Tag Archives: film review

New In Theaters, Slider

Tony Danza, Scarlett Johansson and Porn

2 Comments

by Hope Madden

Look at little Tommy Solomon! Joseph Gordon-Levitt has proven himself a versatile actor in the years since his TV career in the guise of a pre-pubescent Earthling. With his newest effort, Don Jon, he exhibits surprising confidence and aptitude as both a screenwriter and a director.

The film follows Jon (Gordon-Levitt), a Jersey player who cares deeply about only a handful of things: his bod, his pad, his ride, his family, his church, his boys, his girls, his porn.

Guess which one of those gets him into trouble.

Maybe the best way to appreciate what Don Jon is, is to quickly cover what it is not. Don Jon is not a traditional romantic comedy. It is not a sexy romp, or a perfect flick for hangin’ with your bros.

No. It’s a sexually frank, cleverly written, confidently directed independent comedy/drama about our culture of objectification. It’s an alert comment on a society that fears intimacy, collects trophies, and looks to get more than it gives; a culture that raises girls to want to be princesses, and guys to collect sexual conquests. A culture where a fast food restaurant honestly advertises its newest sandwich by having an oiled up, bikini clad super model spread her legs while she enjoys the tasty burger.

The effort certainly carries its flaws, but JGL gets credit for upending expectations, and for brilliantly paralleling romantic comedies and porn – because, let’s be honest, they are equally damaging to our concept of relationship.

Writing and direction are nothing without a cast, and Gordon-Levitt proves just as savvy in that department. Tony F. Danza, ladies and gentlemen! Danza has fun as Jon’s role model father, while this season’s go-to girl Brie Larson – with barely a word – scores as his observant sister.

Gordon-Levitt’s own perfectly crafted swagger finds its match in a gum-chewing Scarlett Johansson, whose sultry manipulator is spot-on.

The fledgling auteur stumbles by Act 3 – quite a letdown after such a well articulated premise. The underdeveloped resolution would hinder the effort more were it not for the presence of Julianne Moore as the eccentric and wise Esther. The role may be a bit clichéd, but Moore is incapable of anything less than excellence.

It won’t be long before we’re saying the same of Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Until the end, he proves himself an insightful observer of his times, a cagey storyteller, and an artist with limitless potential.

 

Verdict-4-0-Stars

For Your Queue

For Your Queue: Z-28-Hit-Play..Hut-Hut!

Leave a comment

 

The zombie thriller directed by Marc Forster (who’d directed no thrillers, let alone zombies) that has almost nothing to do with Max Brooks’s fascinating novel World War Z? Surprisingly enough, yes. Yes please, even. Brad Pitt’s scarf-wearing hero traipses the mostly demolished globe in search of a cure in a movie that never lets up, consistently surprises, and delivers the goods. Check it out this week on DVD.

 

Maybe the zombie movie match-up is Danny Boyle’s not-really-zombie flick 28 Days Later. Sure, they’re not dead yet, but they are super pissed off and they want to eat you, so run! Just don’t run to that military outpost. Boyle’s empty London, brutal monsters, and epically creepy climax makes his foray into horror an especially joyous one. Two great ways to get prepped for the coming Halloween season.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eunaclr-WgU

Or, just watch Fight Club. You can’t go wrong there.

New In Theaters

Another Creepy Chapter

Leave a comment

Insidious: Chapter 2

by Hope Madden

James Wan is preoccupied. He’s made three nearly identical films back to back – Insidious, The Conjuring, Insidious: Chapter 2. In each, small children are terrorized by malevolent forces from beyond the grave, and their well-meaning parents are useless to help them, so the family turns to supernatural investigators. A big, scary dead lady is to blame.

Perhaps worry over Wan’s childhood is appropriate at this point. So why has his recent output been so much fun to watch?

Rock solid casting helps. Given the comparably miniscule budgets for each film, the fact that Wan drew the interest of Vera Farmiga, Rose Byrne, Lili Taylor, and Patrick Wilson (all three times!) says something for his casting ability. Even in this third go round – easily the weakest of the efforts – Wan still shows a joyous thrill for adventuring into something that clearly terrifies him.

As with the previous two ghostly installments, Wan also favors flesh and blood performances to FX when it comes to the spectral side of his films, which continues to elevate his work above other recent ghost stories.

Insidious: Chapter 2 picks up right where the original left off. The beleaguered Lamberts have their once-comatose-and-trapped-in-ghostland son Dalton back, but something ugly returned with him.

Far more streamlined than Chapter 1 but with little of the elegant slow build of Conjuring, Chapter 2 splits its efforts between two sets. We’re in the house with the terrified Lamberts, or we’re ghosthunting with Grandma (Barbara Hershey) and her paranormal investigators.

