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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

January 24, 2012

“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” is the second collaboration between screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and music video maestro Michel Gondry (their first was 2001’s “Human Nature”). It certainly bears the hallmarks of Kaufman’s self-reflexive fantasias, but, in its merging of narrative form and experimental technique, this is pure Gondry, and a dazzling showcase of his conceptual imagination.

Throughout his career, Gondry has mined the trove of his own dreams and childhood memories. Nothing quite makes sense in Gondry’s world but, in that secret language of dream-logic, in which sound and image mingle like the synaptic phantasmagoria of deep sleep, his cinema can be downright revelatory as you’re experiencing it.

Dream-logic lies at the heart of “Eternal Sunshine,” a romantic comedy that questions what it would be like if we could eliminate our worst, most troubling memories. Joel and Clementine’s relationship was littered with them. So, it’s no surprise that, when they break-up, Clementine (Kate Winslet), a hippy-trippy party girl, decides to erase her memories of shy loner Joel (Jim Carrey), using a memory-erasure process invented by a charlatan-neuroscientist, Dr. Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson). When Joel finds out, he decides to follow suit, if only to spite the impetuous Clementine. Assisted by a pair of feckless technicians, Stan and Patrick (Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood), Mierzwiak places what looks like a souped-up colander on Joel’s head and, with his subject in deep sleep, sets out to slash-and-burn all traces of his Clementine memories.

But, about halfway through his “erasure,” Joel realizes just how much he loves his memories and decides to go AWOL. What follows is a most unusual chase picture as Joel, with Clementine in hand, flees across the far-flung regions of his mindscape, as Mierzwiak tries desperately to track him down, mercenary-like. As Joel and Clementine encounter figments of his darkest memories, she helps him to make peace with them, and, as they re-live the rosiest days of their courtship, they brace against the inevitable destruction at the hands of the memory-erasers soon to come.

Kaufman’s script also interweaves Mierzwiak’s own woes with Mary (Kirsten Dunst), his lovestruck office assistant. She’d rather be musing over Alexander Pope quotations with the good doctor than getting naked and stoned with her boyfriend, Stan. What’s more, Patrick, privy to Clementine’s past, finds himself smitten with her and, cribbing from Joel’s notes, he clumsily woos her with his schoolboy wiles.

If anything, Gondry could have pared Kaufman’s script to its essence—Joel’s odyssey—and used its taut frame to develop his abundance of visual ideas. Gondry’s kinetic style, along with Kaufman’s crammed script, overwhelms its otherwise pitch-perfect cast. Carrey and Winslet are terrific, but their wonderfully moody scenes together seem needled by the material’s frantic demands, as if Gondry is constantly jabbing at them with his restless, anxious camera. Still, “Eternal Sunshine” is undeniably ambitious filmmaking and a feather in this year’s cap of indie movies. Its message that, try as we might, we’re forever stuck with the very people who drive us crazy can be read as Kaufman-esque in its cynicism, but I’m too won over by Gondry’s sunshine to be anything but delighted by it.

Grade: A-

Directed by: Michel Gondry
Written by: Charlie Kaufman
Cast: Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Elijah Wood, Mark Ruffalo, Jane Adams, David Cross, Kirsten Dunst, Tom Wilkinson

Posted in Action & Adventure, All Reviews Archive, Experimental, Fantasy, Genres, Romance | Leave a Comment »

Elephant

January 23, 2012

Gus Van Sant’s “Elephant” won the Palm d’Or and Best Director prizes at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, marking the resurgence of a gifted filmmaker whose talents seemed tamed recently in service of more traditional dramas. If “Drugstore Cowboy” (1989) and “My Own Private Idaho” (1991), were dazzlingly wrought portraits of lives on the fringes of society, “Elephant” meanders through the more recognizable territory of high school. More importantly, it’s bravura filmmaking, subtler in approach than either “Cowboy” or “Idaho,” but just as exhilarating.

