THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008) dir. Mark Herman
Starring: Asa Butterfield, Vera Farmiga, David Thewlis

*1/2

Much praise has been heaped on this new slice of Miramax Oscar-fodder - a Holocaust story taken from the point of view of a child of Nazi parents who befriends young boy in a Concentration Camp, but who is not aware of the full implications of his imprisonment.

It's World War II Germany and Bruno (Asa Butterfield) is an eight year old. His father (David Thewlis), a Nazi SS man has been reassigned to the country were he, his wife(Vera Farmiga) and Bruno will be moving to live. Bruno is too young to understand such complicated things like war, death, and specifically concentration camps. We hear conversations and conflicts about the treatment of Jews and the heinous activities in the camps from the child's point of view. Therefore terms like the "Final Solution" are never used, nor even the word Jew.

Bruno, an only child living in a remote area exercises his exploring nature by wondering off the compound to investigate what he thinks is a farm nearby. But its actually a concentration camp. Bruno makes friends with a Jewish boy named Shmuel, who 'looks funny' in his striped pyjamas. Not even Shmuel will let Bruno in on the big secret. Despite objections of his mother Bruno continues to see Shmuel, which, as the war comes to an end, could become a dangerous friendship to maintain.

The film is singular in it’s concept – one paper thin idea of implausiblty is the brush that paints the entire film. It's even told to us in the on screen literary quote off the top. It’s a shame to denounce the film based on a bad reaction to one particular plot hole, but there’s no other layers to examine. The central plot point of the film is that Bruno, an eight year old, can be so completely naïve to everything around him to believe that a Concentration Camp is actually a farm.

It’s possible to believe that Bruno would not understand the concept of genocide or unjust incarceration based on religion, but writer/director Herman (working from a novel as source material) tries to convinces us that Bruno does not even understand the concept of a prison. Really, what eight year old would not know that people wearing striped outfits, who perform manual labour in a fenced-in compound protected by electrical fences and barbed wire are PRISONERS?

If you fail to make this leap of believability then the movie simply falls apart like broken leaves. And so, every emotionally manipulative moment either drips with syrupy preachiness or is fed to us with unsubtle blunt force.

The film also feels so completely inauthentic, which exacerbates its irresponsibility. It’s always been a Hollywood convention to use British actors or British accents as a substitute for real Germans. Unfortunately the fact that no attempt was made to even cast a German in any significant role is too distracting to ignore. Various British accents populate the German landscape, high class aristocrats to working class droles. Asa Butterfield, accent aside, is in almost every scene and performs well. Physically, he could pass as a German. Unfortuately his Jewish counterpoint Shmuel who is supposed to be in a concentration camp looks like a cute British boy with chubby cheeks, big ears and some dirt on his face.

Bruno’s parents played by Vera Farmiga and David Thewlis only react and are so passive they are as important to the film as the furniture in the room. So, other than young Butterfield, there little else to hang one's hat on.

Herman just bombards us with tragic irony, force fed to us with repetitive sadistic force. The finale is emotional and controversial, but it's not earned - just the culmination of a series of manipulative contrivances.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

Slumdog Millionaire (2008) dir. Danny Boyle
Starring: Dev Patel, Irfan Kahn, Anil Kapoor, Freida Pinto

****

With Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire” now in public release we can finally start discussing Oscar legitimately. Boyle's latest film is impossible to place into a genre, it’s a sweeping coming of age film, love story, exotic adventure and triumph of the human spririt all rolled up into a film about a young man who plays India’s version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”. Danny Boyle injects his story with the same cinematic energy as his other classics “Trainspotting”, “28 Days Later”. It's a stunning directorial achievement, and with only 6 weeks left in the year, I can say with almost certainty there won't be a better film this year.

“Slumdog Millionaire” stands out as old-fashioned Hollywood escapism. Yet, there isn’t a recognizable Hollywood face in the entire film. It’s all set in India in 2006. A young Indian man Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) is on the Indian version of “Who Wants to be Millionaire”. He appears to have won but instead of celebrating we first see him strung up and tortured by the police who have accused him of cheating. After many excruciating torture techniques Jamal won’t confess. So they sit him down in front of the videotape of the show and Jamal recounts how he knew each and every question on the show.

As each question is read out by the India equivalent of Regis Philbin, we flashback to the specific incident which recalled each of Jamal’s answers. And so in one half hour game show we get to see a sampling of Jamal’s extraordinary young life. We see Jamal as a child become orphaned, live on the streets begging, stealing, to survive – living a life of poverty like millions and millions of other impoverished kids. Except this one slumdog is about to win the biggest jackpot in the country and make him a millionaire.

Boyle and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy use the life story flashback technique of “Citizen Kane” as it’s narrative structure. After the first couple of flashbacks I figured out what the technique was and I expected a predictable course of action. Indeed the film doesn’t waver from its course, but Jamal’s life is so extraordinary it becomes a unique and eye opening view into Indian subculture.

As expected with a ‘Danny Boyle film’ he sets a blistering pace and challenges us to keep up. There are numerous chases through the populated Mumbai streets, bold eye-popping colours, and an exciting pop music soundtrack. Boyle has always had a great ear for music. Whether it’s the Brit pop music in “Trainspotting” or his pulsing ambient rhythms of “28 Days Later” and “Sunshine”, there’s always something special to listen to in his film. A.R. Rahman (“Elizabeth The Golden Age”, “Water”) provides an eclectic score mixed in with fresh energetic Indian pop music. There are few familiar tunes, but it had me yearning to find the soundtrack and listen to it in the car ride home.