It amounts to two haunted houses, more children in peril, and ghosts who don’t just lurk and stalk but punch you full in the face. So that part’s new.

By this time, seeing an expert on the paranormal freeze in their tracks, terrified beyond words at the malevolent force only they can see feels a little stale. Rather than exploring the darkness as he did so weirdly well in Chapter 1, Wan mostly contents himself with the two real-world sites, which is a bit of a letdown.

Still, that “he has your baby he has your baby he has your baby” dude is pretty freaky.

Lots of images are, showing that Wan’s arsenal of unsettling vision wasn’t quite yet empty. Insidious 2 is a fun genre piece, but a bit of a disappointment after this summer’s spookirific The Conjuring. By this time, hopefully Wan has exorcised his demons and can turn his attention elsewhere.

Oh, that’s right. He’s directing Fast & Furious 7.

I don’t know. Maybe another ghost story would be OK.

 

Verdict-3-0-Stars

 

 

New In Theaters

I’m In Love With That Song

Leave a comment

Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me

by Hope Madden

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.

So, you know, thanks.

 

Verdict-3-5-Stars

New In Theaters

Sometimes Actually Spectcular

Leave a comment

The Spectacular Now

by Hope Madden

The Spectacular Now suffers slightly from high expectations. National critics quickly heralded the film the summer’s best, and its quirky indie pedigree is tough to argue. The film marks Shailene Woodley’s first feature since her breathtaking turn in The Descendents. Penned by the duo that delivered 500 Days of Summer, directed by Smashed helmsman James Ponsoldt, and starring the charmingly charismatic, damaged doofus Miles Teller, the film’s buzz certainly felt potentially deserved.

A popular, life-of-the-party high school senior rebounds from a break up by dating a quiet, hard-working, nice girl. Brace yourself, there’s no make-over, no peer pressure, no angst.

No angst – what?!

It’s true. In fact, it is the film’s fresh approach that makes the safe decisions and clichés stand out. For a high school romance with an edge, The Spectacular Now is an engaging dramedy boasting stronger scripting and far superior performances than what you find in other likeminded works. Indeed, it sparkles in comparison to similar genre titles – the sickeningly overrated Perks of Being a Wallflower, for example.

Polsoldt never drapes his high school romance in nostalgia – a common mistake in films such as these – but looks at the situation with the clear view his protagonist lacks. With a handful of exceptions, the writing holds up, and when it doesn’t, credit Teller and especially Woodley for the sheer talent to buoy the occasional weak scripting.

Woodley, who wowed audiences with her turn as the thoroughly modern, cynical teen in Descendents, shows true range that proves her wealth of talent.

Viewers who remember Teller from his recent work in Project X and 21 and Over may see the young actor as a one-trick pony, again playing the likeable screw up with an alcohol dependency. In his performance here, though, we glimpse a bit of the nuance and power fans of his turn in 2010’s Rabbit Hole will remember.

Unfortunately, The Spectacular Now falls too conveniently into a formula framed by the dreaded college essay. Ponsoldt lets his crisis off the hook far too simply, and where the resolution should have felt appropriately ambiguous, it instead seems superficially settled.

But cast that all aside and drink in two of the most fully crafted teens ever to hit the screen. The team of Ponsoldt, Woodley and Teller plumb for that bittersweet combination of longing, confidence, vulnerability and potential that marks adolescence. While his film may be merely better than average, his leads are truly spectacular.

 

Verdict-3-5-Stars

 

New In Theaters, Slider

You’re Next Did Nothing First

Leave a comment

 

by Hope Madden

 

It looked like 2013 might be the year of the horror film. First came the visceral thrill of the Evil Dead reboot, then the spectral fun of The Conjuring. With the buzz surrounding the indie fright film You’re Next, it looked like we might be in store for the season’s third solid genre pic.

Nope.

Adam Wingard’s film has been lauded as Scream meets The Cabin in the Woods, which isn’t entirely wrong. You’re Next is a derivative work that copies Scream’s wink-and-nod use of genre tropes and applies them to a home invasion storyline, this time set in an isolated, wooded area.

Pudgy, weak, whitebread Crispian (AJ Bowen) brings his girlfriend to his parents’ secluded anniversary celebration. Uninvited guests in animal masks pick off attendants, but they’ve underestimated one guest.

Wingard is part of a new generation of horror filmmakers, a fraternity style community with members who work together frequently. Indeed, Wingard worked with Ti West on the compilation VHS; Bowan co-starred in West’s House of the Devil; West handles a small role in You’re Next as a boyfriend/filmmaker/victim.

Unfortunately, none of them makes particularly good films.

Not that You’re Next is especially bad. It’s just that, aside from some relatively entertaining sibling bitchiness, most of the ideas are cribbed from better films. Masked home invaders is far scarier in The Strangers; the animal masks saw their debut in 1973’s The Wicker Man ; many of the home invasion defense moves come directly from Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs. It’s a long list.