The title of Van Sant’s movie refers, among other things, to the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about. The conspicuous pachyderm, in this case, is the issue of gun violence in American schools, something that stampeded through our collective consciousness in the late-90s, brought most vividly to mind by the Columbine incident. In “Elephant,” Van Sant sets out to talk about it. Just how incisively or effectively he manages to do so, though, is frustratingly questionable.

The movie offers a portrait of an American high school. Van Sant’s characters are students whose paths intersect in the course of a routine day. There’s nothing routine, though, in Van Sant’s approach as he weaves together a mosaic of delicately interlaced storylines. “Elephant’s” most bustling scenes in hallways, offices and classrooms are so assuredly choreographed that they recall the most adroit Altman movies. The movie builds on a cyclical structure, following one storyline before flashing back to pick up another. In this way, Van Sant fleshes out vividly believable characters, bringing them, one storyline at a time, to the edge of his narrative, while allowing a hypnotic, unsettling tension to hang over the movie as we anticipate its inevitable outburst of violence.

Harris Savides’ camera glides along in step with “Elephant’s” largely non-professional, teenage cast. The movie’s immaculate visuals are matched by Leslie Shatz’s expressive sound design, intermingling Beethoven’s classical piano with ambient noise and wild sound to arrive at a disconcerting blend of disparate elements that perfectly serves the movie’s tone.

Van Sant shrewdly withholds judgment and steers clear of moralizing his subject. But, after it’s finished, you’re still wondering what it all adds up to. “Elephant” may be pointing to the insidiousness of violence, lurking in the woodwork of our society, no more unusual than the rest of the banalities of high school life. But Van Sant ends his movie so abruptly, glibly cutting away from his final scenes, that he left me to trip all over myself to come up with the movie’s justification or even any sense of its message. “Elephant” is one of this year’s boldest movies, technically, but, in refusing to assert any point-of-view about what troubles modern American youth, Van Sant’s loses heart and flees the scene of the crime.

Grade: C+

Written/Directed by: Gus Van Sant
Cast: Elias McConnell, Alex Frost, Eric Deulen, John Robinson, Carrie Finklea

Posted in All Reviews Archive, Crime, Drama, Experimental, Genres | Leave a Comment »

Edmond

January 23, 2012

Whether it’s a white-collar noir (“Glengarry Glen Ross”), a courtroom drama (“The Verdict”), a gangster saga (“The Untouchables”), a brainy thriller (“The Spanish Prisoner,” “Ronin”), or even a monster movie (“The Edge”), it seems that David Mamet’s particularly cerebral, male-centric dramaturgy needs the rigors of a plot-driven narrative in which to subdue and shape itself. Otherwise, we get something like “Oleanna”–the playwright/filmmaker’s fatally stilted screed about sexual harassment. With its clipped, oblique dialogue (that old Mamet trademark), and characters that act and talk like they’ve come out of a factory box, molded out of stereotypes of, respectively, the finger-wagging feminist female and the pussy-whipped, white-collar male, Oleanna elicits anger and befuddlement (at least in this viewer), but for all the wrong reasons.

Here comes “Edmond,” originally penned for the Chicago stage in the early ’80s, adapted for the screen by Mamet and directed by Stuart Gordon (whose “Re-Animator” taught us that even disembodied heads have feelings). “Edmond” is another of Mamet’s white, urban, misogynistic male nightmares, but, unlike “Oleanna” (which Mamet himself directed), it is saved from itself thanks to Gordon’s appropriately playful direction and William H. Macy’s lead performance. Instead of sales offices and academic chambers, we’re now trolling through a nighttime labyrinth of crime-ridden streets, alleyways, and strip clubs–it’s “After Hours,” Mamet style.