I saw the film in press and industry screening at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was 9:00am and most of the crowd, like me, were still trying to wake up after a long day of movie watching, partying, or in my case writing late night reviews. After 120mins the film ended on such a high the entire audience applauded spontaneously – a rarity for the jaded businesslike industry crowd. And even more rare is that the audience stayed through the end credits.

After Boyle bombards us with so much story, adventure, melodrama and nail-biting game show suspense, he’s still not content with pleasing us. Over the final credits the entire cast treats us to a raucous Bollywood style dance sequence, intercut with flashing picture credits set to a foot-tapping bangra number. “Slumdog Millionaire” is crowd-pleasing optimistic filmmaking at it’s best. It shines a beacon of light on a subsection of the world that has little hope. Enjoy.

Slumdog Millionaire

LOU REED BERLIN

Lou Reed Berlin (2007) dir. Julian Schnabel
Documentary

**1/2

Lou Reed’s “Berlin” is one of rock music’s legendary albums – after his successful “Transformer” album former Velvet Underground lead man Lou Reed crafted an ambitious concept album about drug abuse and domestic violence, named "Berlin". The album failed commercially when released in 1973, after which Lou Reed quickly abandoned the material rarely played those songs throughout the rest of his career. The album stayed largely in cult-status circles.

But in 2007 Reed spent five nights in St. Anne’s Warehouse in New York playing the whole album live for the first time. A fellow Warhol-era New York artist and now director, Julian Schnabel ("Before Night Falls", "Basquiat") filmed the concert turning it into a feature concert film.

Schnabel is traditional with his treatment of the material. With the help of Michel Gondry's cinematographer Ellen Kuras he shoots the music with the usual language of concert cinema – certainly nothing to challenge, say, “Woodstock” or “Gimme Shelter” or “Stop Making Sense”. Intercut with the band is a smattering of abstract imagery featuring actress Emmanuelle Seigner (last seen in Schnabel’s “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”). It’s Schnabel material all the way, dreamlike pictures, adding an ethereal texture to the music instead of directly complimenting it.

Schnabel’s design of the stage is surprisingly practical and unintrusive. If I didn’t know anything about the film I wouldn’t know that the stage and background imagery were designed by a reknowned artist. Perhaps this is by design so as not to overshadow the music, but Schnabel's presence doesn't add any significant luster or artistic muscle to the film.

So the film is all about the music, and unfortunately for Lou Reed fans only. I was unfamiliar with the album and the songs, but it failed to heighten my emotions, straighten the hairs on the back of my neck, or even tap my foot. But personal thoughts on the music are moot because Lou Reed is one of the greats of popular music and the fact this long lost album is being played again is worth the feature film treatment. Enjoy.

“Lou Reed Berlin” is available on DVD from Alliance Films in Canada.

GET SMART

Get Smart (2008) dir. Peter Segal
Starring: Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Terrence Stamp

**1/2

Turning “Get Smart” into a feature film 40 years after the original series is a bit of an oddity. After all the series was intended as a spoof on the Spy films and TV shows of the 60’s. Now there's not much to spoof anymore, and so, there’s much to be lost in the timegap.

So the filmmakers make the (excuse the pun) smart decision to update the main character, Maxwell Smart, for the 00's. In the TVseries he was a bumbling n’er do well, whose naivity often got him out of his difficult situations. In the film version Steve Carell’s Maxwell Smart, actually is smart. He’s introduced as a meticulously detailed intelligence analyst who writes the briefings for the field agents. But when an enemy attack from their rivals 'CHAOS' destroys their main hub Smart becomes a field agent for the first time. It’s a dream come true for Smart, who yearns for the action.

Smart is paired up with Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway), a beautiful female superagent. Smart’s inexperience in the field causes conflict with 99, who is a seasoned veteran of the action. Smart and 99 travel to Moscow to source out the mastermind of the attack and save the visiting President of the United States from an assassination attempt.

Steve Carell is a natural successor to Don Adams. He has the same geek chic quality and ultra serious demeanour to sell the deadpan gags. Carell's Maxwell Smart turns out to be a variation of his "40 Year Old Virgin" character - generating sympathy from his ineptitude. Gags don't exactly fly off the screen as the humour is contained for family-friendly audiences. As for the action, there's much of it, and all adequately imagined and executed. 

So it’s petty to say, but what really kept me interested is the stunning beauty of Anne Hathaway. She's arguably at or near the height of her career. Much attention was given to her wardrobe and make-up to maximize her curvy figure and porcelain skin. Ms, Hathway shows off her ample assets tastefully but also just enough to tease us. Despite a 20 year age difference between the Hathaway and Carell, director Peter Segal manages to sell us a romance between the two.

So apart from a few borrowed lines, and the names of the characters “Get Smart” the film honours the original series in name only.The famous opening sequence - Smart walking through the endless hallway of doors - also remains, except updated with unnecessary CGI. Really, the production designer couldn't construct a real set of doors to walk through?

Some mediocre action scenes, plot twists and Terrence Stamp all seem perfunctory additions to add polish on to what was originally a low budget but clever satirical series. So substitute high budget for low budget, action for satire and you have a new franchise. I hope Hathaway at least sticks around for one or two more, else they've lost me. Enjoy.

"Get Smart" is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Warner Home Video

Get Smart

YOUNG PEOPLE F*CKING

Young People Fucking (2008) dir. Martin Gero
Starring: Aaron Abrams, Carly Pope, Kristin Booth, Callum Blue, Ennis Esmer

***1/2

One of the most talked-about films ever produced in Canada is “Young People Fucking”. Earlier this year controversy about the porn-sounding title prompted an attempt by the Conservative Canadian government to obtain the right to rescind tax credits on the basis of content, thus adding risk to an already volatile financing system for domestic films – but more importantly censorship of Canadian culture. The politicians (who actually never even saw the film) failed to see the cultural importance of sex on screen.