Yes there’s a twist and some humor, but folks calling this film “a cut above” have clearly not seen some of the competition. Hell, You’re Next is not even the best “cabin in the woods” film released this year. What it is, is safe.

You’re Next subverts tensions before they can generate real terror. Wingard either lets the audience in on the secret or injects a bit of humor every time the film gets honestly tense. He undercuts each scene’s opportunity to scare, falling back on humor or action movie one-upsmanship instead.

One of the many genius moves Wes Craven made with his genre-upending 1996 film Scream was to balance humor and scares, to mine that tension that either bursts with a scream or a laugh. That’s the work of a horror filmmaker who knows what he’s doing.

You’re Next is the work of Adam Wingard. It turns out, that’s not quite the same thing.

 

Verdict-2-0-Stars

 

For Your Queue

For Your Queue: Two 5-Star Options

Leave a comment

We have two five-star options for your queue this week from the brilliant Michael Haneke. The filmmaker won the Oscar for best foreign language film for his breathtaking 2012 effort Amour, available this week on DVD.

The master craftsman tackles the devastating consequences of a stroke in one lifelong relationship. He sidesteps easy emotion, avoids sentimentality, and embraces the individuality of one marriage – therefore unearthing something both universal and intimate. He’s aided immeasurably by flawless turns from both leads, Emmanuelle Riva (Oscar nominated) and Jean-Louis Trintignant.

The White Ribbon (Das weisse Band),  from 2009, is Haneke’s brilliant analysis of evil, full of exquisite beauty and a quiet power that will haunt you.

Set in a small village in Germany in the years just before World War I, the story centers on strange atrocities that begin to affect both person and property.  As the incidents mount and the mystery deepens, the local schoolteacher thinks he can identify the guilty.  He shares his theory with the village pastor, and lines are drawn when the pastor does not agree.

In previous films,  Haneke has mined cruelty both physical (Funny Games) and mental (Cache).  Here, he examines the depth and possible origins of both, and the result is harrowing.

Golden Glode winner and Oscar-nominated for Best Foreign Film, The White Ribbon is that rare work which is not just a film, but an experience. It effectively moves the conversation beyond the film’s setting, and into how the lessons apply to other periods in history and even to present day social, political, and religious movements.

New In Theaters

An Exquisite Performance Haunts The Hunt

Leave a comment

The Hunt

by Hope  Madden

There is one accusation too insidious to ever truly shake, even when it’s unfounded. The Hunt follows the unraveling of one life tainted by that implication.

Danish filmmaker Thomas Viterberg’s restraint behind the camera and the pen allows this quietly devastating tale to unspool at its own pace. It’s November, and the men of Lucas’s small community are daring each other into the freezing lake. Lucas’s best friend strips to nothing and enters, then of course Lucas has to wade in and pull the cramped and drunken buddy back to safety.

Then it’s on to dry clothes and drinking. Later, it’ll be hunting and drinking. It’s all very rustic, charming and masculine, which may be why something feels off when the mild-mannered and deeply decent Lucas makes his way to work at the preschool.

Very slyly, Viterberg creates an atmosphere that separates the masculine from the feminine in a way that hints at a town uncertain of a man who works with children – even if that man is the same truly nice guy you’ve known your whole life.

Viterberg’s observant style picks up casual behaviors, glances, assumptions and choices and turns them into the unerringly realistic image of a small town undone by a rumor of the ugliest sort. He’s aided immeasurably by the powerful turn from his lead, Mads Mikkelson.

For an actor usually saddled with a villain’s role (indeed, he’s currently playing Hannibal Lecter in the TV series), Mikkelson’s reserved and wounded Lucas is a complicated triumph. He won the top prize Cannes awards in acting for a role that proves a breathtaking range.

His work is buoyed by an impressive supporting cast, the gem of which is the chillingly natural little Annika Wedderkopp.

If Viterberg plumbs small town concepts of masculinity to discomfiting effect, what he does with the self-righteous naïveté of upright citizens protecting their young is positively chilling in its authenticity. We watch helplessly as this tiny pebble of an accusation races downhill collecting snow. The quick acceleration of misguided action is breathtaking.

Viterberg seems almost to implicate the audience, because what is the answer? Disbelieve the child?

And if you do believe – would you behave differently?

Small mindedness combines with protectiveness, disgust with suspicion, until a man is no longer considered a man at all but something else entirely. Viterberg’s concern is not simply what happens during the crisis, but whether that crisis can ever finally be resolved. His deliberate and understated storytelling, along with one stunning performance, makes it an unsettling conundrum to consider.

 

Verdict-4-0-Stars