Melancholia

Melancholia (2011) dir. Lars Von Trier
Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alexander Skarsgård, Stellan Skarsgård, John Hurt

**½

By Alan Bacchus

Lars Von Trier is back to titillate us with another meta-spiritual film featuring a tortured woman on an emotional downward spiral to oblivion. Last time it was Charlotte Gainsbourg battling the obsessive therapy of her despicable husband in Antichrist. This time it’s Kirsten Dunst as a bride on her wedding day, which rapidly goes from the highs of nuptial bliss to utter despair and humiliation – all the while another planet in the celestial skies has been approaching Earth on a collision course.

It’s another bold conceptual stroke from the same hand that dared to make a three-hour movie on a soundstage with no sets (Dogville). Immediately we get the same kind of feeling we got from Von Trier’s Dogme 95 films in the late ‘90s. We’re introduced to Justine (Dunst) and Michael (A. Skarsgård) in a limo on the way to their wedding taking place on a spectacular mansion estate. It’s an affable scene showing the inability of the driver to fit the lengthy car into the entranceway to the grounds. Von Trier’s handheld camera and jump-cuts recall his work in The Idiots, Dancer in the Dark and Breaking the Waves. The film also shares the optimistic tone that opened those films compared to the eventual trough of depression that ended them. As such, this scene induced a certain excitement about where Von Trier would take us this time.

The film is structured formally into two distinct halves, titled appropriately using the two sisters’ names, Justine (Dunst) and Claire (Gainsbourg). Justine’s story depicts the wedding, which, after the fun romp at the entranceway in the opening, devolves through the petty family squabbles of Justine’s divorced parents and the obsessiveness of her brother-in-law, John (Sutherland).

From the get-go, something is wrong with Justine. Everyone treats her with kid gloves and walks on eggshells around her. For no apparent reason she starts to exhibit signs of manic depressive behaviour. Instead of comfort, everyone from Claire to John, and even her new husband, rejects her. It’s a deeply tragic ending to this chapter, but it sets up her eventual redemption in the second half. Unfortunately, we never get to the cause of Claire’s melancholia, or at least we never receive the satisfaction implied by Von Trier’s very mysterious setup.

Claire’s story begins in the fall-out after the wedding. After the guests have left, Claire finds herself babysitting Justine in the estate with her rotten husband who obsesses about the encroaching planet in the sky. Although John is convinced that the planet will pass by Earth safely, Justine is not. When it’s clear to Claire that Earth is doomed, including her and her son, Von Trier moves into the heightened realm of cinematic existentialism.

A powerful reversal occurs for Justine, as she rises up from the depression of her wedding to accept her fate with grace. For Claire, the realist, she can only see death and destruction, which enables her own breakdown.

Melancholia works best on this conceptual level. Unfortunately, Von Trier leaves much to be desired in execution. Sadly, his film is bogged down by a heavy running time (134 minutes) without a full narrative to support it. To put it simply, not much happens, and since we know where the film will end it becomes a struggle to engage in the journeys of the characters when they’re drawn out to such an excessive length.

It’s a shame because like Antichrist, Melancholia features some of Von Trier’s most beautiful and profound moments. His use of Wagner, which conveys the sad tone implied by the film’s title, fits perfectly. His expressive use of extreme slo-motion in the opening scene is stunning, and the actual ‘disaster’ moment is a climax of extreme power leaving the viewers awestruck at the end.

Melancholia opens this Friday in Toronto via E1 Entertainment.

Harakiri

Harakiri (1962) dir. Masaki Kobayashi
Starring: Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Ishihama, Shima Iwashita, Tetsurô Tanba, Masao Mishima

***½

By Alan Bacchus

What can we possibly expect from a film entitled Harakiri, that terrible act of ritual suicide that brings honour in death to dishonoured Japanese samurai? It promises to be a grisly movie, and indeed in the opening we’re witness to a gruesome botched suicide. It’s a horrific scene, which sets up Kobayashi's intriguing story of redemption and revenge.

Harakiri finds Hanshiro Tsugumo, a wandering ex-Samurai (aka Ronin), arriving at the estate of the wealthy Iyi clan looking to commit suicide via harakiri in their honourable courtyard. To the clan leader the visit reminds him of a similar request from a younger man, Motome Chijiiwa, who, like Hanshiro, wanted to die by his own sword in their courtyard. Unfortunately, Motome's death, as told by the elder, was less than honourable – a grisly, drawn-out death due to his dull 'bamboo' blade, a fact that does not sit well with Hanshiro.

Recalling the flashback structures of Rashomon, Citizen Kane and All About Eve, for most of the film the backstory of Motome is revealed while Hanshiro is sitting down in the courtyard recounting his story to the elders. As we learn the details of how Hanshiro came to be at the same place as Motome, Kobayashi opens up his remarkably tragic story – the fall of a once-great warrior clan, victims of the country's dismissal of its warrior heroes, the Samurai, who, as with Ronin, in their obsolescence would resort to such painful forms of self-mutilation.

The film, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, has been hailed as one of the great films made during this 'Golden Age' of Japanese cinema, a time of Kurosawa, Ozu, Mizoguchi and Ichikawa. Thematically, the film is filled with Japanese cultural touchstones of death, dishonour, authority and rituals, themes that connect the feudal system to the then state of Japanese politics in the post-war period.

The modern metaphors require some digging or knowledge of Japanese political and cultural history, but the pain and suffering inflicted on Motome, and Hanshiro's innate need for vengeance, resonate loudly.

