities committed during the overthrow of the Indonesian government in 1965. Paramilitary death squads and ruthless gangsters captured, tortured and killed at will, all under the guise of exterminating “communists.” Over one million Indonesians lost their lives, and those responsible continue to gloat about their actions from a seat of power they still enjoy today.
Co-director Joshua Oppenheimer met with some of the most famous death squad leaders and made them a distasteful yet ultimately brilliant offer: would they re-enact their savagry on camera?
The result is mesmerizing, can’t-believe-what-I’m-seeing-stuff.
As they gleefully reveal their love of American film genres, the murderers show themselves as man-children, the result of lives lived running amok without fear of parental or social reprisal. Throwing themselves into the task, they utilize makeup, costumes, props and local extras to film dimly lit drama scenes and extravagant musical numbers, while discussing their bloodlust with a devastating casualness.
Three specific paramilitary leaders take center stage, two of whom show little to no remorse for their actions, explaining that “war crimes are defined by the winners.” The third, an aging grandfather named Anwar Congo, is different. As the ghosts of his past are unearthed, we see a man often struggling to come to grips with himself. While it is not a sympathetic portrait, the transformation in his demeanor is fascinating.
Fearing reprisals, many names in the final credits (including that of the Indonesian co-director) are replaced with “Anonymous.” Two names that do stand out are those of acclaimed documentarians Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line/The Fog of War) and Werner Herzog (Cave of Forgotten Dreams/Grizzly Man), who serve as executive producers.
Recalling the finest of their work, The Act of Killing is unforgettable. It calls to mind past cruelty, an Orwellian present and an uncertain future, emerging as essential, soul-shaking viewing.
Just days after the events depicted in Before Midnight, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) is still smarting from the emasculating attack he endured at the hands of Celine (Julie Delpy), the increasingly bitter love of his life. He returns to their Parisian home and is surprised to find it empty and in a state of disarray.
The phone rings. A strangely accented voice tells him he must steal a souped-up Mustang and perform a series of dangerous tasks if he ever wants to see Celine again.
There’s a long pause. “Well?” the voice asks.
“I’m thinking,” Jesse replies.
Obviously, that is not how Getaway begins. A flick that hopes to attract fans of Gone in Sixty Secondsand similar car-chase epics has no time for complicated relationships. It doesn’t even have time for exposition. Instead, director Courtney Solomon dives into the gear-gnashing, tire-squealing action before the opening credits even roll.
Via flashbacks and spare bits of dialogue, we learn that Brent Magna (Hawke) is a washed-up American racecar driver now living in Sofia, Bulgaria. We also learn that his Bulgarian wife (Rebecca Budig) has been abducted by a mysterious man (Jon Voight) who communicates with Brent through the car’s phone and threatens to kill her unless his instructions are followed to the letter.
Soon joined by the Mustang’s angry owner, a young woman known only as the Kid (Selena Gomez), Brent is ordered to perform tasks that mostly involve evading the police and always put the general public at risk. And because it’s the Christmas season, there’s a lot of general public around to be put at risk.
All of this could be entertaining if it weren’t for a couple of problems.
First, the movie suffers from unfortunate timing. In an early scene, Brent is told to drive at full speed through thick crowds of holiday revelers. Though he miraculously avoids hitting anyone, it’s an uncomfortable reminder of the Dodge-driving maniac who killed a bride and injured 16 others while plowing through a Los Angeles boardwalk crowd in early August.
More importantly, co-screenwriter and third-time director Solomon (An American Haunting) seems to have no knack for this kind of thing. The action is nearly nonstop and the destruction is massive, but frantic editing lowers the excitement level.
We see a tiny Bulgarian police car, and a split second later, it crashes. Where’s the fun in that? A last-minute chase, in which Solomon adopts the driver’s-view strategy pioneered by Bullitt (1968), offers one of the flick’s few heart-pounding moments.
Solomon’s attempts at humor also fall flat. They mostly call on the Kid to hurl insults at Brent, such as calling him a “shitty” driver—which is incongruous, considering he’s performing moves that could only be completed by someone who’s spent his life racing on Sundays and studying stunt driving the rest of the week.
In general, the talented Hawke and likable Gomez are limited to yelling at each other in the midst of all the mayhem, except during the rare quiet moments when the Kid uses her technological savvy in an attempt to figure out their tormenter’s motive. And he has one, of course, but don’t think about it too hard or you’ll start asking questions.
Getaway is designed to be mindless entertainment, after all. It’s just too bad that the mindlessness began before the first pedal was pressed to the metal.
More reviews and stories by Richard Ades can be found on his theater blog, columbustheater.org, and in the new weekly version of the Columbus Free Press, which launches Sept. 5.
Shailene Woodley, the 21-year-old who stole scenes from Clooney in The Descendents, finally returns to the big screen with another awe-inspiring turn in this week’s The Spectacular Now. Woodley is part of a remarkable wave of young female talent worth celebrating. Therefore, this weekend’s countdown: 9 brilliant young actresses not named Jennifer Lawrence.
Quvenzhane Wallis
This nine-year-old boasts an Oscar nomination, a forthcoming historical drama co-starring Brad Pitt and Michael Fassbender, and the lead in the next silver screen version of little orphan Annie’s scrappy story. Her cherubic face and startling talent offers hope for the future of the industry.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF7i2n5NXLo
Kara Hayward
Fourteen and brilliant (honestly – she’s a member of Mensa), Hayward made an impression as the heavily eye-lined lovestruck teen in Moonrise Kingdom. Let’s hope Hollywood knows how to make the most of her deadpan genius.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfBPjbvr1BU
Chloe Moretz
Sure, Kick-Ass 2 disappointed, but the hard-working Moretz doesn’t. Now 16, she has more acting credits than everyone else on this list combined. She’s played disdainful, vulnerable, mean, sweet, blood sucker and victim, and soon she’ll reprise the role Sissy Spacek made infamous. We can’t wait to see what she can do at the prom.
Elle Fanning
The touching, versatile younger sister in an acting clan, this 15-year-old may be the most impressive talent on the list. She has a quiet reserve that draws comparison to Meryl Streep – heady company, but Fanning may just be the one who can live up to it.
Rachel Mwanza
You may not know this impressive talent, but her first professional work in the Oscar nominated War Witch proves her uncanny natural ability. Her devastating, understated performance marks the work of a natural artist and we are eager to see her follow up.
Hailee Steinfeld
She received her first Oscar nomination at 16 for a powerhouse performance that stood up to the likes of Matt Damon and Jeff Bridges in True Grit. She’s been quiet since, but she’ll churn out an impressive number of films in the next two years, including a starring role in Romeo and Juliet this February.
Saoirse Ronan
Oscar nominations, action flicks, period piece drama, teen angst pics, accents aplenty – this chameleonic 19-year-old can seem to handle anything. She’s been an international acting force since childhood and we are eager to see what adulthood brings.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anqgem9eN38
Saskia Roendahl
Another unfamiliar name, perhaps, but 20-year-old Roendahl made the world take note when she brought tender resilience to the devastating war pic Lore. Like Fanning and Mwanza, she suggests a quiet, wary wisdom with her performances that should help her carve out a brilliant career.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XBsT3iafl0
Shailene Woodley
And back to Woodley, 21, a refreshingly natural performer whose choices mark someone who wants to act rather than someone who wants to be a star. Like her impressive colleagues on this list, she offers hope to those of us who love movies and thrill to see the next generation of Streeps, Blanchettes, Winslets, Moores and Closes begin their cinematic takeover.