There are few things that Canadians do well in film – animation, mockumentaries, documentaries are a few – but also sex. Sex on film in Canada is like musicals to MGM, gangster movies to Warner Bros and horror films for Universal. We seem to have a knack at showing some good old-fashioned f*cking on screen. More importantly the system allows us the freedom to show this. Atom Egoyan and David Cronenberg made careers out of weird fetish sex. And even Canada’s most successful commercial film, the raunchy sex comedy “Porky’s” established one of the industry’s venerable financing institutions – The Harold Greenberg Fund. The sex in that film is still paying off 25 years later.

It would be a shame if “Young People F*cking” were squashed because of its salacious title. In fact, its title is one of the most inspired marketing tools to cross our screens in a while, and which will likely ensure it’s inevitable success. But is the film any good? Yes.

YPF is simple and transparent in its concept. Off the top we’re told we’ll be following one night in the lives of 5 couples – “the friends”: two longtime friends who desire to be f*ck-buddies; “the exes”: two former lovers attempting to rekindle a romance; “the first date”: a couple finishing off their first date with a night of hot sex; “the couple” a boyfriend and girlfriend trying to buck the tedium of routine sex; and “the roommates” the film’s only threesome.

Within each night of complex courtship, we see the five stages of sex: interlude, foreplay, sex, orgasm and afterglow. As in traditional ensemble films each scene is intercut with each other showing how each couple makes it through some of the most awkward, embarrassing, frustrating and complex baggage to simply have a little sex. The only thread that links everything together is the f*cking.

Like a good screenwriter Martin Gero sets goals for his characters and throws in as many obstacles as possible to keep them from achieving them. Gero keeps the situations realistic and observational – like a scene in Seinfeld expanded into a feature. But sex provides enough complex intricacies that there’s more than enough material to sustain and warrant a feature film treatment.

YPF could also be called “Young People Talking”, because there’s lots and lots of talk. Certainly more talk than sex. Cleverly Gero’s obstacles derive from the excess chatter his neurotic characters incessantly spew out in the most ill timed moments. Just when the romance is cruising along for our characters, a look, or a line strikes a neurosis that halts the action and creates conflict. The characters have the self-observational insight of a Woody Allen and the blockhead common sense of a Kevin Smith.

The reliance on chatter also prevents the film was breaking out and becoming a great film. The second act drags. Its contained concept starts to feel claustrophobic somewhere during the ‘foreplay’ segments. The exclusive bedroom locale and limited characters almost wears out its welcome. A ‘wildcard’ (a new character or element or location) is needed to alleviate its predictability and spin the film in a new direction.

In the end the audience gets what it wants, good comedy – and good sex – all tasteful, with dollops of non-exploitive nudity. Gero successfully articulates those quandaries, bubble thoughts, and the silent but gnawing frustrations of the act with real world adult intelligence. The Canadian federal government should embrace the only thing other than hockey that we do better than most others - show our uninhibited thoughts about sex on screen. Everyone else seems to like it. Enjoy.

"Young People F*cking" is available on DVD in Canada from Maple Pictures. Do some googling to find out where to get it in the U.S. and other parts of the world.

YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU

You Can’t Take it With You (1938) dir. Frank Capra
Starring: James Stewart, Lionel Barrymore, Jean Arthur, Edward Arnold

***1/2

One of the essential Frank Capra’s pictures is “You Can’t Take it With You”, Capra’s tale of two new lovers caught in between their families’ conflicting ideals. It’s a great American story of class, wealth, and the pursuit of true happiness.

Tony Kirby Jr. (James Stewart) descends from a long line of bankers. He’s just been made VP of his father’s company, which has a reputation of shrewd and aggressive dealings. The position doesn’t sit well with Tony, whose real ambition lies as an entrepreneur/inventor. He’s also happy in love with his secretary Alice, something which doesn’t sit well with his mother. After all, the notion of an upperclassman marrying a lowly middle class stenographer is a social no-no.

Alice’s family is the exact opposite. Instead of stuffed shirts and long working hours, Alice grandfather and family patriarch Mr. Vanderhof encourages a free-spirited lifestyle of personal satisfaction rather than social climbing. Vanderhof also happens to own a piece of property which the elder, Kirby A.P. Kirby has been trying to purchase to complete his grand plan of financial domination. The meeting of the families produces much conflict but also a profound re-examintion of A.P.’s ethics and morals.

To newbies, Capra's reputation is that of a quintessential 'American' director, whose films represent the ideals, politics, and spirit of American culture. This is the case, but the ideologies of Capra’s films are not as simple as rah-rah patriotism, his cinematic morals often conflict with the traditional ideas of Americana.

In "You Can't Take it With You" Capra spins the traditional American ideals back on itself, revealing its flaws and shortcomings. In doing so, he always provides a deeper examination of his country and its people in emotionally simple ways.

Capra challenges the notion of the Capitalistic independent spirit which is the foundation of the great nation. Kirby’s astute business-savvy has allowed him to make more money than he could use and become an upperclassman in society. Vanderhof’s family is distinctly liberal – some would argue socialist even – a group of people who live and work together driven not by money but the pursuit of happiness. Though Capra clearly makes the liberal family the protagonists, they are never un-American.