Harakiri was made in 1962, arguably one of the greatest periods of cinematography in film history. It comes at the end of the black and white era, when cinematographers absolutely mastered the medium. In comparison to the lesser quality colour film stock at the time, a film like Harakiri stands out as a masterwork of visual art.

Kobayashi's use of his 2.35:1 widescreen frame is maximized, using wide angle lenses and deep-focus photography to open up the audience to the world in his frames. The exacting nature of the lighting complements the precise camera movements. Kobayashi's elegant camera creeps in and out of his characters, expressing all the intrigue and suspense of the film's clever plotting while expressing the heightened emotions of the characters.

It's a long picture, running two hours and fifteen minutes, but by the final bloody fight scene at the end, which pits Hanshiro against the entire Iyi clan, the film pays off with maximum flare. It’s an awesome display of carnage, as bloody-lust satisfying as any of the great action sequences in Akira Kurosawa's oeuvre (i.e., Sanjuro, Seven Samurai, Ran).

Harakiri is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

Super 8

Super 8 (2011) dir. J.J. Abrams
Starring: Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, Kyle Chandler, Riley Griffiths, Ryan Lee, Glynn Turman, Noah Emmerich

***

By Alan Bacchus

J.J. Abrams’ painstaking love letter to the Steven Spielberg films of old couldn't live up to the true magical experience of say ET or Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but he’s not allowed to try and damned if he doesn’t come really, really close. Abrams does such a good job of aping the kids vs. adults theme Spielberg popularized in the ‘80s, it brought me back to those summer days as a suburban kid playing guns in the backyard, blowing off firecrackers illegally and just about getting into any kind of dangerous shit I could think of. Super 8 is not perfect, but it makes for the most highly entertaining summer film of the year – a genuine love for film, filmmaking and just being a kid.

That said, the film doesn't quite hold up on second viewing, especially on Blu-Ray - thus losing a 'half-star'. Much of the retro-freshness is lost on the small screen, and the deficiencies in plotting show their wear. It's no less an admirable third film from JJ Abrams though, gradually improving his big screen filmmaking skills.

We’re in a classic small Midwestern American town in the ‘70s, an idolized working class suburban world where kids can ride bikes safely without helmets and without adult supervision. The kids in this film are not unproductive brats but highly motivated pre-teen geeks who have channelled their love of horror and monster movies into their own filmmaking coterie. Joe, Charlie, Preston and their 10-year-old friends are in the midst of shooting their latest 8 mm zombie film for the Cleveland Super 8 Film Festival. Charles (Griffiths), the fat kid, is the director and Joe (Courtney) is the special effects guy. After roping the unattainable blonde Alice (Fanning) into the mix they have their full cast and are ready to film their big emotional scene at night at the train station. The joy of having a real train pass behind the camera to achieve ‘production value’ turns to tragedy when the train derails and crashes in a spectacular accident.

After the accident, funny things start to happen in the small town. Mysterious military men show up to take scientific samples, mysterious electrical disturbances cause power outages and a gnarly beast seems to be chasing away dogs and abducting people from the town. Joe and Charlie have a theory that it’s an alien experiment gone wrong and a government cover-up. Like ET, it’s the kids versus the adults, using their guile, ingenuity and naiveté to save the town and the kidnapped townsfolk from both the beast and those despicable military men.

J.J. Abrams is so reverential to Spielberg it was almost mandatory that Spielberg be involved to shepherd this project as producer. Abrams cherry picks plotting and character elements from Jaws, ET, Close Encounters, Goonies and even Jurassic Park to create a fun, thrilling and supremely entertaining chimera of a film. The town hall scene in which the police deputy answers the questions of the people apes similar scenes in Jaws and Close Encounters. The sharply paced montage scenes pay homage to the great preparation scene in Close Encounters. And a confrontation with the beast in a control unit trailer reminds us of the same scene in The Lost World: Jurassic Park. The list could go on and on, but none of it feels like theft. The genuine heart brought to the picture by the fine acting of the children relieves Abrams of crafting a purely technical exercise. Such was the case with the awful steroid-infused Star Trek reboot a couple of years ago.

It’s not completely a Spielberg film either, as Abrams’ own stylistic hallmarks are in full effect. The train wreck, for instance, feels remarkably like the plane crash scene in the pilot episode of Lost. If anything, the wreck is almost over-produced. Lasting minutes, it’s a bombardment of explosions and flying cars tumbling continuously for much longer than what would happen in reality. But he can’t be faulted for pulling out the stops to create a spectacle. As usual, he shoots the film in wide-angle anamorphic and along with it, more lens flares. Though distracting in Star Trek, they actually fit the mood in this film and reference Spielberg’s own play with light to highlight emotion and create a tone of magic escapism.

The film threatens to fall apart in the final act, where the plotting fails us. For example, we see a huge army firing guns and attacking what feels like an army when it’s really just the one beast. The beast, which the kids learn is actually benevolent, never develops into the sympathetic character we’re meant to believe. And the creation of his spaceship just doesn’t make sense. That said, there’s a surprisingly profound moment between the beast, Joe and his treasured pocket watch that hits all the right emotional buttons. Again, it’s not at the level of ET’s dramatic departure from earth, but it’s touching nonetheless.

Super 8 is available on Blu-ray from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment.

It's a Wonderful Life

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) dir. Frank Capra
Starring: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore

****

by Alan Bacchus

The timeless classic It’s a Wonderful Life is essential viewing for the Christmas season. It follows the life story of humble family man George Bailey, who, throughout his life, gave more than he received. And in his moment of deepest despair he’s allowed to see the effects of his goodwill. Though known as a holiday film, it’s a perfect piece of cinema on its own and legitimately one of the greatest films of all time.