Deeply frustrated city mouse, Edmond Burke (Macy), hates his wife, his job, and desperately wants to get laid. One night, after a fortuneteller tells him his life has gone way off track, he bolts from his marriage. At a local drinking hole, a fellow boozer (Joe Mantegna), sympathizing with Edmond, directs to him a gentleman’s club where he might relieve himself. In Edmond, the real victims of sexual predation aren’t the whores and strippers so much as their decent, frugal-minded johns. Edmond is constantly overcharged for sexual services–a running (and very funny) joke in the film. If that weren’t bad enough, he also finds himself an easy target for pimps and scam artists–you know, Black People. After a night of getting mugged and ripped off, Edmond snaps. In a scene that demonstrates the best and worst of Mamet’s style, Edmond and Glenna (Julia Stiles), a waitress he’s just slept with, unleash a rant against “niggers” and “faggots”–the former because they’re lazy and criminal, and the latter because they hate women. Theirs is a crude, naked rant, and Mamet sees it through boldly. But just how bold is open to question, for this is a rather generic sort of hate, taking shallow urban stereotypes to task as if they had any real currency with an intelligent audience. This is “Oleanna” territory, and we’re happy to see the noisy, clattery scene end–and in a shower of blood, no less.

Edmond’s odyssey takes him from the urban jungle, where his fears ran rampant, to a penitentiary where he must butt up, so to speak, against all that drove him into his mad delirium. The outside world is wild, immoral, and untrustworthy, even as it shrouds itself in the hypocrisy of law and order. Prison’s bad too, but at least it’s honest about it. “It’s simple,” says Edmond, now shaven-headed, tattooed and mustachioed, the desperate fear in his eyes now replaced by the calm of moral nihilism. The world-class Macy is reason enough to check out “Edmond.” Mamet’s script may not convince as either satire or social commentary, but, in Macy’s hands, poor, pathetic Edmond’s story finds its shocking, darkly funny resonance.

Grade: B-

Directed by: Stuart Gordon
Written by: David Mamet
Cast: William H. Macy, Julia Stiles, Mena Suvari, Joe Mantegna, Denise Richards

Posted in All Reviews Archive, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Genres | Leave a Comment »

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

January 22, 2012

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is George Clooney’s directorial debut, but, if you didn’t know it, you’d swear it was the concoction of a seasoned filmmaker. While the erstwhile lions of film culture seem to be fumbling with misbegotten, less-than-successful ventures like Autofocus and Gangs of New York, Clooney and his team have fashioned a rip-roaring jolt of a movie, two hours that remind us that story and style can co-exist in a fierce, exhilarating embrace.

The film is based on the autobiography of TV legend Chuck Barris, in which he recounts his rise in the ’60s and ’70s as producer of such rowdy, culture-defining fare as The Dating Game and The Gong Show. Barris goes on to detail his adventures in the thick of the Cold War when, he alleges, he served as a hitman for the CIA. Whether you buy Barris’ dubious claim or not, the sheer zest and energy on display here render any misgivings unimportant.

While scraping by as an underling at ABC, Barris, played to the hilt by Sam Rockwell, hits on the idea of The Dating Game. Downtrodden during his initial struggles to sell the show, Barris is approached by a CIA recruiter (Clooney) who entices him to sign on for a life—albeit a covert and dangerous one—of heroic espionage. As Barris embarks on his double life, Confessions branches out into parallel stories which take on their own complications, eventually overlapping and blurring.

Among these complications are Penny (Drew Barrymore), Barris’ girlfriend, and Patricia Watson (Julia Roberts), a CIA operative who seduces Barris. While Watson’s wiles are easy for Barris to succumb to, it’s his love for Penny that forces him confront his own fears of commitment. That sounds a bit clichéd, but Clooney’s film goes further as it delves into Barris’ tortured past, dredging up some disturbing, though fascinating, explanations for what drives those fears, as well as his deep desire for approval and the appeasement of his male ego.

Over the years, a gamut of writers worked on Confessions until Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation, Being John Malkovich) hammered it into its final shape. While not a particularly in-depth character study—what really drives Barris’ zeal for fame remains shadowy—Kaufman’s script appeals by virtue of its ambitions. Equal parts psychodrama, Cold War thriller, romantic comedy and an Alger-esque rags-to-riches yarn, Confessions engages on every front.