The distinct magic of Frank Capra is evident in the final act. At the one-hour, forty mins mark Capra stages a wonderful courtroom scene which brings the Sycamore/Vanderhof and the Kirby families together in front of a judge. The scene is staged like a typical Hollywood climax scene, all the characters together in one room solving their conflicts. As a sign of appeasement A.P. Kirby offers to bail out Vanderhof, who declines. After which the citizens and friends of Vanderhof proceed to drop all their coins in a hat, making up Kirby’s offer. It’s a remarkably poignant moment, which could have made Kirby see the true value of friendship thus ending their conflict. All other film directors would have faded out there. But Capra films another act (a fourth act?) which throws even more obstacles in Tony’s way of being with Alice leading up to an even more emotionally satisfying ending - the harmonica serenade dance sequence.

Unfortunately, some narrative flaws prevent it from truly rising to the perfection of say, “It’s a Wonderful Life”. The Vanderhof’s and Kirby’s familes are related by a series of unnecessary coincidences – specifically, the fact Alice happens to be the granddaughter of the man Kirby’s been trying to buy his last bit of land from. This fact isn’t acknowledged until deep into the second half of the film, by which time, the reveal is inconsequential. In addition much time is spent away from the central characters – the courtship of Alice and Tony.

But Capra is a great filmmaker and he executes his final act with such deeply emotional resonance all the flaws quickly disappear from memory.

“You Can’t Take it With You” is a special film made by one of the few auteurs in early Hollywood. Unmistakably Capra-esque, an optimistic film which stimulates the audience to self-examine their own personal values. Are you a Vanderhof or a Kirby?

“You Can’t Take it With You” is available in Sony Pictures Home Entertainment’s Best Picture Box Set

THE SKULL

Image courtesy of Offscreen.com

The Skull (1965) dir. Freddie Francis
Starring: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Patrick Wymark, Jill Bennett, Michael Gough, Patrick Magee, Peter Woodthorpe, Nigel Green and George Coulouris

**1/2

Guest Review By Greg Klymkiw

While hardly a classic of the genre, “The Skull” is a solid horror outing from upstart British studio Amicus that during the 70s gave reigning Hammer Films a considerable run for their money with some astounding omnibus pictures – most notably, the near-perfect “Asylum” and “Tales From The Crypt” as well as the solid “Vault of Horror”. Departing from the aforementioned E.C. comic structures, “The Skull” is a single feature length tale based – appropriately enough – on Robert (“Psycho”) Bloch’s story and directed by the visually gifted cinematographer Freddie (“Glory”, “The Elephant Man”, “The Straight Story”, etc.) Francis. The picture is an occasionally fun and decidedly creepy tale with a deliciously insane antagonist.

Who might that be, you ask?

Why none other than the title entity – the skull of – I kid you not! – The Marquis de Sade.

Opening with a fabulous grave robbing scene that involves the decapitation of de Sade’s rotting head and closely followed by a delectable sequence wherein the flesh, hair and other viscera are burned and boiled off to make the skull pristine and gleaming, one is drawn ever-so avidly into a tale that, while paced a tad too deliberately, delivers more than its fair share of shocks.

Much of these shocks come from Francis’s unusually flashy direction. For an artist who always delivered the goods visually as a Director of Photography, his own work as a director could often feel phoned-in. The notable exceptions are “The Skull”, “Tales From The Crypt” and a handful of others in a directing career that spanned approximately 30 features. One can only assume Francis directorially excelled ONLY when he was faced with material that truly tickled his fancy and that the rest was so much gun-for-hire fodder.

Though “The Skull” feels about ten minutes too long (and it’s already short), it still manages to pack a minor wallop and feels more like a good horror second feature from the 40s (in spite of being made right in the middle of the British swinging New Wave period). In a superbly fussy and obsessive performance, we follow Peter Cushing as he plays an academic specializing in occult research who collects strange oddities from all over the world in order to study them. His wife starts to object to the house being filled up with paraphernalia that represents evil and though one suspects she’s a typical harridan coming down on her collecting-obsessed hubby, it eventually becomes obvious that perhaps she has a point when Cushing starts to slowly go psycho after he acquires the skull of the notorious de Sade.

The story is told with numerous visual flourishes – lots of cool dollies and pans, sumptuous lighting and endless Skull-Cam shots so we can get a glimpse of what the evil spirit of the Marquis de Sade gets to see.

After the spirited opening, the movie does slow down quite a bit, but once it picks up steam, it seldom lets up and builds to a genuinely creepy and (at least for this fella) scary climax. A superb supporting cast includes an extended cameo from the always-delicious Christopher Lee as a collector who realizes and tries to warn Cushing about the dangers of hoarding occult items and we’re blessed with a truly slimy turn from Patrick Wymark as an underground occult dealer and an even sleazier one from Peter Woodthhorpe as the dealer’s foul landlord.

“The Skull” is one of several British genre pictures distributed in North America by Paramount Pictures and yet another undiscovered delight being unleashed upon the world through Legend Films.

If you’re a fan of British horror films, this won’t be the best you’ve seen, but you’ll still be glad you did – if, indeed, you do – and, of course, you should.

“The Skull” is available on DVD from Legend Films

SOUTHLAND TALES

Southland Tales (2007) dir. Richard Kelly
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Seann William Scott, Miranda Richardson

*

"Southland Tales" is astonishingly bad. I'm actually impressed with how bad it is. It most certainly ranks in the upper reaches of my unregulated list of worst movies of all time. Without a traditional theatrical release the film was saved the dishonour of complete trashitude, but by it's disastrous Cannes screening in 2005, we all knew Richard Kelly's follow-up to "Donnie Darko" was a bomb.