Existentialism courses through the veins of this picture. Capra and his writers give us a full hour and a half of story before revealing the heart of the film. We see George at the benchmark moments in his life when his selflessness has furthered the lives and careers of others. There’s his brother’s sledding accident, during which George saved his life but caused irreparable damage to his own ear. Before going off to college George stays in the town he desperately wants to leave so he can bail out his father’s old Building Savings and Loan business. On the day of his wedding George forgoes his honeymoon so he can stem a potential bank run against the business – and he personally loans $2000 from his own savings to help the community. But most importantly, he sacrifices his hopes and dreams of becoming an engineer in order to help prevent his community from falling under the power of the monopolistic money baron, Mr. Potter.

These events are carefully written and planned out in the screenplay so they will pay off in the famous third act, which most of us are familiar with. The angel we heard talking to us at the beginning of the film comes to Earth like the ghost of Christmas past to help George see the good he has brought his friends and family. The film is existential because despite the divine intervention, it’s George’s direct and indirect actions in his life that ultimately save him from financial ruin. Although the benign angel, Clarence, allows George to see the effect of his goodwill on the community, there is no magic button or pixie dust thrown into the mix. The revelation and resolution are not religious or a miracle, but rather the result of a life’s work of goodness.

In many ways the film is also a direct shot at extreme free-marketing. Bailey’s credit union battles Potter’s evil economic takeover throughout the film. I’m surprised the film wasn’t blacklisted because the allusions to socialism are clear. Frank Capra, though, is such a talented filmmaker that his righteousness and common wholesomeness trump any economic or political agendas.

It’s a Wonderful Life is timeless not because of its Christmas themes but because there’s a bit of George Bailey in every one of us, including his dreams, aspirations, guilt, insecurities and neuroses. And the purpose of the film is not to spread Christmas cheer but to make the audience look inward and rediscover their own personal faith in humanity and the value of the smallest, seemingly insignificant actions in our lives. Such optimism is rare for films today.

It's a Wonderful Life is available on a Special Edition Blu-ray from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment along with a memento to hang on your Christmas tree.

Beginners

Beginners (2011) dir. Mike Mills
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Melanie Laurent, Christopher Plummer

**½

By Alan Bacchus

The story of a late thirty-something graphic designer grieving the passing of his father who recently came out of the closet as being gay, in indie film circles, is one of the most adored films of the year - a critique which might just illicit some angered responses from the devoted fan base. With only a slight narrative to hold on to, the ambling tone and seemingly improvised quirkiness compares to the cinema of Sofia Coppola. It’s heart-on-your-sleeve filmmaking, with unnecessary stylistic idiosyncrasies, that unfortunately wears out its welcome.

There's not much of a story here, but to make up for it director Mike Mills splits his running time between three periods - the present, which has the designer, Oliver (McGregor), during his grieving period finding true love with a whimsical French gal (Laurent); the immediate past with his dying father (Plummer) still living out his new gay life like an energized teenager; and Oliver's oddball childhood and the relationship with his artsy mother. None of these periods seem like the present, past or future, instead a revolving door of time, the combination of which forms the slice of Mills' own life.

Most of the dialogue feels completely unnecessary to tell this story. Instead, it becomes just part of the background sound as important as the street noise, the eccentric jazzy piano score and McGregor's intermittent and random voiceover ramblings.

The deadpan stylish flourishes, such as the subtitle musings of Oliver's dog, I could live without. Same with the use of Oliver's scratchy drawings shot in close-up with a jump-cut montage effect, or the idiosyncratic editing, or the annoying faux-profound pronouncements, which seem more at home in a Levi's or Microsoft ad than in this film. The gentle tenderness thus morphs into some kind of grand lesson of life, which never really connects to the emotional core of Oliver's experiences.

Cherish Beginners for Christopher Plummer's youthful performance as an old man in the midst of his sexual liberation. Everything else is window dressing.

Beginners is available on Blu-ray and DVD from Alliance Films in Canada.

Crazy, Stupid, Love

Crazy Stupid Love (2011) dir Glenn Ficarra and John Requa
Starring: Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore, Marisa Tomei, Emma Stone

***1/2

By Alan Bacchus

Oh, how refreshing it is to be surprised by a Hollywood studio genre picture these days - a film about love, which doesn't need to play into the familiar overplayed romantic comedy template overpopulated by 15-year-old Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts movies or new millennium Richard Curtis dreck.

You probably know the story by now. Steve Carell plays an emasculated husband who's just found out his wife has been cheating on him. Now separated, he finds himself on the market, back on the dating scene. Ryan Gosling, a handsome playboy/barfly takes Carell under his wing for a male makeover of sorts, bringing out Carell's own inner pick-up artist.

Ficarra and Requa's film is filled with well rounded and interesting characters beyond the star casting of Steve Carell and Ryan Gosling. At its heart, the film tracks the experiences of love for a 13-year-boy infatuated with his babysitter, the babysitter who is infatuated with the kid's father, the father who is still infatuated with his wife, his wife who is no longer infatuated with him and Ryan Gosling's game-changing head-over-heels infatuation with a recently-dumped woman. Other lesser ensemble romantic films like Valentine's Day and He's Not That Into You have tried this revolving door approach, but none of them work better than this.