Rockwell steals the show in a performance that plays up its comic potential without losing sight of its pathos. He’s ably supported by Barrymore in a role tailored to her sweet, quirky persona, by Clooney himself as the delightfully deadpan recruiter and, of course, Rutger Hauer as an aging hitman who relishes his job a bit too much.

Clooney and his cinematographer, Newton Thomas Sigel, create a kaleidoscope of styles, from the staid sepias of the ’40s, to the burnt ochres of Mexico and the nervy, pan-and-zooms of the ’60s, before hitting the candy-coated, soft-focus hues of the ’70s. The film’s visual dynamics, including its giddily inspired staging, blend into the fabric of its narrative, always complementing its pace and mood, never overwhelming it.

Only a first-timer, free from the trappings of an auteuristic ego and from studio expectations, could’ve told a story so passionately and efficiently at once. Confessions is an auspicious debut, and the closest the majors have come in years to fearlessly expressive moviemaking.

Grade: B+

Directed by: George Clooney
Written by: Charlie Kaufman
Cast: Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore, George Clooney, Michael Cera, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Julia Roberts, Matt Damon

Posted in All Reviews Archive, Comedy, Drama, Genres, Thriller | Leave a Comment »

Crimson Gold

January 22, 2012

“Crimson Gold” is the latest import from that world cinema hotspot, Iran. Scripted by Abbas Kiarostami, the movie is Jafar Panahi’s follow-up to his widely praised “The Circle” (2000) and finds him continuing to explore the theme of the individual pushing feebly against inexorable social forces. But, while “The Circle’s” power erupted from its live-wire, all-female ensemble, the cold austerity of “Crimson Gold’s” style and dramaturgy all but strangles any emotional resonance the movie might have had.

Panahi frames his movie in a jewelry store where a robbery has gone tragically wrong; in a fit of rage, Hussein (Hussein Emadeddin), a glowering bear of a man, shoots the storeowner then, as pedestrians watch in horror, turns the gun on himself. Panahi then rewinds his narrative to make the case for how a combination of demoralizing circumstances turned this low-key, working-class schlub into a violent criminal. Amid the teeming streets of Tehran, Hussein ekes out a living on his moped, delivering pizzas. We see how he endures the snobbery of a wealthy jeweler, the material indulgences of a garrulous, patronizing playboy and, on one night as he delivers pizzas, the bullying of a policeman who blocks his progress as he ambushes guests leaving a party, arresting them on charges of dancing in mixed company. Hussein’s fiancé, meanwhile, is boggled by his morose detachment and her brother, Ali, can’t seem to snap him out of his stupor.

Hussein’s urban breakdown has echoes of Travis Bickle’s but with none of the latter’s engaging, expressive fury. We sense that Bickle is essentially a moral character driven to vigilantism in the name of his own, admittedly warped, sense of pride and morality. “But what does Hussein want?” we ask ourselves. “What does he yearn for beneath all this repression?” Indeed, under the relentless drone of his moped, we sense no impetus in Hussein: no yearning, no calling. So we do not especially care what happens to him.

Even Fassbinder’s Hussein-like Hans Epp in “Merchant of Four Seasons,” a movie that hews closer in tone to Panahi’s than does “Taxi Driver,” wants something—a measure of peace and acceptance after a lifetime of grief. Indeed, several scenes in “Gold” have the unsettlingly raw feel of Fassbinder’s cinema, right down to its halting, unactorly technique. Emadeddin is a non-actor (he is, by trade, a pizza deliveryman), but, more than that, he is a paranoid schizophrenic. Panahi knew this when he cast him, and it might have been far more poignant to acknowledge Emadeddin’s mental illness within his narrative rather than to work around it, to absorb it within his story-fabric, thereby adding to, rather than stripping down, the emotional texture his characters so badly need.

The impression that Panahi did his damndest to make “Crimson Gold” as elusive and distancing as possible runs like a stake throughout this movie. Panahi may have turned his camera on a fascinating society-in-transition, but it reveals so frustratingly little and remains so stubbornly alienating as to render the whole thing an artful failure, a moped-fueled odyssey into dramatic weariness and monotony.