How the film got into Cannes is a mystery and the programmers should really be embarrassed. There have been disastrous screenings before, but there is absolutely nothing of value to cling onto. It's the clear the cult of "Donnie Darko" had clouded everyone's opinions of Richard Kelly as a filmmaker, because even with 10 producers credits he seemed to have been given free reign to free associate his thoughts onto celluloid.

The plot is incomprehensible, but the broad strokes go like this: Its a couple years into the future and America has just suffered another terrorist attack. The country is divided into two extremes - ultra leftist revolutionary and ultra-right wing conservatives. A group of neo-Marxixts hatch a plan to subvert the Orwellian actions of the Government surveillance agency USIdent by infiltrating their organization and killing their leader (I think). Boxer Santaros (Dwayne Johnson), a Hollywood celeb and husband to the Vice-President has been kidnapped by the Marxists and used in their nefarious plans. He also holds the key to unlocking the secrets to a new form of alternate fuel as well as some form of fourth dimension/time travelling device.

Saying the film 'meanders wildly' is an understatement, but Kelly juggles dozens of characters, played by recognizable faces to hammer home a hodgepodge of ideological statements about the environment, the Patriot Act, terrorism, extremism, etc etc. Kelly attempts to make it all palatable with satircal humour, but it only comes across as absurd. Without a basis of reality, it all comes unglued fast.

The cast is as perplexing as the plot. Let me just roll off the names, other than the leads listed above who play significant roles in the film there's Mandy Moore, Christopher Lambert, John Larroquette, Will Sasso, Wallace Shawn, Justin Timberlake, as well as a number of SNL Alums, Nora Dunn, Amy Poehler, Janeane Garofalo, Cheri Oteri and Jon Lovitz. Oh yeah, that old lady from Poltergeist is in it as well. All of the actors actually perform as best they can, especially Dwayne Johnson's stone-faced lead performance.

Kelly's ambition is clearly longer than his reach. The film even has the audacity to begin with "Chapter IV" - a la Star Wars - telling us there's even more story to tell which he hasn't put on screen. The intertitles which are usually there to help us out, are even more idiosyncratic than the dialogue. The chapters are labelled: "Temptation Waits", "Memory Gospel" and "Wave of Mutiliation".

The grandiose failure of this film is impressive, because I'm sure at the script stage it barely made sense either. Since the actors performed as best they could with the material, there's no one else to blame for it's commercial failure than the producers who financed it. Clearly a lot of time and effort went into making the film, it's polished with all sorts of top notch special effects, graphics, music etc. Perhaps they thought Kelly with carte blanche could turn in his "Magnolia". It will be curious to see how this will affect his career. The straight-to-video release will surely quell the damage.

"Southland Tales" is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

LEATHERHEADS

Leatherheads (2008) dir. George Clooney
Starring: George Clooney, Renee Zelwegger, John Krasinski, Jonathan Price

**

It’s a shame Mr. Clooney followed up his passion project “Good Night, and Good Luck” with such a drab, uninteresting Coen-wannabe romantic comedy.

Like we’ve seen the Coen Bros do time and again, Clooney attempts to make a classic throwback screwball comedy, a la, Preston Sturges, Frank Capra, Leo McCarey - think “Hudsucker Proxy” meets “Intolerable Cruelty”, meets “O Brother Where Art Thou?” We just don't make comedies the way we used to, and rekindling someone's else's magic rarely ever works. 

Clooney plays Jimmy "Dodge" Connelly, a professional football player in the 1920's. Pro football then is not quite the same as the NFL today. Amateur sport was the top tier of athletic entertainment in those days. And we see this contrast via college star Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski). After Rutherford's completes his star junior season he's courted by Connelly to play for his Duluth Bulldogs. Rutherford's war-hero status and poster-boy public charm is the ideal star to lift the hapless professional league into respectability.

Then along comes Lexie Littleton (Renee Zelwegger) - think Jennifer Jason Leigh doing her Katherine Hepburn impression in "The Hudsucker Proxy" - a career-climbing news reporter who desires to expose some dirt on the unblemished Rutherford. Carter courts Lexie, who then confesses a dark secret about his war record. Meanwhile Connelly just can't help sparking a relationship with Lexie, which causes Rutherford to quit the team threatening the league. Connelly and Rutherford settle their score on the football field. 

The film doesn’t make a strong enough statement or hit any comedic or emotional buttons needed to elevate the film beyond its handsome production design. As a sports film, it’s nil. Sure, there’s no stakes in the big game other than pride, but the main opportunity missed was to show how the success of the modern game is due to the actions of the characters in the "Leatherheads" era.

Clooney could have examined the debate of professional vs. amateur sports, and it's issues with gambling, but Clooney barely breaks this surface. Instead much screentime is devoted to the controversy of Rutherdford's war record. Again, Clooney barely scratches the surface emotionally and so without comedy or substantial drama these scenes deflate any excitement.

Clooney seems to rest on the nostalgia of the era to maintain our interest. The film is dripping in 20’s décor. We can even catch a slight smirk of enjoyment on Clooney's face when he’s driving his vintage convertible car. The film is beautifully designed, framed and lit, and the football scenes bristle with authenticity. But who really cares without a substantial story to either engage in, or learn from.

None of the personal passion Clooney demonstrated with "Good Night, and Good Luck" or even the flawed "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" comes across with "Leatherheads". We don't even get the sense that Clooney loves football. I've heard basketball's his sport. Clooney as James Naismith might have produced something worthy and distinct of this megastar who can afford to pick and choose his projects.

"Leatherheads" is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Universal Studios Home Entertainment

Leatherheads

THE GARMENT JUNGLE

The Garment Jungle (1957) dir. Vincent Sherman
Starring: Kerwin Matthews, Lee J. Cobb, Richard Boone, Gia Scala, Robert Loggia

***1/2

The 1950’s produced a number of notable labour-themed pictures (ie. “On the Waterford”) and one of the least known but most entertaining is Vincent Sherman’s “The Garment Jungle”. As the title suggests the setting is the New York fashion industry at a time when unions were moving their way into the sweatshops of the ‘dress-making’ shops in the Garment District. A fight to keep the union out of Walter Mitchell's business results in violence and murder.

Kerwin Matthews plays Alan Mitchell, the son of New York City fashion entrepreneur Walter Mitchell (Lee J. Cobb). Alan comes home to join his father in the family business. Immediately Alan gets in the middle of a bitter labour dispute with the local dressmaker's union shop, which has recently taken the life of Walter's business partner.

As Alan gets to know the labour leader, Tulio Renata (Robert Loggia), he develops sympathy for Walter's bitter enemies. The conflict causes a rift in their relationship and ultimately brutal violence within the family.

The fashion industry milieu provides an interesting setting for this pseudo-noir. The plot doesn't boil as customary with the genre, and the dialogue and characterizations are kept to the side of realism. Instead of genre conventions, the anchor of the film is the reconciliation of father and son. Character actor Lee J. Cobb, who specialized in gruff and imposing men like in “On the Waterfront” or “12 Angry Men”, is the clear antagonist early on. As his son enters the business and sees both sides of the labour battle, the batte becomes father against son.

Walter Mitchell, though stubborn, is given enough depth to understand his predicament. A self-made man, in a family-owned business, who legitimately wants to keep full control of his company. But understandably he’s out of touch with the realities of big business. And so Mitchell’s redemption and then quick punishment hit all the right dramatic buttons.

By the end Walter Mitchell changes from bullish, profit-hungry slave driver to compassionate working class hero - a classic arc in literature and a strong throughline which elevates this film beyond mere pulp fiction.

Though the central conflict is about union vs. non-union the film never brings up the issue of the workers, their working conditions or wages. There is no character at the level of seamstresses, or tailors grinding out the work for Mr. Mitchell. Inadvertantly the film could make the point that, in an era of labour-corruption, often worker-well being wasn't always the incentive for unionization. This isn’t the case in this picture though because clearly the filmmakers stand on the left in characterization the organizers as near saintly working class heroes.

What's notably absent are any homosexual characters (whether covert or overt). Sure the Production Code was still in full effect, but that never stopped Hollywood from portraying gay characters. Despite being the fashion industry, it's full of hetero-males. Of course, it's also about a dominantly hetero labour organizations, but there is a missed opportunity to show contrasting personalities at work.

"The Garment Jungle" turns out to be a surprisingly well-crafted and emotionally involving story about reconciling father and son. Joseph Biroc’s classical and unflashy but crisp B&W cinematography sparkle on a Sony's clean and well-transferred DVD, which is packaged under their "Martini Movies" moniker. Enjoy.

CHANGELING

Changeling (2008) dir. Clint Eastwood
Starring: Angelina Jolie, Colm Feore, John Malkovich,

**

The title “based on a true story” appears in the credits at the opening. It’s vital the audience knows this because “Changeling” would be the most absurd, contrived, and unbelievable films ever made. In 1920’s Los Angeles the child of a single mother who goes missing and is returned to her months later, except it’s not her son. A lengthy fight to find her real son uncovers heinous corruption in the LAPD. Unfortunately, because this is a true story does not make the film less frustrating for its ridiculous implausibility.

The film’s lovely hero is the luscious Angelina Jolie, who looks great in the flappers 20’s outfits. She’s a single mother who works hard as a manager of a telephone operator service. One day she suffers a parents’ worse nightmare, her son is gone, nowhere to be found. Months go by without any trace, until miraculously the police find the boy. But when he’s brought home, it’s not her son. Despite repeated denials and physical evidence to the contrary the police find every excuse to deny Christine’s accusations.

Fearing negative public backlash against this mistake Christine is put into a medical asylum without trial. Meanwhile one of the LAPD officers undercovers the crimes of a heinous serial killer, which may link to Christine’s son. Over time Christine continues to fight the uphill battle against deep-rooted police corruption in order to find closure in her life.

“Changeling” is just too much story for Eastwood and his writer J. Michael Straczynski to provide the depth of character, historical context and understanding of the issues. In order to cover all bases, Eastwood hopscotch's through a series of events with speed. Several dramatic detours take the audience away from the central conflict about mother finding son. A broad three-pronged story is revealed about A) a mother searching for her son, B) a historically significant saga about deep-rooted LAPD police corruption, and C) a story about a heinous child serial killer.

If the grief of losing one’s son and having him replaced by another kid despite the vehement objections to the contrary being ignored were shocking enough, midway through we’re introduced to a story about a man and a young teenager who has chopped up 20 young kids with an axe. And when storyline B) takes over Eastwood is not shy to show us grisy flashbacks to kids getting abducted and chopped up with an axe. It's emotional overkill.

Eastwood, who has shown surprisingly patient attention and carefulness to his recent films, is distracted with these extraneous plot threads. In the final act, he just can’t seem to end the film At one point Christine visits the serial killer in jail. The scene leads to nothing except an unnecessarily long execution scene.

Some performances are decent. Jolie cries and screams “I want my real son” numerous times. It’s authentic and emotional, but once or twice was enough. Eastwood’s characterization of the serial killer is 100% Hollywood artificiality and no more insightful than one of his Dirty Harry pictures. The corrupt cops, again, are nasty and mean, but cardboard stand-ins and token antagonists. Malkovich, as usual, delivers the best performance as a priest who helps Christine fight the battle.

Despite handsome 20’s production design, stunning cinematography, wonderful Eastwood-esque musical tones, and some decent performances, simply put “Changeling” is a frustrating experience because it fails the logic test.

Despite being handed a son which isn’t hers Christine takes him into her home. But never does she ask him directly, who he is, or why he claims to be her son. And though she continues to deny the boy is hers to the police, her only method of rebuttal is repeating over and over again, “he’s not my son”. She never gets a lawyer, or a private investigator, or any other officer of the law. She's resolute but passive. Really quickly (probably within a day or two of this happening) Christine should realize the police have manufactured this rouse. And so, if she really wanted to find her son, she would gotten a lawyer and saved a lot of unnecessary grief.

But, of course, this is based on a true story, but this is where artistic license should turn this unique story into a good movie.

Changeling

CHILD'S PLAY

Child’s Play (1988) dir. Tom Holland
Starring: Catherine Hicks, Chris Sarandan, Alex Vincent, Brad Dourif

**

One of the more forgettable horror film killers is “Chucky”, a franchise begat by the forgettable film “Child’s Play” - a child’s doll possessed by a serial killer becomes a murderous threat to a young boy and her mother.

Somehow this film was enough of a success to warrant four more films. With the exception of porn, only the horror genre could exploit such mediocre and talentless filmmaking into a bankable franchise.

The opening establishing scene features Brad Dourif, being chased by a cop played by Chris Sarandan, down the streets of Chicago. The perpetrator is cornered in a toy store, but before he’s captured, somehow he summons some supernatural demonic force in the sky and transmits his soul to one of the toy dolls on display.

Months later we’re introduced to Karen Barclay (Catherine Hicks) and her young boy Andy. Karen is a single mother who desperately wants to give her son a coveted Cabbage-Patch-like doll for his birthday. While on work she finds an opportunity to buy a black market doll from a shifty homeless man on the street. Despite her reservations she gives in and buys the doll. Every one is happy until Andy exhibits suspicious behaviour claiming the doll moves and talks like a regular person. Of course, no one believes him.

It turns out it’s the same doll possessed by Brad Dourif. The doll starts killing people in an effort to exact revenge on the people that betrayed him in his former life. Of course the doll desires to become a human again, and to do so he must kill the first person he confessed he secret to – Andy. And so Karen and the cop race to save Andy from the three foot plastic menace known as Chucky.

Director Tom Holland (“Fright Night”), who is no hack, does sustain some minor chills for a very brief period. Between the moment Karen buys the doll and when we first hear him speak, Chucky’s presence is implied with the usual off camera suspense. We’re never sure if Chucky is alive or not, we just see the doll appear in unusual places, disappear and reappear at will. When Holland cuts to the doll for a reaction its always the same expressionless plastic toy face. Thus the audience implies the threat posed by the doll.

But once Karen discovers for herself who Chucky really is, the film moves sharply from a legit horror film into a camp action picture. Chucky suddenly has a gruff and mean voice and snarling facial features. Ironically he becomes less threatening, because well, he’s only three feet. The fights and chases which ensue over the final half of the film are too ludicrous to be scary and just mildly interesting as action set-pieces. Really, all it would take is just a swift kick to the head, or use a broomstick to shoo it away.

Somehow Chucky became a bonafide franchise. The producers recognized and embraced the campiness of the character and so the subsequent films were more comedy than horror. It’s the 20th Anniversary of “Child’s Play” and a Special edition is available including, for hardcore fans (I don’t know who that would be) scene-specific in-character audio commentary from Chucky himself.

"Child's Play 20th Anniversary" is available on DVD from MGM Home Entertainment

MATRIX REVOLUTIONS

Matrix Revolutions (2003) dir. Andy and Larry Wachowski
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving

*1/2

With the final chapter of the “Matrix” trilogy, the brothers, to put it plainly, just ran out of gas.

At the end of “ Matrix Reloaded” we were told by ‘the Architect” that Neo, as ‘the one’, was planted by both he and the Oracle as a way of giving hope, or purpose, to the human colonies that they could defeat their robot masters – a truly intriguing thought, which teased us with thoughts that, hmmm, is Neo a robot as well? How will the humans ever get out of this cycle of birth, death, and rebirth?

The Wachowskis set up for themselves an impossibly complex puzzle to solve. Well, it’s not completely insurmountable, except, with their reliance on pure action as opposed to intrigue and suspense, there was no hope for the brothers that they could wrap everything up satisfactorily.

Where “Matrix Revolutions” fails is that it’s set almost exclusively in that unappealing, clausterphobic haphazardly designed Zion underworld. The virtual matrix world of highway car chases, office room shootouts, and city street hand-to-hand combat was where all the magic happened. Other than the fantastic reveal of Neo’s cocoon-like prison in the first film, almost every scene in that cavernous real world was an uncinematic crutch on the story.

In “Revolutions” we begin aboard one of the patrols ships in the underground tunnels. Neo is in a coma, which means he’s in some kind of hastily-explained limbo-world in between the Matrix and real life. Neo, Morpheus and Seraph go back into the Matrix to rescue him. They chase down a dull new baddie named the Trainman (Bruce Spence, who is too old to run properly) and confront that coy Frenchman, the Merovingian, again. Unlike the last film the confrontation is a quickie, and the foursome get away with ease.

Meanwhile those nasty robots are digging their way to Zion. Eventually they punch their way through the wall and a gigantic CG battle ensues with mondo robots and mondo bullets bombarding us. After Neo visits the Oracle again he finally figures out he has to go to the heart of the Machine City in order to save the day for Zion.

As a technical exercise in CG, the lengthy battle with the fish-like robots is a great achievement. But it’s just overkill, and also headscratchingly illogical. There’s a scene when the gruff military leader, Mifune, is strapped to his large mechanical harness (uncreatively stolen from James Cameron’s “Aliens”) and battles literally thousands of robots by himself. The amount of robots coming down from the sky is endless, yet they group together and fight like one large school of fish flying headlong into the guy’s bullet stream. Really, none of the robots were smart enough split off and come from behind, or the side?

This logical oversight could easily have been glossed over and suspended if the story were engaging and we actually cared if any of them survived or won the battle. The point is, by the end we never cared for any of these human characters, because they never seemed human or likeable at all. The stodgy military characterizations of these Zion characters are as soulless and uninteresting as those unemotive Matrix Agents.

Sadly, screentime of our heroes, Neo and Trinity, are vastly decreased and leave the film for what seems like half an hour while we get bombarded with CGI robots. When the Wachowskis do return to the romantic couple, we’re never really sure where they’re going, or what they're going to do when they get there. They seem to head in the right direction though, because they end up at a balcony where Neo has a conversation with another being even higher up in the chain than the Architect. Really, I thought that morose white-bearded dude was the leader? Guess not.

In the final act, we get to suffer through the longest death scene in movie history. I won’t ruin who that is for anyone who hasn’t seen this film, but it’s just an indication of the sad whimper with which this series died.

The filmmakers freely acknowledge this general sentiment of the fans. And so Joel Silver and the Wachowskis allowed a trio of film critics to critique the film as their audio commentary which makes the film is actually humourous and watchable.

"Matrix Revolutions" is available on Blu-Ray from Warner Home Video.

Other related postings:
THE MATRIX
THE MATRIX RELOADED

WATERWORLD

Waterworld (1995) dir. Kevin Reynolds
Starring: Kevin Costner, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Dennis Hooper, Tina Majorino

***

Before this picture came out, its production problems were legendary: shooting a large scale action film entirely on water, suffering through massive hurricanes which destroyed its multi-million dollar set, producer-director squabbling between the Kevin Costner and Kevin Reynolds, not to mention the shear ludicrousness of remaking one of the great action films of all time, “The Road Warrior”, on water! “Waterworld” seemed born to fail.

Yet, despite all the strikes against it, “Waterworld” is a guilty pleasure of mine. Kevin Reynolds actually has some talent as a director of action. With most of its $175million actually on the screen, Reynolds’ production team were allowed to surmount the production nightmare of shooting action on water and craft some visually stunning action set pieces. If you accept its ludicrousness as 'camp', "Waterworld" can be enjoyed as one of the great unintentionally hilarious films ever made.

The late trailer voiceman Don Lafontayne’s opening narration explains the very simple scenario to us. The polar ice caps have melted and the entire world is covered in water. Those who survived have adapted to a new world of water. Kevin Costner’s man with no name character is a wandering warrior plying the seas, surviving by trading like all other wanderers. Costner and his boat are completely self-sufficient; he's got his own guns, harpoons, and other weapons to protect himself, his own plants, tools, reading material. He's even got a device that turns his piss into fresh water!

When he goes to trade some goods at an atoll/floating city he’s discovered to be a ‘mutant’ with gills. The prejudiced city-folk imprison him and sentence him to death. Before that happens the evil plundering ‘smokers’ attack the city. Costner escapes with the help of Helen (Jeanne Triplehorn) and a little girl named Enola (Tina Majorino). When Costner discovers the girl holds the key to finding the elusive ‘dry land’ he finds himself battling the smokers to protect himself and his new found friends.

The Kevins (that is, director, Reynolds and producer, Costner) stage two wonderfully imaginative action set pieces in the first half – the opening attack scene on Costners catamaran and the attack on the floating city. Though initially skeptical about the concept, having these scenes in the first half allowed me to suspend myself disbelief to this truly ridiculous world. For most people though getting past the idea of Mad Max on water was just insurmountable, and I respect that. If you can’t accept this scenario, then every ridiculous moment (and there are many) will become amplified to the point of anger and annoyance.

If you accept the scenario you would find Kevin Costner’s catamaran a really great piece of production design from the Dennis Gassner. The attention to detail in crafting the numerous ramshackle devices Costner’s character creates from cobbled-together spare parts is admirable. In the days before CGI, Gassner's tangible retractable sail and mechanical wheels and pullies which makes it work actually looks functional. Even Costner’s ‘urine-to-fresh water’ device is given a close-up to showcase its detail.

Of course, if you can’t suspend your disbelief the ridiculousness of these devices are just plain laughable. In a world without land, somehow these citizens of the water have skidoos, electricity, helium filled balloons, operational motor vehicles, cigarettes, etc etc.

Guilty pleasure or not, the absurdities do compound on one another and barely hold together as a credible story. The filmmakers treat Costner’s character arc with such seriousness, his tortured wanderer/western anti-hero persona, allegories to the classic western genre heroes from “Shane” and “The Searchers”, reaches way too far. Dennis Hopper, who plays the leader of the smokers, is the only actor who plays his character with the right tone. He provides the camp humour the audience requires to accept this film as entertainment and not vanity.

Modern films like “Snakes on a Plane” embraced its campiness, which became a selling point and made it acceptable for audiences to enjoy. Unfortunately, despite some great imagination and surprising filmmaking skills, “Waterworld” became a laughing stock of Hollywood.

If you need to see a three-hour version of the film, it’s now available from Universal Studios Home Entertainment, as “Waterworld: 2 Disc Extended Edition”.