While other rom-coms revel in the plight of the protagonists, here Steve Carell's pathetic geek chic character, which is well used in roles from Date Night to The 40 Year Old Virgin, gets well tarnished in this film. He gets it in one of the best scenes in the film during a parent-teacher meeting with his ex-wife, as his son’s teacher happens to be the woman he slept with. Marisa Tomei, Moore and Carell create a marvellous scene which is both comedic and emotionally moving.

This scene is indicative of the intelligence of this film, playing each character with shades of grey and mixing broad comedy with edgy raunchiness and earnest life lessons. Everyone makes mistakes in this film in the name of love. It’s a difficult, nebulous fog to navigate through and with comedy and pathos the filmmakers find the right mix to make us laugh and move us to new places.

A heavy dose of strong cinematic style helps as well, bringing to mind the eccentric flourishes of John Hughes in his heyday. Crazy Stupid Love is one of the most satisfying studio commercial films this year.

Crazy Stupid Love is available on Blu-ray from Warner Home Entertainment.

Like Crazy

Like Crazy (2011) dir. Drake Doremus
Starring: Anton Yelchin, Felicity Jones, Jennifer Lawrence, Charlie Bewley, Alex Kingston, Oliver Muirhead

***½

By Alan Bacchus

Reposted from Sundance 2011

It’s been three days and us writers waiting in line at the P&I screenings are constantly trying to figure out the ’it’ film of the year. It may have just arrived in Drake Doremus’s epic, romantic, bittersweet journey of love.

Anna and Jacob are in love. They meet in the first scene in a college class, follow each other home, hang out, giggle, hold hands, eat, play around, maybe they kiss, maybe they don’t. Either way they are hopelessly in love. Oh what bliss. What could possible separate them? Well, Anna is British and on a school visa, which of course will run out. But she’s a romantic and nothing can stop her from being with her man. So she remains in the US to stay in bed and make love for two months.

She can’t escape reality though, and it comes crashing down when Homeland Security detains her for violating her visa after a brief trip back home to the UK. Now it’s a long distance relationship with the US government separating them. Thus begins the rollercoaster ride of love including the ups and downs of Anna and Jacob – like Going the Distance made by Michael Winterbottom.

After the opening act, Doremus puts his cynical hat on and tests our ability to believe that these two should be together. So are we watching Blue Valentine? Or (500) Days of Summer? Doremus keeps us on edge at all times. Anna flirts with other boys back home, and Jacob does the same with girls, but their iPhones always connect them. Doremus constantly oscillates between these extremes of lovestruck pit-of-your-stomach romance and the agonizing missteps and miscommunications that create roadblocks to finding love. Just when we think they’re splitting up for good, all it takes is a short text across the ocean to jumpstart the rollercoaster ride once again.

Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones are close to the last word as recent on-screen romantics. Doremus’s frequent close-ups connect the characters like intertwining vines. Whenever they’re in the same space together on screen they seem to engage in a graceful sensual dance.

Pitch perfect hip music complements the new millennium courtship in which these two are engaged, not to mention the Winterbottom/Boyle visual aesthetic employed by Doremus. And so, just as I’m close to shooting myself after having to constantly hear about the authenticity in the highly overrated Blue Valentine, I can latch onto Like Crazy, the superior antidote to that other film.

Captain America

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) dir. Joe Johnston
Starring: Chris Evans, Hugo Weaving, Hayley Atwell, Dominic Cooper, Stanley Tucci, Toby Jones

***

By Alan Bacchus

The announcement that journeyman visual effects guy-turned-director Joe Johnston was attached to this project wasn’t really a cause for celebration. His body of work consists mostly of adequate, though ultimately unmemorable, ‘effects’ films (Jumanji, Jurassic Park 3, Wolf Man). Johnston’s been around the block and so we wouldn’t even get a fresh new voice into the mix.

However, after watching the first few scenes of Captain America I started to come around. The WWII setting of this picture under the faux war effort propaganda filmmaking style of Hollywood in the ‘40s brought back memories of the underrated comic book film from 1990, The Rocketeer, which was directed by... you guessed it, Joe Johnston. The pieces of this puzzle were now fitting together.

Captain America is the last of another puzzle, the Avengers Saga, an ambitious undertaking by Marvel Entertainment that began in 2008 with Iron Man to create a series of independent feature films that fed into a ‘super-group’ movie, The Avengers, due out in 2012. Iron Man was a fantastic film. The Incredible Hulk that same summer was decent and a sign that this might actually work. Next came Iron Man 2 in 2010, which was a dreadful quickie sequel that betrayed the inspiration of the first picture. And then Thor came out earlier this year, which, like IM 2, was mostly awful. But now the series picks up a bit of its mojo with Captain America, a rousing actioner with spirit.

It’s 1941 and America is recruiting soldiers to fight abroad. One of the hopefuls is Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), a meek, scrawny weakling who gets denied service. But through perseverance and a bit of cheating he will not take no for answer. After witnessing Rogers’ steadfast patriotic belief and determination to stand up for himself, German ex-pat scientist, Dr. Abraham Erskine (Tucci), recruits Rogers into the military to be a guinea pig for his experiments in body enhancement. And at the first act turn, the meek Rogers is transformed into a beefcake ubermench with super strength and lightning speed.

But instead of going to Europe, Rogers becomes a spokesman for war bonds and is prostituted in recruitment revival shows, ads and USO concerts. When Rogers’ best friend goes missing in Italy, Captain America goes AWOL and arranges a secret rescue mission. All the while, Dr. Erskine’s old rival, Johann Schmid (Hugo Weaving), is conducting similar experiments on his own with his splinter Nazi group called Hydra. Rogers quickly recognizes Schmid as the real enemy he needs to excise, thus sparking a battle of the ages, one which will likely spill over into the present and involve the other superheroes from the other movies in The Avengers.