Grade: C-

Directed by: Jafar Panahi
Written by: Abbas Kiarostami
Cast: Hossain Emadeddin, Kamyar Sheisi, Azita Rayeji

Posted in All Reviews Archive, Crime, Drama, Foreign, Genres | Leave a Comment »

Confidence

January 22, 2012

“Confidence,” the crackerjack new caper from director James Foley and writer Doug Jung proves, finally, that Ed Burns is a better actor than either Matthew McConaughey or Ben Affleck. Much better, in fact, for he never resorts to the gimmicky smirks or stone-faced stammering associated with clueless actors run amok. Burns combines a working class charm with the requisite cool of an ace grifter to genuinely appealing effect.

Jake Vig (Burns), and his partners, Gordo (Paul Giamatti) and Miles (Brian Van Holt), choose poorly when they pick Lionel Dolby, an accountant, to swindle, because, it turns out, the money they steal is already stolen—from a little terror of a kingpin named, aptly enough, The King (Dustin Hoffman). After both Dolby and Big Al, the gang’s fourth member, turn up dead, Vig promptly approaches The King, and, in a bid to cool tempers and settle his debt, strikes a deal with him.

Targeting a bigtime banking tycoon, Vig offers to hatch an intricate scheme to extort millions from his coffers, then divide the spoils between them. Before setting forth, Vig recruits Lily (Rachel Weisz), a clever pickpocket who puts her fetching sexiness to full use in practicing her trade.

Jung weaves his plotlines briskly and entertainingly, never idling long enough for us to notice the kinks in his story. Once Vig, Lily and the gang strike up their camaraderie, the script hits the ground running, bringing into its fold a discontented lunk of a banker, a pair of weasely cops and the curious snoopings of a grizzled Federal officer (Andy Garcia) sporting the dullest of neckties

It’s clear from the chemistry of this cast that everybody’s having a grand time. Already relishing the go-for-broke spirit and bristling dialogue of Jung’s script, the cast is aided further by Foley’s distinctive character-driven style. He reinforces his characters with enough psychological nuance and backstory to make this a truly compelling gallery of cads and villains.

“Confidence,” however, never slows down to enjoy its own charms. Foley seems obliged to keep his movie galloping along to a needlessly frenetic rhythm. A casualty of this, unfortunately, is one my favorite scenes in which Vig and his gang go to work on a sad sack banker. It’s a scene that confirms the strength of this cast and this material, in which Foley might’ve let his camera rest, so we too might enjoy the slow, predatory nature of their game. While it sometimes fails to live up to its title, “Confidence,” ultimately, wins us over—in short, it dazzlingly does what all good cons are supposed to do.

Grade: B+

Directed by: James Foley
Written by: Doug Jung
Cast: Edward Burns, Dustin Hoffman, Rachel Weisz, Paul Giamatti, Donal Logue, Brian Van Holt, Andy Garcia

Posted in All Reviews Archive, Crime, Genres, Thriller | Leave a Comment »

Code 46

January 22, 2012

A futuristic film noir-love story with an Oedipal twist. That sounds like a devilish cocktail and it might’ve made for just such a movie. But “Code 46” by director Michael Winterbottom and writer Frank Cottrell Boyce is a muddy, strangely unintoxicating mix. A noir with no moral desperation, no clear-cut point-of-view and a love story whose eroticism feels about as urgent as yardwork.

This is not to say that “Code 46” lacks merit. Mark Tildesley’s production design and Alwin Kuchler and Marcel Zyskind’s photography ingeniously render a future-world that has ingredients of “Blade Runner” and “Mad Max” among other futuristic noir antecedents. Its soaring neon-lit towers and its smog- and dust-enshrouded landscapes are striking, but equally so is how the movie’s design—out of a need for economy and narrative expediency—is kept within the bounds of a recognizable reality. Those gleaming and ominous settings are modern-day Shanghai, Dubai and Hong Kong tricked out merely with lighting, filters and minimal art design.