In many ways, Captain America feels like the G.I. Joe movie that never was – a rousing story of triumph over adversity with a strong American patriotic spirit that actually works for the picture. The origin story, like the beginnings of Iron Man, contains the best moments. Chris Evans' digitally enhanced underweight alter ego is a fine bit of invisible CGI. We know it’s not Evans' body. In fact, we know it’s 'face replacement technology' used by Fincher in Benjamin Button and The Social Network, but it works so wonderfully, especially when acted with such earnestness by Evans. Stanley Tucci also does a wonderful turn as Rogers' kindly mentor

Unfortunately, what fails the picture is Joe Johnston’s action scenes. Once Cap’n America gets to Europe and is engaged in Nazi-fighting, Johnston curiously chooses to show much of this action in montage form. We’re deprived of a few set pieces and full-length scenes with a build-up and payoff. Instead, we see a series of random shots of jumping, punching, motorcycle riding and explosions without anything tying it all together.

Johnston, though a special effects expert, uses too much of it. As such, we get the feeling that during most of the action Evans is in front of a green screen on a soundstage and NOT in the forests of Western Europe or the snow-capped Bavarian mountains. This takes us out of the anchored reality in which we were placed in the first act.

But what Captain America does better than Iron Man, Thor and The Hulk is set up The Avengers movie and tie together some threads from the other pictures. Dominic Cooper's Howard Stark character, thus Robert Downey Jr.'s father, is a clever link-up. It’s the same with the other worldly motivation of Hugo Weaving's character, which suggests a link-up with the alien gods of Thor. And with the Easter egg clip and trailer at the end of the credits I'm sufficiently teased. That's all I wanted and Captain America delivered.

Captain America is available on Blu-ray and DVD from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment.

Il Divo

Il Divo (2009) dir. Paolo Sorrentino
Starring: Toni Servillo, Anna Bonaiuto, Giulio Bosetti, Flavio Bucci, Carlo Buccirosso

**

By Alan Bacchus

The story of seven-time Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti's controversial leadership in the latter stages of his 50-year service, which saw him accused and tried for having an alliance with the mafia, as well as being an accomplice to several murders of his key rivals, is an impressively stylized and cinematically inspired take on what could have been familiar and morose subject matter.

Comparisons of director Paolo Sorrentino to Martin Scorsese were made after its Cannes premiere and were not unfounded, as the film works best in its numerous, energetic, pop culture-aware montage sequences. Scorsese's style never trumps his substance though, which can't be said about Il Divo, whose dense and near-incomprehensible narrative is neglected in favour of Sorrentino's cinema gymnastics.

If anything, the film comes off like the Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels of political films. Nicolas Winding Refn's Bronson also makes a good comparison. Like Refn's film, Il Divo works best as a subjective expression of a man as opposed to a traditional narrative story. Unfortunately, Sorrentino wants to have his cake and eat it too. Even up until the last moments of the film we're still meeting new characters, so many in fact that each person has to be introduced with a graphic describing his/her name, title and relation to Andreotti. Granted, the design and use of these graphics are incorporated with wicked hipness into the composition of the scenes, but it's just too much information to keep track of.

Style aside, Il Divo suffers most from Sorrentino's direction of lead actor Toni Servillo. His performance, which has been lauded by other critics as an enigmatic, Yoda-like, Zen master portrait of political savvy, comes off as un-expressive, robotic and dull as cardboard while under cover of a bad wig that wouldn't pass muster on a Saturday Night Live sketch.

To each his own, as the virtues and failings of this picture will likely divide audiences. It's a shame foreign releases like these don't get the Blu-ray treatment because for a film that relies so heavily on its stunning visuals, the boring old standard definition DVD just doesn't cut it. The DVD contains just the movie with no special features.

This review first appeared on Exclaim.ca

Star Wars: Episode One The Phantom Menace

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999) dir. George Lucas
Starring: Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Jake Lloyd, Natalie Portman

***

By Alan Bacchus

Yeah, I don’t hate this movie, and sure it’s a slight disappointment, especially when compared to the first and second original films. But The Phantom Menace successfully puts us back in the tone, style and pacing of the original series, however cartoonish and wooden most of these new characters are.

Like everyone, my expectations were high. Not only for the return of the characters I grew up with and loved, but more for George Lucas’s return to the directing chair – the first film he directed since Star Wars (1977). Unfortunately, it’s marred by a strong feeling of laziness on his part. But more on that later.

Let’s start with the good stuff. The main reason this film succeeds is Liam Neeson, the guiding force (pun not intended) of this movie. He’s a commanding physical presence, which lines up perfectly with the powerful and Zen-like existence of the Jedi knights. I’d argue that it’s the best performance by any actor in a Star Wars film.

Lucas also sets up a strong political plot, laying the seeds for the eventual takeover of the galaxy by the evil Emperor whom we got to know only briefly in Return of the Jedi. While in the previous films the journey we’re taken on is a relatively simple trajectory from the point of view of a naïve country boy-turned fearless Jedi Knight, these new films, based on Phantom Menace, promised a complex chess games of sorts.

The character of the Phantom Menace, as referred to in the title, unfortunately fails to provide any tease or mystery. The man under the hologram cloak looks and sounds exactly like the Emperor in Return of the Jedi, who looks and sounds exactly like Senator Palpatine, the wily seat-filler who engineers most of the action. By the time Revenge of the Sith comes around there’s almost nothing to reveal.

The laziness referenced above is the over-reliance on computer special effects, which moves beyond a mere technical aid and overwhelms the drama. Lucas accomplished some remarkable achievements in technology, but he also pushed it so far as to show its seams. Most of everything in this picture is shot on a green screen soundstage, a process which is more invisible to its technique than ever before. But it’s still not 100% photorealistic. Unfortunately, our human eye can tell even the slightest variance from reality, thus creating a barrier between us and the characters on the screen.

Lucas also overpopulates this film with non-human characters, seemingly caused by this same overconfidence in the technology. He did the same thing with Return of the Jedi, using more alien creatures as main characters than in Star Wars or Empire. Unfortunately, in any of these films the best characters are always the human ones. Yoda might be the exception, but he was operated as a physical hand puppet by the great Frank Oz. In these new episodes much is lost in the transition from human to puppet to CG. As such, Jar Jar Binks, Anakin’s Tatooine slave master Watto and the Japanese nose-less Trade Federation boob Nute Gunray are ineffectual supporting characters that can’t match the heart or soul of human actors.

That said, Lucas has also crafted what is arguably his best villain, Darth Maul, the red-faced acrobatic Sith warrior who looks absolutely menacing with his Maoris-style face makeup and snarling teeth. Lucas is smart to tease us with Darth Maul's abilities until the film’s absolute best scene at the end (and probably the best scene in the entire 6-film series), that is the Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan/Maul lightsaber battle. This trump card, which he keeps in his pocket until the last 20 minutes, is enough to make up for any ill-feelings from Jar Jar, the over-reliance on CG effects and the usually stiff human acting.

Kuroneko

Kuroneko (aka Black Cat) (1968) dir. Kaneto Shindô
Starring: Kichiemon Nakamura, Nobuko Otowa, Kei Satô, Kiwako Taichi

***

By Alan Bacchus

Delicious Gothic atmosphere from the fog-filled and misty bamboo forests is the star of this loopy and often haunting Japanese ghost story of female revenge against malicious Samurai soldiers.

It’s the Senguko period in Japan, that is the 17th century when most other Japanese Samurai films are set, and like most places in times of war, men go off to fight and women stay home for sometimes years waiting for their husbands to return. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. For Gintoki it’s been three years since her husband was literally snatched from their house leaving her and her mother-in-law, Yone, home alone. We’re exposed to a particularly brutal opening, which has a rogue band of soldiers wandering through Gintoki’s farm stopping for some water. It’s an innocent visit at first, but quickly turns into a heinous rape and murder of the two women and the burning of their home.

But with the help of a wandering black cat the women are reincarnated as ghosts to exact revenge on their assailants. Now the women ply the lands of the neighbouring forests as sirens of sorts seducing wandering Samurai into their home for room, board, sex and then vicious, blood curdling, vengeful murder. But when Gintoki’s husband returns, she finds herself at odds with her Faustian bargain. She must either kill her husband, who as a Samurai is now her sworn enemy, or lose her ghostly abilities and cross back over into the land of the dead.

Billed as a ‘horror film’ this picture is less a shocker than a brooding and existential psychological study. Shindo creates a haunting atmospheric feeling during the sirens' frequent seduction sequences. The crisp and contrasting black and white cinematography is gorgeous – jet black frames delicately populated with splashes of light, creating a feeling of eerie Gothic strangeness.

This film was made in 1968, and there’s a strong psychedelic tone to the staging of the film’s key sequences. Gintoki’s love scenes are tastefully choreographed, covered up skin appropriately with flowing drapes and such, but Shindo sure teases us with artistic silhouettes of Gintoki’s supple nude body.

The attacks on the men are vicious and perhaps speak to a feminist movement in the world zeitgeist at the time. But the emotional core of the film arrives in the third act when Gintoki’s husband learns the truth of his wife’s apparitions. A forlorn and tragic love story emerges from the Gothic horror.

Unfortunately the film is also bogged down by a stiffness in performance that is common with these types of period Japanese films. The extreme reactions and emotions of the characters are far from the naturalism we usually expect from Western films. But this is a purposeful convention of Japanese cinema – take it or leave it.

Kuroneko is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

The Bad Seed

The Bad Seed (1956) dir. Mervyn LeRoy
Starring: Patty McCormack, Nancy Kelly, Henry Jones, Eileen Heckart, Evelyn Varden, William Hopper, Gage Clarke, Joan Croydon

***1/2

By Greg Klymkiw

"I thought I'd seen some mean little gals in my time, but you're the meanest." - Henry Jones as Leroy in THE BAD SEED

Movies about kids who kill is a most noble tradition.

It's yielded a cornucopia of depraved little buggers who've sliced and diced their way through a variety of thrillers and horror films with all the requisite aplomb required to deliver maximum visceral impact. Few will forget the shot of little Michael Myers in John Carpenter's Halloween, standing ever so still in the front yard of the quaint suburban home in the leafy innocence of Haddonfield, Illinois, grasping a butcher knife, staring with the eyes of a shark and splattered with the fresh blood of his nubile teenage sister who was previously lolling about in post-coital bliss. Damien, the pubescent Antichrist from Richard Donner's The Omen remains one of the more memorable killers in movie history - especially the magnificent moment when he pedals furiously on his tricycle and knocks his pregnant Mom off her plant-watering perch and sends her crashing to the floor from the balcony. Then there's my personal favourite of all kids-who-kill pictures, Alfred Sole's criminally neglected 70s thriller Alice Sweet Alice which features some of the most repulsive killings imaginable. It matters little that the true murderer appears to eventually be someone else - for most of the film's running time, we're convinced the killer is sexy tweener Paula E. Sheppard and we do get to see her, with the most sickening smile imaginable, grabbing a kitten by its neck and strangling it in front of its owner, the disgustingly corpulent, unwashed Mr. Alphonso, adorned in piss-and-shit-stained pants, and screaming in falsetto, "You little bitch! You've killed my cat!"