Winterbottom and Cottrell Boyce postulate an endpoint to our age of rapid urbanizing and globalizing. Theirs is a George Orwell-meets- Phillip K. Dick dystopia where people’s mobility and behavior are heavily regulated and where overpopulated cities are separated by vast stretches of wasteland. “Code 46” itself refers to a reproductive law in which partners who share common genes are prohibited from mating—a way to keep genetically identical humans and clones from getting it on.

There’s the rub for William (Tim Robbins), a detective who arrives in Shanghai to track down who’s been manufacturing and selling counterfeit “papelles”— special permits needed to transit from one city to another. The culprit, he discovers, is Maria (Samantha Morton), a waifish, dreamy-eyed loner. He promptly falls in love and into bed with her. Soon after returning to his married life, William is alerted to a murder that leads him back to Maria. But her memory of William, their shared sexual history, has since been wiped clean by doctors, owing to a Code 46 violation. William learns that Maria was cloned from his own mother’s genes. Logically, I wondered why, if sex with such a clone were possible, aren’t there measures—identity cards, retinal scans, whatever—to preempt such an act. Why? Because logic would’ve overstepped “Code 46’s” entire second half when William, too smitten with Maria to care about their genetic relatedness, flies off with her for another illicit jaunt in the desert. Their cavorting, of course, comes to the lovelorn end we expect from this genre, but which registers none of its emotional payoff.

Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton, two intelligent actors, are fatally unconvincing as lovers. As William proceeds to woo Maria, we continually wonder what he sees in her and vice versa. Sporting her close-cropped “In America” haircut, Morton pitches her performance somewhere between the crime-predicting humanoid of “Minority Report” and the mute wallflower of “Sweet and Lowdown”—not exactly a combination to get a man’s pulse racing. The foundation for all noirs is how it reveals a wounded world through the dark but ever-hopeful gaze of its detective-protagonists. “Code 46,” which poises itself as noir, fails utterly to lock us into William’s world-view; Winterbottom, instead, lingers on Maria’s pseudo-poetic interior monologues, conjuring dreamy moments that narratively amount to nothing. Below William’s cocksure surface, Robbins’ characterization is a milky mess, absent of any motive for his infidelity, let alone a personal desire to solve this or any crime.

“Code 46” is an ambitious but miscalculated affair, owing entirely to Cottrell Boyce’s unengaging script. It prompts more questions of logic and motivation than it bargained for, losing its actors and audience along the way. Winterbottom is a competent filmmaker known also for his prolific output. Were it not for his flair for mood and texture, “Code 46” might sink entirely. Nevertheless, he might better serve his stories—especially those as conceptually complex as this one—by slowing down and taking the time to tell them clearly and well.

Grade: C

Directed by: Michael Winterbottom
Written by: Frank Cottrell Boyce
Cast: Tim Robbins, Samantha Morton, Om Puri

Posted in All Reviews Archive, Genres, Noir, Romance, Science Fiction, Thriller | Leave a Comment »

Cabin Fever

January 22, 2012

Peter Jackson has hailed “Cabin Fever” as “brilliant.” And those of us with an unquestioned love of gore will likely embrace Eli North’s movie with the same giddy enthusiasm. In essence, his movie isn’t a far cry from Jackson’s own “Dead Alive” (1992)—his whacked-out horror spoof about humans who become ravenous zombies after being bitten by a satanic monkey. A deliriously unhinged nuthouse of a movie, “Dead Alive” makes a terrific double bill with Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead 2” (1987), with everybody’s cult hero, Bruce Campbell, trapped inside a cabin, gamely mowing down zombies of his own. North retains the cabin setting of Raimi’s movie but replaces Jackson’s monkey with a just-as-fearsome flesh-eating virus, unleashing it among a bunch of bungling teenagers trapped in the deep woods. In that sense, “Fever” also harkens back to “Friday the 13th” and the whole spate of “teensploitation” horror flicks that followed in the wake of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” on through the mid-80s to mid-90s heyday of Wes Craven, by way of the biological gross-out of John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982).

“Cabin Fever” is a rollicking nostalgia ride through that hallowed tradition of gore flicks that holds our childhood memories in such thrall. North and co-writer Randy Pearlstein have the uncanny talent for weaving into their narrative every cliché, plot device and nuance from the horror cannon of the last 25-or-so years. As an homage, it’s energetically made, enjoyable while it lasts, but never breaking new ground or leaving behind much of an imprint.

Five horny, party-hardy co-eds take off for a week of sex, squirrel hunting and campfire stories at a secluded cabin. When a local hobo crashes their party, raving and stumbling in the throes of what is clearly an evil virus, things heat up. One-by-one, they begin to fall ill, panic and paranoia set in, and, in their blundering efforts to seek help, they only turn the already-freakish locals against them. The pathology of this virus isn’t clear other than it turns you into a raving lunatic and your skin into hideous bacon strips. North, in that sense, has commandeered the makings of crackerjack medical horror, with its slow-burn dread, then grafted it onto far less interesting teen-scream material.

Scott Kevan’s cinematography and Nathan Barr’s score, with help from David Lynch veteran Angelo Badalamenti, are effectively eerie and evocative. On their lead, North builds a genuine sense of creepiness and foreboding. Certainly, “Fever” packs its share of jolts and none-too-shabby black humor, both worthy of a place alongside Romero. But after all the noise dies down and “Fever” cools, resolving itself as predicably as any “Elm Street” installment, what do we have? A remembrance of past frights, I guess, but as a horror yarn in its own right, it just bleeds into the background.

Grade: C+

Directed by: Eli Roth
Written by: Eli Roth, Randy Pearlstein
Cast: Rider Strong, Jordan Ladd, James DeBello, Cerina Vincent, Joey Kern

Posted in All Reviews Archive, Genres, Horror, Thriller | Leave a Comment »

Bukowski: Born Into This

January 22, 2012

“When you get the shit kicked out of you long enough…you’ll have the tendency to say what you really mean,” states Charles Bukowski in the engaging new documentary “Bukowski: Born Into This.” That terse observation hints at the brutality of Bukowski’s childhood, when his father would beat him with a razor strop. It also affords a context in which to view his famously stripped-down, no-nonsense literature, charged with autobiographical detail, an urgent, acerbic world-view and that balls-to-the-wall take on booze, sex, poverty and the daily grind.

The documentary marks the filmmaking debut of John Dullaghan. The former advertising copywriter felt such a kinship with Bukowski that he devoted seven years to making what is, at heart, a loving tribute to a writer, his craft and, above all, the idea of living and dying by one’s own creed. “Born Into This” manages to peer beyond the Bukowski Myth to arrive at something far more layered and fascinating. Indeed, the portrait that takes shape here is of a soul as much traumatized as toughened by abuse, loneliness and cruelty.

Dullaghan gets a lot of mileage from interviews shot in the 70s and 80s, separately, by director Taylor Hackford and by European TV crews. It’s wonderfully revealing stuff, chronicling his years of rootless wandering and his fifteen years slumming at a local post office, all the while writing poems and stories for small literary magazines. That penniless obscurity contrasts sharply with the latter-day Bukowski, the counter-culture hero, reading his poetry at a San Francisco gathering, taunting his sold-out audience while reaching for a beer in the fridge placed onstage. What’s truly amazing is that, while he may command the spotlight in his later years, Bukowski, the hard-drinking rabble-rouser, is ever-present and spoiling for a fight.

Layered over this are biographical tidbits and Dullaghan’s own intensive interviews with various Bukowski acquaintances. Among the most riveting are his interviews with Bukowski’s publisher, John Martin, and wife, Linda Lee Bukowski. In the late ‘60s, Martin became Bukowski’s devoted publisher, granting him a weekly stipend that allowed him to write full-time. The direct result of Martin’s patronage gave us his novels, beginning with 1971’s “Post Office.” For more intimate insights, Dullaghan turns to Linda, a woman who weathered the Bukowski whirlwind of tantrums and starfuckers, and steered him through the twilight of his life.

This is a lovely mosaic, not unlike 1994’s “Crumb.” In fact, “Crumb’s” editor, Victor Livingston, also edited “Born Into This,” and the documentary benefits from Livingston’s ability at piecing together portraits of intense, enigmatic personalities, and making them feel altogether familiar and human. But it’s Bukowski himself who pulls this documentary together and reminds us of the immensely inspirational force of his strident wit, honest conviction and saying always what he really meant.

Grade: A

Directed by: John Dullaghan
Cast: Charles Bukowski, Bono, Linda Lee Bukowski, Joyce Fante, Taylor Hackford, Michael D. Meloan, Sean Penn

Posted in All Reviews Archive, Documentary, Genres | Leave a Comment »

Bubba Ho-Tep

January 22, 2012

Elvis lives and so, apparently, does JFK in writer-director Don Coscarelli’s pseudo-horror indie lark, “Bubba Ho-Tep.” Based on Joe R. Lansdale’s short story, “Bubba Ho-Tep” tries ineffectually to be both a lyrical character study and a darkly satirical horror flick. As the latter, the movie demonstrates all the zeal and invention of a tired carnival act, and, in trying to mine heartfelt pathos from its depiction of two lonely curmudgeon-icons, it digs up only platitudes and schmaltz.

Bruce Campbell, something of a cult item himself and delightfully campy performer, plays a crochety, limpdicked Elvis, facing the twilight of his years in an old-age home. As “Bubba” tells it, Elvis, tired of his fame, switched places with an impersonator decades back and took to a more anonymous life on the Elvis-impersonator circuit. An injury, though, has landed him in these drably lit, antiseptic surroundings, rhapsodizing about erections and other bygone triumphs, nursing regrets about a wife and daughter left far behind. Elvis finds a sympathizer in a fellow resident (Ossie Davis), a black man convinced he’s Jack Kennedy.

“Bubba” starts off tantalizingly enough with black-and-white newsreel footage reporting the discovery of a cursed Egyptian mummy. That opening holds such lip-smacking promise of thrills to come that it’s a real letdown as Coscarelli’s script devotes much of its subsequent energies to Elvis’ plodding backstory, and to the derivative characters and circumstances surrounding his life at the home. We get the saucy nurse, the flinty doctor, the buffoonish hearse drivers, medicinal penile gel and even ruminations of what kind of shit a mummy might produce. This is all meant to be outrageously funny, but it isn’t quite, because “Bubba” never achieves that unfettered, freefall zaniness that it desperately needs to thrive and distinguish itself. Indeed, its script is too square and well-mannered, choosing instead to sentimentalize its offbeat characters—a fatal mistake since he never develops them beyond the realm of well-trodden clichés. He wastes precious storytime on tiresome jibes about Elvis’ once all-conquering penis, his schmaltzy ponderings over his past, and Jack’s own paramoid musings about Castro.

Once the mummy—an ill-developed creature himself, given to foppish headwear—lets loose inside the old-age home, “Bubba” still doesn’t wake up. Apart from a pitched battle scene between Elvis and a monstrous, winged beetle, the action scenes are predictably staged, leading to an appropriately limp finale. The Campbell-Davis pairing is inpired, but Coscarelli’s plotting and characterizations are too unadventurous for their dynamic to amount to much. Similarly, he peppers his movie with flash cuts and other run-of-the-mill shock tactics to distract us from the flimsy, half-baked goings-on. Still, if seeing Campbell in a bouffant wig and sporting the King’s sneer and swagger does it for you, then “Bubba Ho-Tep’s” charms—such as they are—may not be all lost.

Grade: C

Written/Directed by: Don Coscarelli
Cast: Bruce Campbell, Ossie Davis, Ella Joyce, Heidi Marnhout, Bob Ivy

Posted in All Reviews Archive, Genres, Horror | Leave a Comment »

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