The cinematic patriarch of this delightful genre is, without question, Mervyn LeRoy's still astounding late 50s film adaptation of William March's bestselling novel and Maxwell Anderson's hit play The Bad Seed.

Opening with the departure of Col. Penmark (William Hopper, "Paul Drake" from Perry Mason) for an extended business trip to Washington, we're introduced to his beautiful, love-starved wife Christine (Nancy Kelly), who pleads with him to come home soon and their insanely precious daughter Rhoda (the unforgettable Patty McCormack), adorned in a frilly white frock, tap-dancing delightfully into everyone's hearts, her blonde pigtails bobbing, her smiles ever-so warm, her language precise and formal and greeting all who enter the home with a curtsy.

Rhoda is the perfect child for the perfect All-American family.

Wrapping her arms around Daddy, she chirps: "What will you give me for a basket of kisses?"

Daddy responds, as he clearly does every time she asks: "Why, I'll give you a basket of hugs!"

Rhoda is perfection incarnate.

She's also spoiled, jealous and a sociopath.

With Dad out of town, Christine begins to notice a few oddities in Rhoda's behaviour (odder than usual). Her daughter expresses the most vitriolic banter about a schoolmate, little Claude Daigle who has won the penmanship medal at the exclusive private school she attends. Rhoda is convinced she deserved the medal and obsessively natters on about how Claude was singled out for favouritism - pure and simple. There might be some truth to this. Rhoda is almost insufferably aware of her perfection and Claude is an adorable young lad from a "lower-class" family who have sacrificed and scrimped to get their boy into a good school.

At a school picnic, the unthinkable happens. Claude drowns. Foul play isn't suspected, but there are some very odd crescent-shaped marks on his face. We eventually learn these quarter moons are identical to the steel plates affixed to the soles of Rhoda's tap shoes. As the tale progresses, Rhoda engages in behaviour that becomes ever-more nasty and self-centred. Christine discovers a few surprises in Rhoda's room and also learns how she herself was an adopted child - that her own birth mother was, in fact, a notorious serial killer.

Uh-oh!

Is Christine's own flesh and blood afflicted with the bad seed?

Was that previous accidental death in the town they used to live in, all that accidental? Was little Claude Daigle murdered? Who tossed lit matches into the basement storm shelter, locked it and listened to the blood curdling screams as the suspicious caretaker burned to a crisp?

Not much of this is presented as mysterious. We know pretty early on that all is not right with Rhoda and soon, her Mom knows it too. What we're presented with is not so much a thriller, but a delicious melodrama. And who better to deliver the goods than the brilliant Mervyn LeRoy? Retaining much of the claustrophobic atmosphere of the play and its original Broadway cast, he lets the actors emote as if they were on stage and renders many of their key moments in closeup so that the melodrama is heightened further.

LeRoy, of course, delivered the goods on some truly great melodramas from his old studio days: the grand amnesia romance Random Harvest, the weepy tale of orphans Blossoms in the Dust and one of the finest tear-jerkers about the effect of war upon the women who are left behind in his great remake of Waterloo Bridge. He also presided over the nobility of Margaret O'Brien suffering in Little Women, the grand melodrama of Christians being led into the lions' den in Quo Vadis and, lest we forget, Edward G. Robinson croaking out his final words in Little Caesar, "Is this the end of Rico?"

With The Bad Seed, LeRoy acquits himself magnificently. There are a few tiny clunky moments, but they're easily forgiven. When the movie is working at the peak of its power, it has few equals. The subplot involving Claude's alcoholic mother is especially heart wrenching. Played by the brilliant Eileen Heckart, her handful of appearances in the film are accompanied by one of the most astonishing pieces of music from Alex North's score. (I highly recommend the soundtrack album - in particular, the piece referred to which is titled "No More Children".) Heckart's performance is bigger than big - she suffers and stumbles through her scenes with all the passion required AND a mordant wit. One of the movie's great lines is when the booze-soaked Heckart matter-of-factly quips, " It's a pleasure to stay drunk when your little boy's been killed."

Henry Jones as the demented, half-witted borderline pedophile caretaker is also a high point of the picture. Jones oozes creepiness and slime with such abandon, that he might well have rendered one of the greatest on-screen villains of all time. He recognizes the evil in Rhoda because he feels it within himself. It's implied that he might well have eventually sexually assaulted Rhoda, so his death, while shocking, also feels strangely justifiable.

The movie's pace, at first deliberately slow, but deliberately amps itself up to a shattering climax and a very weird conclusion - tacked on by the Hays Code so that Rhoda doesn't get away with murder. Strangely enough, this censor-initiated coda seems even more horrific than what was there to begin with.

The Bad Seed is completely and utterly over-the-top. Some have suggested it's a product of the time it was made. I'd dispute this vigorously. The movie is a melodrama, and as such, is GREAT melodrama.

At one point, Eileen Heckart remarks: "Children can be nasty, don't you think?"

Indeed they can. And nasty children deliver first-rate entertainment value.

The Bad Seed is available on Blu-Ray from Warner Home Entertainment. It's a great transfer and includes a terrific commentary track from Patty McCormack.

Green Lantern

Green Lantern (2011) dir. Martin Campbell
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard

*½

By Alan Bacchus

It would be overkill to beat this failed franchise starter down again, but the fact is Green Lantern is clearly scraping the bottom of the barrel of the old school comic book superheroes. The story of an Air Force test pilot chosen to be a member of an intergalactic policing squad to fight off their encroaching arch enemy from taking over Earth should have stayed on the page.

The over-ambitious intergalactic plotting and mondo special effects sequences sink any attempt to humanize this story. This was the same problem with Thor, which mostly took place in another universe, thus lowering the stakes on Earth and reducing our ability to identify with any of the conflicts at play.

That said, in Green Lantern the filmmakers make no allusions that this is "realism." While more successful films like Iron Man, Spider-Man and Batman have a shred of plausibility, Green Lantern is pure fantasy. In fact, in the Blu-ray special feature "focus points," the filmmakers and actors look genuinely confident that they're doing great work, a hubris derived from their honest integrity for the tone of the original comic.

This universe is played for serious and, if anything, it's actually refreshing to be saved from another self-aware superhero. Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) is a straight-up old-fashioned superhero transplanted directly from the pages of the comic, a square jawed jock heavily flawed and in need of inspiration and emotional cleansing, which he receives from his gifted superpowers. Reynolds' warm, accessible personality is ideal for this role, but sadly he's subdued by the grandiosity of the story and the excessive technical tricks.

Visually there's also a strong whiff of Battlefield Earth: the green cinematography and elaborate alien creatures serving as key supporting characters, in particular Peter Sarsgaard's enormous head, which recalls John Travolta's ludicrous headgear in the L. Ron Hubbard flop.

But, really, the commonality is the uninspired direction, in this case from Martin Campbell, who fails to make us care for his characters or excite us in any way. The Blu-ray special features comprehensively break down the origins of the comic, the film and the key aspects of making this huge effort. Ironically, I found myself interested more in the disconnect between the enthusiasm of the artists involved than the dismal result on screen.

This review first appeared on Exclaim.ca

Star Wars: Return of the Jedi

Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983) dir. Richard Marquand
Starring: Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Billie Dee Williams, David Prowse, Anthony Daniels

***

By Alan Bacchus

Even at age 8, after seeing this film in the theatre, I remember having a feeling of being let down. I even remember my reaction to the revelation that Leia was Luke’s sister. Even to my then unsophisticated movie brain I knew this twist was unnecessary and didn’t add anything substantial to the big picture story at play. I also remember my disappointment at Lucas for his decision to bring back another Death Star for Jedi, robbing us of a fresh new piece of cinematic awesomeness to top what came before it. Another Death Star, even to an eight-year-old, felt like lazy writing.

But I also remember the fear that overcame me when Luke Skywalker surrendered himself to Darth Vader and resigned himself to facing the Emperor, putting his own life on the line to convert his father back from the dark side. This is the strength of Return of the Jedi, a flawed finale, which, as I mentioned in my Empire Strikes Back review, has the daunting task of having to wrap up a beautifully unveiled story of moral corruption and one man’s redemption across generations through his estranged son. Space, lightsabers, Wookies and Ewoks aren’t even mentioned in this one-sentence summary, which demonstrates the thematically profound story that is the foundation of this popcorn franchise.

It’s a similarly structured film as Empire containing a lengthy opening action-packed set piece like the Hoth sequence. Here, the heroes from Empire have convened on Tatooine to rescue Han Solo from Jabba the Hut. Looking back, the scene is hit-and-miss. Luke’s introduction is terrific. No longer an innocent teenager, he’s wearing his new all-black duds and has a strong air of Jedi-confidence – a long way from his introduction two films prior. The idiotic musical sequence, which attempts to trump the original Cantine sequence, is just plain awful – as awful to my 8-year-old eyes as it is to my 36-year-old eyes. The barge siege from Luke, Leia, Chewy, Lando and the droids is well shot and cut, and Carrie Fisher still looks sexy in her Jabba-bikini. If there was something Lucas did right in his revamped ‘Special Editions’ it’s the digital touch-up work he did to erase those ugly green-screen lines around the actors superimposed in front of the Rancor.

Once outside of Tatooine, the film hits a funk. Han Solo’s recruitment as the squad leader for the Endor attack doesn't befit the former selfish space smuggler. His lovestruck p-whipped softness is a sad trajectory for his character. And sure, the Ewoks don’t really work. The irony of the pint-sized teddy bears taking down the mighty Empire, like Solo, only results in severely softening the dangerous allure of the Stormtroopers.

Thankfully, the final confrontation between Luke and Vader is not bungled. In fact, the escalation of suspense through the Emperor’s temptations of Luke to the dark side is frightening. It’s a wholly credible threat elevated higher and more threatening than Vader’s confrontation with Obi-Wan in Star Wars and Luke and Vader’s first meeting/fight in Empire. This is really all we wanted from this chapter of the series – a moving and emotional reconciliation of father and son. Jedi, thus, does not disappoint.

And for the record, I do abhor the newly added voiceover of Vader yelling ‘NO!’ when he picks up the Emperor and throws him in the cavernous pit. No, it’s not as bad as Hayden Christensen’s Vader yelling ‘NO’ at the end of Revenge of the Sith, but it’s still unnecessary. Vader’s unspoken actions resonate infinitely stronger than his inarticulate monosyllabic grunts.

And so, while Jedi is the lesser of the three original films and lacks the freshness of the first film and the sustained suspense and urgency of the second, it adequately concludes this great trilogy – something many other franchises (The Matrix) have not been able to do.

Return of the Jedi is available on Blu-Ray from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment