Film Review: Edge of Darkness

Edge of Darkness is Mel Gibson’s first appearance in a leading role since 2002, and he uses it to remind audiences that he’s far from finished as an actor. The film itself doesn’t quite live up to that standard.

Edge of Darkness was originally a six-hour BBC mini-series that aired in 1985. The longer television format may have benefited the story in a few cases, particularly the character development of Emma Craven (Bojana Novakovic). The audience is barely introduced to Emma before she’s dead in Craven’s arms, which makes it more difficult to share in his desire to find her killer. That’s where Gibson’s performance takes over.



Though his recent media-baiting personal problems have obscured the fact, Gibson remains a powerful actor. His turn as the unfortunately named Tom Craven may not be the most original or challenging role – a police officer driven to work outside the law in order to avenge his daughter – but the pain he emotes, coupled with several “hallucination” scenes with a younger version of Emma, helps flesh out the relationship he had with his daughter that wasn’t initially apparent. Elsewhere, Danny Huston plays corporate fat cat Jack Bennett with skin-crawling efficiency.


The plot is intriguing enough to keep audiences engaged, and the initial questions are answered in a reasonably satisfying manner. There are, however, some murky points, the lingering one being Jedburgh’s (Ray Winstone) motives for sympathizing with Craven.

Though action movies fans will be happy to see Gibson’s several scenes of gunplay, the movie focuses more on conspiracy and less on violence. The story seems to take on an anti-government theme, and the fear over nuclear research that fueled the British mini-series has diminished over the time between the Cold War-era airing of the original and the present. The official types working against Craven tend toward the one-dimensional, demonstrating shady evil-for-the-sake-of-being-evil personalities that are all too familiar in conspiracy films.

Meanwhile, it takes a suspension of disbelief to follow Craven’s relatively linear search for the murderer, considering characters’ constant assertions that the perpetrators of such crimes are rarely captured. It doesn’t wrap up as neatly and happily as it could have, but the ending is pure Hollywood. For comparison, consider that the original series’ writer, Troy Kennedy Martin, wanted Craven to transform into a tree at the conclusion of the story.

As a conspiracy thriller, Edge of Darkness is above average, thanks to Gibson’s strong portrayal of Craven. The movie itself doesn’t quite live up to the legacy of its televised inspiration, but it’s a worthy diversion nonetheless.

[Apollo's] Hipness rating: 5 out of 10
[Apollo's] Actual rating: 6 out of 10

2009: Mark's Picks

FILM

CREAM O’ ‘09
01 A Serious Man
02 Up in the Air
03 Inglourious Basterds
04 Adventureland
05 The Hurt Locker
06 Sugar
07 500 Days of Summer
08 Funny People
09 Precious
10 District 9

RUNNERS
Moon
In the Loop
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Zombieland
The Men Who Stare at Goats
The Messenger
The Hangover

DUDS
Miss March
The International
Serious Moonlight
Taking Woodstock
Taken
Public Enemies
Away We Go

STILL NEED TO SEE
The White Ribbon
An Education
Avatar
The Road
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans


MUSIC and TV


MUSIC

CREAM O' '09
Bat for Lashes – Two Suns
Yo La Tengo – Popular Songs
Monsters of Folk – Monsters of Folk
Fever Ray – Fever Ray
Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes – Up From Below
Bob Dylan – Together Through Life
Black Moth Super Rainbow – Eating Us
Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Pains of Being Pure at Heart – Pains of Being Pure at Heart
The Avett Brothers – I and Love and You

RUNNERS
Sonic Youth – The Eternal
Passion Pit – Manners
The xx – XX
Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest

ROLLING STONE IS UNFAIRLY OBSESSED WITH
Bruce Springsteen – Working on a Dream
U2 – No Line on the Horizon

TV

CREAM O' '09
Mad Men
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Shark Tank
Modern Family
Bored to Death
Party Down

RUNNERS
Parks and Recreation
Hung
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

SORRY I DON’T WATCH
Battlestar Gallactica
Friday Night Lights

Film Review: Up in the Air

Up in the Air – a funny, sad, naturalistic and polished dramedy from co-writer/director Jason Reitman – is undeniably a contender for the 2010 Academy Awards. Yet it has no elaborate costume or set design, James Cameron-engineered digital effects, an epic narrative or even propulsive drama. This comparatively small film by Oscar’s standards will rack up nominations but should win only the smaller awards by no fault of its own. It just isn’t that breed. This is the kind of winter film that's comforting in its bleakness and uncertainty and doesn’t flaunt production value but instead sees it as economic cache.

Reitman's solid antecedent comedies, Thank You for Smoking and Juno, laid the bricks for his best feature yet. It doesn’t hurt that he's the son of the guy who made Ghostbusters.

An apotheosis of the George Clooney persona, Ryan Bingham flies 270 days a year as an expert layoff specialist, formally dismissing employees from companies around the country when the bosses lack the cojones to do so. It’s an unusual job that has manifested itself into a life mantra for never having to really know anyone.


“How much does your life weigh?” asks Ryan at the podium of motivational seminars. He coaches traveling professionals on the mentality of someone with a successful, baggage-less solitary existence. Home in Omaha for Ryan is torture. Not because of sour relationships with his sisters or painful memories but because he lives for traveling. “No man is an island” means zilch to him.

He meets Alex (Vera Farmiga), sleek, sultry and professional, whose occupation is never revealed, in a cocktail lounge. They hit it off right away. Alex is even shallower than Ryan and requests keeping their relationship strictly business-sexual. “Think of me as you with a vagina,” she says.

Then, enter Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), a 23-year-old precocious Cornell grad has new plans for the company – upgrading from in-person layoffs to cost-saving video chat firings from the Omaha office. Ryan’s boss (Jason Bateman), absolutely smitten with the whiz kid, strongly considers it but first sends Natalie on the road with Ryan for a series of corporate send-offs.

The sight of two people nervously preparing to deliver bad news to an unsuspecting American taxpayer triggered déjà vu ala The Messenger. And Ryan’s seminars reminded me of the faux-profound nature (thanks to Carter Burwell) of Clooney’s speech about the Massey prenup in Intolerable Cruelty.

No doubt this new depiction of romance and seduction is as impersonal as the coupling of 21st-century technology and the application of sociology. Witty, sexual banter is exchanged via text messages, and post-coital activity includes Ryan and Alex logging onto their adjacent laptops to check flight times and layovers.

Critics swooned over Up in the Air in the past month for being delightfully modern, which certainly makes Ryan’s senseless detachment from family, dependence and commitment a relatable flaw. Although Reitman shows the hardship and adversity the recession has incited, he probably will ironically make a healthy sum from it.

Clooney has amassed plenty of mileage in a decade and a half, and he delivers one of his most complete performances in this role. Farmiga, who more or less faded into the back of The Departed’s decked-out ensemble, may finally have a chance for meaty roles in the future.

The screenplay, adapted from Walter Kirn’s 2001 novel, doesn’t shy from corporate lingo and appropriates fearlessly astute dialogue within romantic scenes, a rarity in post-George Cukor and post-Howard Hawks cinema.

There is a great scene in a hotel lounge in which Natalie, who was recently dumped by her boyfriend, and Alex take turns describing their ideal life mate while Ryan listens. Alex’s standards for a man are much lower than Natalie’s, though both desire a figure of status. The 15-year gap between them is vast, and Natalie can’t imagine a life without the potential for perfection.

Before the film digs itself into a hole of depression, it bursts out with a happy hour of sorts. The two large-group events in the film include the tech convention after-party and Ryan’s sister’s wedding. Natalie’s drunken exuberance in the former and Ryan and Alex’s closeness in both scenes are sportively amorous yet also sincere.

Actors known for their comedic relief - Zach Galifianakis, J.K. Simmons (Reitman regular) and Danny McBride – have small bit parts in essentially serious roles. McBride is given one of his first roles since All the Real Girls to prove he can actually act.

The soundtrack plays to the strengths of the wavering tone. Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings’ sassy version of “This Land is Your Land” is the opening number, and somber, folky tracks from Crosby, Stills & Nash, Elliott Smith and Roy Buchanan fade in at the right moments.

The story gets blotchy in its final ten minutes. Some surprises and the jumpy cuts to suitcase handles and airport terminals dizzies up the mise-en-scene in an otherwise smooth conclusion for the characters.

While still an unlikely pick for Best Picture, Up in the Air scores a lot of points for pathos. Reitman's film offers a refreshing blend of classical star wattage and a potently contemporary perspective that forge a connection with the audience on many levels despite an overall elegiac tone.

Film Review: The Messenger

Films portraying U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq have a bit of a bad reputation save for The Hurt Locker and a few others. Most are loaded with ideology and preach no more coherently than a cable-news pundit. Those that examine the reintegration period when soldiers return home have not had as much of a chance to shine.

The Messenger, from first-time director Oren Moverman, is about post-Iraq as much as it is about any war. The film refrains from flashing to gritty warfare footage and from dwelling on soldier’s stories until it’s absolutely necessary. There is wrenching drama in observing the aftermath of war on all those directly or indirectly connected to the U.S. involvement in the Middle East. Despite weak pacing in the second hour, The Messenger articulately provides fascinating profiles of two men forever scarred from fighting on the front lines – with a more concentrated focus than other post-Deer Hunter coming-home fare.



Staff Sgt. Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) is back home in New Jersey stationed at Fort Dix with no family aside from an ex-girlfriend who moved onto a new suitor in his absence. Combating loneliness, he finds employment notifying families of their spouses or kin’s recent death in the military overseas. Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson) accompanies Will on each home visit, enforcing a strict list of orders that prohibit any subjective empathy with the bereaved. Will violates the job’s contract when he develops a relationship with a shy widow Olivia (Samantha Morton).

The first hour of the film serves as an insightful, joltingly emotional in-depth look, more moving than any newspaper feature, into the job of a casualty notifications officer. It is harrowing work that requires enormous discipline on the part of the officer. Identifying with Will and Tony as dutiful workers on the job, you can’t help but feel strangely dissonant when frustrated that a distraught father (Steve Buscemi) of a deceased soldier lunges out at them, threatening violence. The casualty’s parents aren’t the bad guys, but the officers’ mission as messengers of death isn’t as esoteric from an outsider’s perspective now.


The disparity between those who have been directly affected by the war and those haven’t is a widening crevasse. The same goes for the duality of the responsibilities of a messenger in delivering bad news and/or good news. To have shared in the experience either on the front lines or in losing a loved one abroad is to suffer a wound that can’t easily be healed.

Foster, appropriately unhinged, is a fine actor in his own right but too often falls one tier below method performer Ryan Gosling. Harrelson, on a roll in 2009, steals the show as he did in October’s buddy horror-comedy Zombieland.

The second hour hits a snag in which the plot tends to meander about. One such sluggish scene between Will and Olivia packed no nuance, no sense of pacing nor comprehension of fluidity. The couple’s relationship is never developed thoroughly and Olivia always appears like she could care less. The impact of the first hour slightly flattens in retrospect.

Unlike the majority of recent Iraq fare, Moverman’s downer, anchored by two powerful lead performances, doesn’t bite off more than it can chew in showcasing the inherently fractured nature of the outcast veteran.

[Apollo's] Hipness rating: 5 out of 10
[Apollo's] Actual rating: 7 out of 10

Film Review: Pirate Radio (The Boat That Rocked)

British ensemble comedy The Boat That Rocked, retitled Pirate Radio for American audiences, has suffered at the hands of critics on both sides of the pond. The film, about a group of DJs running a pirate radio station from a boat off the shore of 1960s England, has earned a 54% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.



I have no desire to argue with the detractors. Pirate Radio is clearly flawed, a jumble of incoherent plot fragments and poorly developed characters (what the hell was Ike Hamilton’s character’s job on the boat?). The ending is at odds with the tone of the rest of the film, and the film’s premise is not nearly as historically accurate as it would lead audiences to believe. Finally, it was still a little lengthy despite a recutting for the American version.

And yet, at the same time, it’s a joyous celebration of some great rock ‘n’ roll. Never mind that some of the song choices are a little hackneyed. The Kinks’ “All Day and All of the Night” isn’t exactly a forgotten gem, but who wouldn’t want to hear it again? The Rolling Stones, Small Faces, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Otis Redding, Cream, The Beach Boys, and Martha & The Vandellas are just a few of the classic artists featured on the soundtrack.


Several songs make strong contributions to the film’s tone. Cat Stevens’ “Father and Son” makes a logical and powerful appearance.

One minor complaint about the music selections: at least one song was not period appropriate. The movie, set in 1966-67, predates The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by a good four years. British soul revivalist Duffy also makes an appearance, but she’s covering an older song.

The amount of rock cred bursting from the movie doesn’t stop at its soundtrack. The cast of characters on the boat embody the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, from Midnight Mark’s legendary silence to Gavin’s distinctive on-air voice, from Dave’s rampant sexual appetite to Bob’s burned out demeanor.

It’s already clear how important rock is to the DJs, considering they’re willing to seclude themselves on a boat for its sake, but the numerous scenes of characters simply dancing to the music cements that fact.

Philip Seymour Hoffman plays The Count, the American member of the crew of DJs. Hoffman, as an actor, has a generous helping of inherent cool that allows him to believably portray characters like this. I’ve seen Almost Famous so many times that, as far as I’m concerned, Hoffman actually is Lester Bangs. And The Count loves the music so much that he’d be willing to die for it.

Music fans will likely find little to complain about while leaving the theater. This is a movie about the joy of music. Plenty of films have examined the joy of making music, but this one delves deep into the amount of pleasure that can be derived simply from listening. That pleasure is catching.

HIPNESS RATING: 5/10
ACTUAL RATING: 7/10

Is 'Bad Lieutenant' Nicolas Cage’s best role in years?

Director Werner Herzog has remade a tale – the 1992 Abel Ferrara micro-cult indie cop drama Bad Lieutenant starring Harvey Keitel – that never warranted a revisit. The result is Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, starring Nicolas Cage as an imbalanced corrupt cop with more vices than a carpenter’s woodshop and a paranoid fear of iguanas. Apparently the only similarities between the two films are the title and the presentation of an immoral drug addict. In grand idiosyncratic fashion, Herzog reportedly commanded Cage on the set to “turn the pig loose!” Herzog told the Toronto Star: “He immediately knew what I meant. And man, does he turn the pig loose! As an actor, he always understood the fluidity of the situation. The kind of musicality, jazz in particular, which allows you to improvise and stay within a certain mood and go wild.”

In the past decade, Cage has been a victim of disparagement and derision from audiences for his schlocky acting roles. The Wicker Man, Ghost Rider, Next, Bangkok Dangerous, Knowing. The worse the film, the wackier his stylized coif.

While reviews for Lieutenant are on-the-whole very positive, critics are either praising Cage’s Frank Booth-esque tour-of-force of mayhem or dismissing his ability to act at all. Regardless, his portrayal of Terence McDonagh qualifies as his most challenging role since his 1996 Oscar-winning turn in Leaving Las Vegas.

More after the jump.

Cole Smithey writes that Cage loses control of the character, slipping into an “off-putting vocal delivery late in the story,” which further distracts from the patchwork plot. “Cage even goes so far as to tear a page from Klaus Kinski's relationship with the camera,” he says, “but the tribute is as inappropriate as making a sequel to a film to which there could never be a follow-up. A disaster.”

Roger Ebert, who swam against the current in awarding Cage’s film Knowing four stars in March, comes to the actor’s defense. He argues that Cage and Herzog, “both made restless by caution,” were born to work together and gives this film four stars as well. “No one is better at this kind of performance than Nicolas Cage. He's a fearless actor. He doesn't care if you think he goes over the top. If a film calls for it, he will crawl to the top hand over hand with bleeding fingernails.”

Andy Klein of Brand X breaks the opposing camps down into how they’ll perceive this film. “Cage’s affectations are always daring, if not always successful. His contorted posture rightfully reminds us that he is always one inch away from excruciating back pain, but a shift in his manner of speaking for several scenes around the three-quarter mark is simply baffling. Your reaction to the whole thing probably depends on your general feelings about Cage: Fans will relish his unique brand of scenery-chewing; non-fans are likely to be irritated.”

Apollo guest blogger reviews 'The Twilight Saga: New Moon'

[EDITOR’S NOTE: We have a guest blogger today – Victoria, a new London correspondent for Apollo’s Cred. Keep an eye out for her byline. Her first article is a review of the divisive new Twilight film…The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Seriously though, no one on staff had the courage to see this. As always, give us your feedback!]



New Moon is the second installment of the vampire romance Twilight series, based on the books by Stephanie Meyer. Director Chris Weitz (The Golden Compass, About a Boy) took the helm with this film, replacing Catherine Hardwicke. He stayed quite faithful to the plot of the text but managed to speed up the pace of the film, making it quite interesting and enjoyable to watch.

The story takes us from where it ended in Twilight: Bella, a very simple teenage girl, totally in love with Edward Cullen, not only the most handsome boy in the school, but also a vampire and the most ideal man in Bella’s universe. However, their relationship is darkened and complicated by some "ordinary" problems of vampire-world, and Bella is forced to suffer through the emotional troubles of the break-up. Apart from the fact that the boy is a vampire, this story is very ordinary and has happened to every girl. Weitz should get credit for understanding this.

He shifts the genre of the film saga more towards chick-flick or female Gothic rather than vampire horror, which seems quite appropriate as the main audience is comprised largely of teenage girls. He understands girls and gives them what they want: In contrast to Twilight, New Moon has more kisses, more romantic talks that are supposed to make you cry or say “awww” and (oh yes!) more naked torsos. Sorry boys, these are only men’s naked torsos. So, for the target audience, this film is a great treat.

New Moon brings more attention to the story of werewolves and the Bella-Jacob relationship. Jacob Black, of course, is the nice boy/werewolf who helps Bella through her breakup with Edward. The werewolves' action scenes are beautifully done and fascinating to watch even if you are not a fan of the Twilight mythos. The relationship between Bella and Jacob acts as the central one in the film, which is good, as it is not as straightforward as Bella and Edward’s love. It gives the audience a chance to see some acting from Kristen Stewart and novitiate Taylor Lautner. Over the course of the film, Robert Pattinson musters a range of two to three expressions, which is probably his -- or the director’s -- idea of how an ideal man (oops!) ideal vampire should look. It is a shame because he is a good actor and certainly can pull out a wider range of different expressions, as he proved in Little Ashes.


The film's other cast members are very interesting to watch: Michael Sheen simply shines as one of the Volturi vampires, and Billy Burke as Bella’s dad proves again that he is probably the only believable human on the screen.

The cinematography of New Moon (courtesy of director of photography Elliot Davis) is starkly different from Twilight – it’s more colorful, sharp and light. That again proves the director’s intentional shift from a spooky film towards chick-flick.

The films make the world look almost dull, unchallenging and simple when compared to the books. That is, however, the problem with all mass and pop-production, whether it’s fast food or films. While it is enjoyable to consume once in a while, I hope it doesn’t become our everyday diet.

- Victoria Russo

Coen brothers trade 'Old Men' for 'A Serious Man'

It’s difficult to categorize a new film made by the Coen brothers as one of their best. It’s powerful, hilarious and daring, but does it even matter? This calling of praise is a “been there, done that” scenario for Joel and Ethan Coen and the fact that they’ve surpassed their impressive peak kind of degrades the whole classification. Or does it? Perhaps their ‘just good’ films are now more inferior in comparison. A Serious Man, the latest Coen project and their most personal one yet, continues the journey of brave new non-genre-specific directions for the brother team. There was a time when Fargo was considered their best, or non-fans would say The Big Lebowski was their most entertaining, or critics would reflect on Blood Simple or Barton Fink as worthy of high recognition, and their big Oscar triumph for 2007’s No Country for Old Men got recognized as an opus. The Big Lebowski has enjoyed a healthy afterlife as a cult classic for wannabe lowlifes and remnants of an abandoned counter-culture, but it amounts to little more of mishmash of inspired ideas (with very good rewatch value!). If No Country was the career zenith after 25 years of a filmmaking zeitgeist, what does it say if A Serious Man is an even better, more profound and lingering work?

A Serious Man


A Serious Man, an offbeat, indirect spinoff of the story of Job, isn’t explicitly personal. The Coens’ father made his living as an economic professor, whereas Larry Gopnik (played by the outstanding unknown Michael Stuhlbarg) teaches college physics. Word is that Larry’s daughter mirrors the Coens’ sister, who later became a doctor and moved to Israel. But beyond that, Gopnik’s troubles as a married Jewish man in a 1967 Jew-centric Midwestern town are relatable and ordinary in all except their frequency. The trailer for A Serious Man is set to the sound of someone pounding Larry’s head against a blackboard as the obstacles of middle-class living are rhythmically thrust upon us. His wife wants a divorce, he gets into a car accident, his chances of acquiring tenure are diminishing and a series of anonymous letters sent to his university denigrate him.



Larry’s issues at home and at work are exacerbated by his inability to deal with them. The narrative is broken down into three subtitled acts corresponding to three rabbis Larry turns to for an enlightened perspective. The Coens, however, are more enlightened because they know that a serious man’s efforts to prevent what is happening to him are futile and irrevocable. Woody Allen comes to mind when examining how the film juggles comedy and tragedy. It ultimately leans toward the latter - with a softened landing. The ending is abrupt and curious even when compared to No Country for Old Men, but it certainly sticks with you once you figure out what little you were meant to understand. The Coens, like omniscient clouds, once again cast a shadow over viewers, intimidating, confusing and mocking them. And, being the remarkably skilled filmmakers that they are, they get away with it.

BEST COEN
Blood Simple
Barton Fink
No Country for Old Men
Fargo
The Hudsucker Proxy

GOOD COEN
Miller’s Crossing
The Big Lebowski
Raising Arizona
Burn After Reading
Intolerable Cruelty

THE REST
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
The Man Who Wasn’t There
The Ladykillers

PFF Review: The Men Who Stare At Goats

(Grant Heslov, 2009) - Out in theaters November 6.






















George Clooney, the perfect athlete in American cinema – a favorite and an underdog at the same time – stars in another very smart film about the government. The Men Who Stare at Goats – based on Jon Ronson’s nonfiction study of the U.S. Army’s experiment with trained psychic ‘Jedi warriors’ – generates most of its laughs from the fact that it's based on truth. Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) has a spiritual experience while fighting in Vietnam and soon founds the New Earth Army with Lyn Cassady (Clooney) as a prodigious psychic. Ewan McGregor plays the journalist who learns the history of this underground unit and spends most of the movie wandering the Kuwait border with Cassady. Plentiful flashbacks are often hilarious and informative. The film, a well-cast crowd pleaser, never assumes that it is a political piece above a comedy. Even if it isn’t grandiose with its satire like Dr. Strangelove or rapid-fire in its comic delivery like In the Loop, it doesn’t have to be. Festival runs should give Goats a word-of-mouth boost if it even needs it.

Apollo's Rating: 8 out of 10 (Reviewed at the Philadelphia Film Festival)

Running time: 93 mins.

Zombieland: perfect length for delivering maximum entertainment

Zombieland. This post-apocalyptic horror comedy – a type of film that more often than not strikes coal than gold – did well by its chosen extent of exposure. The film employs no delay before assaulting the viewer with blood, guts and disarray that ravage everyday life. The unsightly sight of the slobbering, obese and ruthless zombies traipsing through groceries and gift shops, coupled with the equally ruthless and fun ways the remaining survivors enact decimate them encompass a good chunk of the film’s pleasure.

The secret is that it plays it short and wins. From the get-go, the comical parody of horrific zombies and the unusual methods used to murder them could seem to grow tiresome. The premise could very well have run out of steam, but it never does. Instead, you leave the film feeling shortchanged of the long-term futures of the characters’ lives.

A clean 80-minute running time doesn’t necessarily make best use of the impact of a complex domestic drama. But it does significantly tighten a thinly plotted adventure that doesn’t require expositional complexities to be effective.

Some films like The Deer Hunter thrive on a liberal running time punctuated by the feeling of time passing by. Zombieland thrives on comic energy and hyper-adrenalized tenacity, courtesy of Woody Harrelson’s hero-type Tallahassee.


The central quartet – Tallahassee, Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) – rarely exhibits much of a reluctance to kill, and this paucity of fear cuts down on the scream or shock factor. In the mind of the survivors, the zombie killings – or at least in small, manageable doses – had come to represent the “daily grind.” Columbus was the wimpy one by default, but he still had the most systematic plan for survival, represented by his list of ultimate rules. These come in quite handy for the characters as well as for the film’s own creativity. In a recurring visual gag, the rules are emblazoned across the screen in clever and funny ways throughout.

By no means does a film this short have to qualify as “breezy.” To cite an earlier Eisenberg work The Squid and the Whale – you don’t need 100 minutes to hit home. There’s nothing like a concise and honest 81-minute representation of family, divorce and social trepidation. Though it’s definitely not a joyride and definitely a downer, Squid is also Eisenberg’s finest hour-and-a-half since his film career kicked off in 2002. He’s been terrific at portraying realistic, neurotic young adults. In Zombieland, he too often resorts to a perfunctory neurosis we’ve seen all too many times recently (albeit not in zombie-coms), but that’s mostly the script’s fault. Among other trends in the Eisenberg filmography, Lou Reed (see below) and amusement parks each play a role.

Zombieland manages to stay very alive, capitalizing on the thrill of the concept and the interactions among the characters. In this kind of economy, 80 minutes does the job more efficiently. Now if only the level of ticket prices would diminish accordingly.




Jesse Eisenberg’s Lou Reed Jukebox


The Squid and the Whale (10 out of 10)
Lou Reed – Street Hassle

Adventureland (8 out of 10)
The Velvet Underground – Pale Blue Eyes
Lou Reed – Satellite of Love
The Velvet Underground – Here She Comes Now

Zombieland (7 out of 10)
The Velvet Underground – Oh! Sweet Nuthin’



APOLLO-APPROVED LINKS
www.rubenfleischer.com
http://media.avclub.com/audio/articles/article/33350/AVT-ZombieLying.mp3
http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2009/10/getting-to-know-zombieland-director-ruben-fleische.html

Philadelphia Film Festival does a double take in 2009

The 18 ½ Philadelphia Film Festival, which has Fellini nodding in his grave, exists as an offspring to The Philadelphia Film Society following the Philadelphia Film Festival organizers' marriage split.

After a series of threatened lawsuits and heated feuds this summer, The Philadelphia Film Society diverged from its former festival-planning partner TLA Entertainment. TLA renamed the event CineFest, which will resume in the spring. Meanwhile, the PFF still belongs to The Philadelphia Film Society.

The festival, typically an April event, is under singular management and therefore celebrating a half-birthday in the spite of the behind-the-scenes divorce.

The mini-festival is scheduled to showcase 37 films from 15 countries over the course of five days - Thursday, October 15 to Sunday, October 19. Films will be shown at two Center City locations - Ritz at the Bourse (400 Ranstead St.) and the Prince Music Theater (1412 Chestnut St.).The selections are predominantly reruns of flicks shown at Cannes, CineVegas, Chicago and Toronto that will now get to play here.

The Philadelphia Film Society's J. Andrew Greenblatt told Philadelphia City Paper that director F. Gary Gray and “special guests” will be in attendance for Gray’s film Law Abiding Citizen, and director Lee Daniels will bring Precious star Gabourey Sidibe.

The roster’s highlights:

Saturday appears to have the greatest number of high-profile selections: The Men Who Stare at Goats, the kooky George Clooney CIA farce; Bronson, the biopic of a crazed British criminal; and The Messenger, the Oren Moverman (co-scripter of I’m Not There) war drama about a soldier who falls for his deceased comrade’s wife.

The closing night feature, Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire, directed by Lee Daniels of West Philly has garnered some serious buzz. Precious, an overweight, illiterate teen who is pregnant with her second child, enrolls in an alternative school and learns a thing or two. Why and how a line from the credits made its way into the title is uncertain. It also de-emphasizes the reality of such a story with the reference to its “novel” roots. Nevertheless, based on the trailer, the flick looks to be one of the most emotionally taxing films of the festival. Precious screens Sunday at 7:30 p.m. since Monday is a best-of run of the films.

The lurid modern-biblical horror film Antichrist, made by Danish auteur Lars Von Trier, has everyone talking and reacting in various forms of disgust and awe. Charlotte Gainsbourg, one-half of the film’s cast, earned the Best Actress award at May’s 62nd Cannes Film Festival. It’ll be screened Friday night at 7:45 p.m. at the Ritz.

For more info: Go to PFF09.org or call 215-253-3599 for more details. Tickets are open to public beginning Monday, October 5. Films cost $10 excluding opening night and centerpiece screenings.

Other film festivals in Philadelphia this month include FirstGlance Film Festival (Oct. 22-25), Project Twenty1 Film & Animation Festival (Oct. 1-4) and the second annual Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival (Oct. 9-11).

Movies with Exclamation Points!

A film’s title is essential in convincing a viewer about what it is their seeing and how they should react to it. Steven Soderbergh’s latest The Informant! out in theaters this Friday, bears an exclamation point, which changes the entire tone of an otherwise serious subject. Based on Kurt Eichenwald’s true-life book, The Informant, it tells the story of an Ivy League rising star at Archer Daniels Midland who teamed up with the FBI to blow the whistle on the company’s illegal price fixing tactics. The irony was that a man is such a high position would try so adamantly to overthrow his employer. Soderbergh thought this was hilarious, and so he adapted the story to fit the mold of a whimsical, offbeat comedy/thriller starring Matt Damon.


The promotional material for the film reminds me heavily of Schizopolis, a peculiar 1996 Soderbergh film in which Soderbergh himself plays two roles – that of an eccentric self-help guru and a perverted dentist. It was far too outside the realm of conventional thought for the everyday audience. The manic energy from Schizopolis seaped into The Informant! but to a containable extent.

That aside, the exclamation point certainly plays a role as an enthralling device in cinema and thankfully has been far from overused. Scrutiny of past movies with exclamation points classifies them into three dominant genres – comedies, westerns and musicals – and the occasional horror or war film. Let’s take a look at past efforts to employ the feisty grammar mark, sometimes to glorious success! And sometimes to dismal, uncompromising failure!

Them! (1954, Gordon Douglas)
A ‘50s B-movie! This film’s exclamation punctuated the scary-ass image of black-and-white radiation-giganticized ants. Oh, life before CGI…which looks equally fake. It’s more convincing than the modern-day B-movie, Eight Legged Freaks (2002, Ellory Elkayem), another David Arquette clunker.



Hatari! (1962, Howard Hawks)
Translated from Swahili to English, it means “Danger,” and therefore is appropriately exclaimed. John Wayne and wild animals = almost always exhilarating entertainment.


Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970, Richard Fleischer/Kinji Fukasaku/Toshio Masuda)
The American-Japanese epic directed by three men (one American, two Japanese) refers to Japanese code words, translating to “Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!” indicating that success had been attained.

Airplane! (1980, David Zucker/Jim Abrahams/Jerry Zucker)
This comedy classic mostly closely exemplifies the desire to add a ! to boost the comedic energy of its source material. In this case, the film being parodied, Zero Hour! (1957, Hall Bartlett), was a melodramatic aviation thriller with no laughs, and Airplane!, borrowing the plot and punctuation, added about a hundred. This technique was used in similarly humored films Top Secret! (1984, David Zucker/Jim Abrahams/Jerry Zucker) and Hot Shots! (1991, Jim Abrahams).

To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995, Beeban Kidron)
Snipes is the anti-Blade, Leguizamo’s more outlandish than his one-man show and Swayze’s the opposite of Dalton in Road House (Note: R.I.P.). The exclamation in the title, intended to be read like a postcard, is a bit confusing, especially if you think Julie Newmar is appearing or portrayed by someone in this dreck.

ALSO
Moulin Rouge! (2001, Baz Luhrmann): surreal musical that challenges convention by infusing modern pop music like Nirvana and Madonna in a Paris-set period piece.
Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969, Burt Kennedy): a comic Western parodying the rogue ‘man with no name’ antihero type.
Avanti! (1972, Billy Wilder): Jack Lemmon comedy set in Italy. Avanti! means “Forward!”
Viva Zapata! (1952, Elia Kazan): fictionalized biography of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata.
McLintock! (1963, Andrew V. McLaglen): a comical John Wayne Western loosely based on Shakespeare.
Oliver! (1968, Carol Reed)
Oklahoma! (1955, Fred Zinnemann)

Jeopardy! doesn’t count. Are we missing any?

The trailer for The Informant! is below. I haven't seen the film yet, but it appears to be not quite as funny as it wants to be. It's got droll down pat.

Endless Tyler Perry

I have never seen a Tyler Perry film in its entirety. I’ve viewed every theatrical trailer of his feature films. These endeavors are occasionally purposeful but mostly by force in a dark crowded theater when it would have been arduous to mosey out.

The dark horse box office candidate is no longer a dark horse, standing apart and often dominating ticket receipts during the year’s weakest months. Take this year – two Tyler Perry films were released – in February and this weekend in September. The two absolute worst box office months of the year (not including January because of the Oscar film carryover). And these films perform extremely well despite the fact that mainstream critics and audiences seem to be turning the other cheek.

His seventh feature film I Can Do Bad All By Myself, in theaters Friday, is based on one of Perry’s earliest plays. In the film, Madea (Perry) catches a 16-year-old girl and her younger brothers robbing her home and decides to send the children to their only relative, Aunt April, an alcoholic nightclub singer (Taraji B. Henson).

Aside from a cameo in Star Trek, Perry stays committed to his own insular projects, having produced two sitcoms, written 10 plays and established his own studio in Atlanta. Knocking out two movies a year, he and his assembly line of stock situations wrapped in moral rhetoric never cease to generate profit.

Like a wall of National Lampoon’s straight-to-DVD films on the N shelf of a video store, the T section now bears a potent stench. How did one man gain this much control?

Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail, which came out in February this year, grossed $90 million. On Rotten Tomatoes, it scored a 31 percent; and its user rating on IMDb is a dismal 3.3/10. The film’s biggest selling point for a gentleman like myself, who stands outside the exclusive TP circle, was that Madea would finally be handcuffed, restrained and locked away. This ain’t an Ernest comedy. It was time to say goodbye.



Though the box office numbers are growing, a steadily decreasing number of critics are even taking time to review the films for national publications. The total critic count, beginning with Madea’s breakout Diary of a Mad Black Woman, has gone from 106 to 43.

Granted, an audience exists for these films, one significantly larger than the unequivocal niches it appeals to.

Critics castigate Perry’s films for being melodramatic and monotonous populist propaganda. Only a small but significant constituency keeps coming back.

Every February and every September, I commend Perry for finding a way to disguise his Madea sequels as a set of episodic stories that consistently draws patrons willingly to the multiplex, generating over $400 million.

But I’ve yet to understand its appeal. At what point does a cult transmogrify into mainstream activism? And how could one overthrow its churning out of poorly made films in the name of democracy and decency?



Grading Tyler Perry ... based on the titles alone

I Can Do Bad All By Myself (September 2009) - With Taraji B. Henson. A-
Madea Goes to Jail (February 2009) – $90 million. With Derek Luke. B+
The Family That Preys (September 2008) – $37 million. With Kathy Bates and Alfre Woodard. C
Meet the Browns (March 2008) – $41.9 million. With Angela Bassett. D
Why Did I Get Married? (October 2007) – $55 million. With Janet Jackson and Jill Scott. C-
Daddy’s Little Girls (February 2007) – $31.3 million. With Gabrielle Union and Idris Elba. D+
Madea’s Family Reunion (February 2006) – $63.3 million. With Blair Underwood. C+
Diary of a Mad Black Woman (February 2005) – $50.4 million. With Kimberly Elise. B-

Director Todd Solondz makes unofficial sequel to Happiness

Life During Wartime – not to be confused with the Talking Heads song – is the latest project from writer-director Todd Solondz, who specializes in introspective tragicomedy. It premieres at the Venice Film Festival between now and Sept. 12, competing for the Golden Lion with more than 20 films.



Solondz’s finest film Happiness was a hilariously sad ensemble piece about three middle-class New Jersey sisters who have problems with their families and sex lives. It was originally rated NC-17 in 1998, then its rating was ‘surrendered,’ meaning the MPAA essentially gave up and it now has no rating. With Life During Wartime, He has chosen to revisit the miserable set of characters, one a pedophile (originally played by Dylan Baker) and one a pervert (originally played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman), with an entirely new cast.

Solondz told the Associated Press the film is more political than the first and he craved the freedom to play around with his characters. “If I wanted to make a white character black. Some characters age 20 years, some five,” he said.

"I guess it's something of a post traumatic stress disorder kind of movie genre," Solondz told reporters. "I didn't ever think I'd go back to them. They weren't haunting me. Once I started writing I think what I needed was to feel free to play with these characters in any way I wanted to."

The new cast features Allison Janney, Michael Lerner, Michael K. Williams (replacing Hoffman), Shirley Henderson and Charlotte Rampling.



Since Happiness was possibly the most overlooked and brilliant black comedy of the ‘90s, I think this comeback for Solondz, who hasn’t made a film since the hit-or-miss experiment Palindromes in 2004, will finally generate much deserved attention to his work. Welcome to the Dollhouse and the second half of Storytelling are also gems in his catalogue.

apollo's bog.: Love Happens, Fame

This is the September edition of Apollo’s Bog, a new monthly feature that takes a look at upcoming films and music for which we have genuinely low expectations. While we want to avoid jumping the gun and panning a film or album before experiencing it, these selections are specifically chosen because we doubt it can gracefully flutter its wings upon release. Based on the sway of its marketing campaign, trailers and singles, we judge art sullenly and aptly.
FILM VERSION




Love Happens (Sept. 18, Brandon Camp)

THE PLOT
A best-selling self-help guru, coping with the death of his wife, falls for a florist that he meets at one of his seminars.

THE BEEF
This cookie-cutter romantic drama starring Jennifer Aniston and Bill Pullman – I’m sorry, I mean Aaron Eckhart – is either a throwback to precursors or a disaster zone of unoriginality.

The trailer pre-packages its torpid genre ingredients. Behold the holier-than-thou plot device, the meet cute. Eckhart and Aniston bump into each other turning a corner in a hallway, and in a bout of love at first sight, he asks, “Would you like to have a cup of coffee?” There’s not even an effort made to give us something we haven’t seen before.

Aniston, who’s suffering career death Kate Hudson style, is sleepwalking through another ill-fated box office dud about whimsical romantic love missing in her own overly publicized life.

Formal grievance: Enough close-ups of Aaron Eckart’s mug. Thank You For Smoking, Meet Bill and The Dark Knight all had plenty of that.

Judy Greer is rudimentarily typecast as every girl’s closest pal in these types of films. Greer told Entertainment Weekly, of working with Aniston, “All the roles that she’s played – I’ve always wanted to be her best friend.” Seemingly unconcerned about career mobility, Greer may never be a legit lead.

The trailer reveals way too much, including Eckhart running through a forest after taking advice from Dan Fogler. It actually shows us the scene in which Eckhart shows up at the flower shop and the two decide to get together, which is clearly later on in the film.

Another unchallenging role for Aniston, Love Happens is a commodity that has been spewing out of the studio system for people who live as boring, clichéd lives as its characters. The demand for it died before the extinction of VHS tapes.

Trailer music report card:
Goo Goo Dolls, “Better Days” C-




Fame (Sept. 25, Kevin Tancharoen)

THE PLOT
Dance students struggle for perfection at a competitive performing arts high school in New York. Alan Parker’s Academy Award-winning 1980 original ranked 42 on Entertainment Weekly’s list of the 50 best high school films.

THE BEEF
When it was decided that the remake of Fame would not be R-rated like the original but rather a PG kid-friendly version, it must have a fairly simple solution to a problem. How could the High School Musical franchise continue to be a stable moneymaker in the multiplex without officially being a part of the franchise? Remake Fame – diluted for kids!

This unnecessary September release is an excuse not an exhibit. It won’t have half the impact of the original, though it looks visually polished, it’s mostly a money grubber in a typical deadspot in the year of the box office. September is almost as bad as January – but at least Kelsey Grammer, who appears as a member of the performing arts faculty, gets to juxtapose the series debut of his next big sitcom Hank with this forced attempt at a blockbuster.

The film has been described as a reinvention instead of a remake – a ‘reinvention’ that just happens to capitalize on name brand recognition and an enormous fan following that adore a film much different than this safe teen fare. The big money men merely wanted to see the title song shine once more with dollar signs.

Unlike Parker, who had a distinguished directing resume at the time of Fame, Kevin Tancharoen has thus far choreographed Madonna, directed Britney Spear’s Onyx Hotel tour and remixed projects for Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson and Tyrese. So Tancharoen understands dance choreography and maybe a little about music, but can he handle a film of emotional depth? Can he choreograph ambition, triumph and adversity in the form of affecting pathos in between those dance steps? Yawn.

Trailer music report card:
“Fame” (cover) B-

How the War Should Have Been Won

Review of Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)

The tone is so gleefully vengeful in Inglourious Basterds it’s as if Quentin Tarantino is hunched over in hockey gear cherrypicking at the goal line, securing a victory for the Jewish oppressed.

His revisionist history of World War II – envisioning a Jewish-American team of Nazi scalpers led by Tennessee gentile Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) winning the war – is a glowing pop-art pastiche of epic proportions. Derivative of spaghetti westerns, exploitation cinema and ‘80s luxury glamour (courtesy of David Bowie’s “Cat People (Putting Out the Fire)” in an exquisite sequence), Inglourious Basterds is a deliriously calculated, thoroughly thrilling Jewish-American wet dream.























The film opens in Nazi-occupied France with a chilling, layered scene in which sinister Nazi Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) correctly suspects a farmer is hiding Jews. A few years later, Shosanna (Melanie Laurent, a sexy noir-ish ingenue), the sole escapee from this massacre, owns a movie theater in France and meets a Nazi war hero (Daniel Bruhl). He convinces Joseph Goebbels to hold the premiere of a new war film in her theater, setting off a chain of events.

This is QT playing around like a chef dabbling with confectionary delights, and of course cinema ultimately plays a major role in the course of American History: Vol. II.

The epic structure borrows chapter divisions from Tarantino’s last epic attempt Kill Bill, and the five chapters each willfully serve a specific purpose. Lengthy scenes are constructed brilliantly. Civil conversation, as intentionally tame as a drinking game with playing cards, escalates into interrogation and often results in an act of severe bloodshed influenced by Tarantino’s DePalma-style thirst for violence. The viewer gets antsy not bored for peripheral vision during a few long scenes.

Unlike QT’s creative slump Death Proof, the dialogue among a few seated characters trickles with boiling tension and all the animosity that’s left unsaid. Death Proof’s groups of Chatty Kathy girls rambled and lulled the viewer to sleep; Inglourious Basterds' war is fought with words and gestures, particularly how one counts to three.

On the acting front, Waltz is superb and, in the span of the first 10 minutes, represents the insidious distrust and bigotry of the Nazi army. Laurent, as the beautiful Shosanna, is outstanding and the film’s focal Jewish heroine.



The misleading title indicates that the Basterds are the film’s centerpiece, and though they’re a compelling, motley Jew crew, their exploits are only seen in segments. These snapshots don’t give us much of a backstory, and Aldo, the quirky, impassioned leader, is the biggest caricature of the lot. Pitt delivers a good performance, but if it wasn’t for Pitt’s casting (still not the best pick), his commanding presence when we first meet him delivering a Patton speech would be heavily deflated into a persona. He’s an amiable cardboard cut-out of a hero, but his personal motivation for such a risky operation is unexplored.

That the film is a bit overstuffed is a secondary thought, however. The viewer wants more of the Basterds, but there are no plot strands worth cutting to preserve its already 153-minute running time. Word is Tarantino has 500 additional pages of unproduced writing about the Basterds, a possible prequel that could just as easily fall by the wayside like the Pulp Fiction/Reservoir Dogs prequel The Vega Brothers and the Kill Bill follow-up with Vivica A. Fox’s growing daughter.

The finale in Shosanna’s theater is a fiery bullet-ridden tour-of-force of anxiety, fear and vengeance. The film unites the audience in a very popular cause and exploits all it can in enveloping us in giddy ecstasy of taking down Hitler. The pleasure and catharsis is so enthralling the past running time doesn’t seem taxing at all and you don’t wish it to end just yet.

Inglourious Basterds is Tarantino’s greatest effort since Jackie Brown, and the final line and final shot hit you like a smiling bullet.

HIPNESS RATING: 8/10
ACTUAL RATING: 8/10

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Filmmakers talk about mockumentary short The Bridge Bash

In 2003, the greatest party of all time almost didn't happen. One DJ saved the night... and changed the world.



On one abstruse night in 2003, there was a legendary party held on the Brooklyn Bridge that every attendee hazily remembered but kept secret. Details were fuzzy, and the identities of the approximately 600 affluent, high-profile partygoers remained cloaked – until now. Like two groomsmen-turned-fratty sleuths in The Hangover, a pair of New York-based filmmakers sought to find out just what the hell happened. Or so it seems.

The Bridge Bash is a star-studded mockumentary short due online in late December. APOLLO’s CRED had a chat with the two men behind the party puzzle piece-finding mission, Adam Moreno, the writer, producer and co-director, and Alex Mamlet, the producer and co-director. As a part of their absurdist PR plan for promoting the film, they pretended all this was real and that master disc scratcher DJ Blue who saved the ‘party’ took years to find – despite the fact that the real DJ Blue is in fact Moreno himself.

Providing necessary clout to the film is an eclectic line-up of celebrities, as indicated in the trailer, including Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Ethan Hawke, Justin Long, Billy Crudup, Sam Rockwell, Peter Dinklage, David Wain, Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter. Additional details about the film are available at bridgebash.com.

Moreno’s background is largely in contributing musically to soundtracks for a few films including The Ten, and Mamlet’s mostly known for documentary work. The gang is still editing and hoping to create awareness in an effort to gather more interviews and facts. They talked to us about the project and improvised lies surprisingly well.

AC: How’d you guys arrive at the concept for this project?
Alex: Myself and Adam had heard about this party for years, and we also heard about DJ Blue, but we’d never really met anybody who had met him. Was it your uncle that worked with him at the sanitation department?
Adam: Yes.
Alex: Blue’s uncle worked in the sanitation department. He told us that [Blue] had recently run into some money problems and was excited about getting his story out there. So we tracked him down. We got to meet him for the first time and learn how legendary this party was. After the interview with him, we sort of became superjazzed that for the first time this story could be told.
Adam: We had about this party and we’d sort of been spinning it as the most famous party ever, but the truth is it was a very underground thing that just fabulous people were at. And there was no footage. So a lot of the people we went to – it wasn’t working. We’ve been trying to get this off the ground for a while. It wasn’t working until we were able to hook up with Paul Rudd, and that really set it off. He got us access to other people that were there, people that weren’t there. And we’ve just been compiling footage until we could get the interview with DJ Blue.

AC: What were some challenges and advantages that came with making an authentic true-to-facts documentary?
Adam: One of things that made it difficult was there were no cameras allowed at this party. But one of the great things about us putting this Web site out is we’re now starting to hear from people who were there who filmed it, and footage is starting to surface, which is really exciting for us as filmmakers.
Alex: I’ve done some documentaries about the lore of parties and party crashing, so I was always fascinated by the idea of this party that people aren’t sure even happened. And it was so explicit and so private and there was no footage taken. When Blue and I hooked up, we brought the sensibility of really wanting to get to the bottom of this story: what happened on this sort of magical night.



AC: How’d you assemble an eclectic group of celebrities to talk about a party from six years ago?
Adam: Once we were able to get to Rudd, more people came out. When people heard about DJ Blue, they got involved and were more willing to talk about their experience. People in the hip-hop community and club scene, some athletes. People that actually worked the party as well. People that did catering – some of their stories are really interesting because they had high-end everything from the sound system to the food. It was like Tom Cruise’s wedding where you had to sign the releases. We haven’t interviewed yet – but we spoke to people from the Mayor’s office and we want to get them on camera to talk about releases. How long the bridge was closed for, what the traffic issues were. It’s overwhelming because we’re getting access to start this little short, and it’s almost more than we can handle.

AC: What was the purpose of posting a trailer this early into production?
Adam: We made a trailer in part to light a fire under our own asses and finish it. Some documentaries take years, and we’re not doing Muhammed Ali. We’re doing the story of a party from one night, and we didn’t want to dwell on it. We’re doing a short and we want to get it out as soon as possible.

AC: The trailer gave me the very strong impression this was a mockumentary. Almost too strong. Can you confirm that?
Adam: It’s not a mockumentary. The reason we put this trailer out was to help us get this footage that we’ve really been struggling to get, to be able to tell the story well. We like, though, that angle, and it’s been provocative that people have been asking us, ‘Is this bullshit?’ As some of the responses start coming in, from people that were there, we’re able to start painting actual pictures of the footage. People had a tough time figuring out whether or not it was real, which was really interesting for us.

AC: So it’s kind of a mystery you’re curiously anxious to solve.
Adam: In the age of the Internet, the allure of something that was once properly kept under wraps is no longer an enigma. By making a film about it, we’re basically going to be destroying what made that special because we want to publicize it.

AC: Do you think many in the New York in-crowd care about keeping the party’s anonymity intact or do they not even care anymore?
Alex: There were a lot of people that were so fucked up that night they don’t remember it. […] Like anything controversial, it’ll spur a dialogue.

QT's Top 20 film list contains no references to himself!

The latest Quentin Tarantino extravaganza Inglourious Basterds – which The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg argues no Jew would have had the cojones to make – is finally here Friday. Since QT’s name is bigger than anything related to the production itself, and its ho-hum reception at Cannes, he recently told LA Weekly about his 20 favorite films that were released in the past 17 years – since his notable directing career took flight. The list does not include Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, From Dusk Till Dawn, Four Rooms (ha!), Natural Born Killers, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill or Grindhouse.

#1:
Battle Royale (Kinji Fukasaku)

#2-20 (in alphabetical order):
Anything Else (Woody Allen)
Audition (Takashi Miike)
The Blade (Tsui Hark)
Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater)
Dogville (Lars von Trier)
Fight Club (David Fincher)
Friday (F. Gary Gray)
The Host (Joon-ho Bong)
The Insider (Michael Mann)
Joint Security Area (Chan-wook Park)
Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola)
The Matrix (Andy Wachowski & Larry Wachowski)
Memories of Murder (Joon-ho Bong)
Police Story III (Supercop) (Stanley Tong)
Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright)
Speed (Jan de Bont)
Team America: World Police (Trey Parker)
Unbreakable (M. Night Shyamalan)

The list is an assortment of blockbusters that meet an entertainment quota, Asian cinema that was overlooked in the states and a truly forgettable Woody Allen comedy. You know, the one with Jason Biggs.

QT adopts the auteur theory in making his picks, it seems, with writers-directors like his buddies Paul Thomas Anderson, Richard Linklater and Sofia Coppola showing up, as well as Lars Von Triers (I would’ve gone with Dancer in the Dark over Dogville), Michael Mann (digging The Insider pick but no love for Heat?) and M. Night Shyamalan. He thankfully used restraint in nepotism by not including his friend Eli Roth’s horrid horror film Hostel.

Being a utilitarian of international film history in bundles, he ironically takes a swing at British cinema, saying Shaun of the Dead is a one of the rare great British films. Although I wouldn’t go that far in evaluating the hilariously derivative zombie-com, I appreciate the honesty.

Film Review: World’s Greatest Dad

Complete with spoilers!




A thorough analysis of World’s Greatest Dad, in theaters August 21, comes packaged with strain and restraint. It’s a bleak tragicomedy that reveals a glum plot twist, which barrages you with multifarious feelings. An intense discussion of such would ruin the film for you, so please note the upcoming spoiler tabs.

What begins as a dallying, shrewd observation of modern malfunctioning father-son relationships derails into an expression of unanimous societal narcissism. Though the twist is refreshing technique, the film never quite recovers its deft perception of human behavior.

Oddball ‘80s comedian Bobcat Goldthwait wrote and directed this satire starring Robin Williams as Lance, a failed writer and single father who teaches high school English. His recalcitrant son Kyle (played by Spy Kids’ Daryl Sabara), an attendee of the school, is the absolute worst. The Problem Child in highschooler form, Kyle’s a perverted, spoiled loner who abhors his father and almost all natural hobbies except sexual self-pleasure.

The film starts out entertaining and meandering, with Kyle’s ineptitude and apathy serving as the common punch line. The script is socially conscious of the tricks and verbal prestidigitations of the everyday smart aleck. At the 37-minute mark, the tempo switches up a bit, and the film goes where you don’t expect it.

SPOILER ALERT: After an evening out to dinner with Lance and Claire (Lance’s teacher girlfriend, played by Alexie Gilmore), Kyle commits an embarrassing act of sexual experimentation David Carradine-style n his bedroom, accidentally killing himself. Lance discovers the body and, in recreating his death to look like a suicide, crafts an articulate suicide note that infers Kyle had much to communicate.

From here forward, the script fleshes out Lance in a comparatively less compelling manner and takes a relatively long time to really get its point across about Lance. In the process, it loses its hilarious, rhythmic display of spirited vulgar dialogue previously exhibited.

Lance at one point quotes Simon Pegg, “Death is an impediment not an energy drink” – an appropriate allusion because death indeed drives the plot forward quite momentously.

SPOILER ALERT: The film’s attempt to convey Kyle’s posthumous impact as a misunderstood genius is never quite convincing. The idea that the school students who hated him now revere him is obviously ridiculous, but it’s exploited here rather than effectively critiqued. You initially sympathize with Lance and want him to be a successful writer, and then tragedy strikes, and you definitely don’t. You only feel pity, and this detachment strangles the film’s vitality.

Goldthwait’s reputation stands for more of a name - and a squeaky voice - than a body of work, but with this he’s drawn new attention to himself. The production is certainly higher maintenance than his last indie film Sleeping Dogs Lie (2006), in which he scoured for cast and crew on Craigslist. This wickedly sour tasting from Goldthwait’s warped mind also finally gives something bitter and dogmatic for Williams to work with.

What’s additionally shocking is a major studio’s willingness to get behind a project that depicts the disturbing and the immoral with a gleeful vivacity.

World’s Greatest Dad is an iron-fisted, fearless comedy that strives for full-circle satirical brilliance but shines a lot less bright after dishing out a few hard-to-swallow surprises.

HIPNESS RATING: 6/10
ACTUAL RATING: 5.5/10

What’s Out: From the critics’ notepad

District 9 (Neill Blomkamp)

"District 9, with a chump-change budget of $30 million, soars on the imagination of its creators. This baby has the stuff to end the movie summer on a note of dazzle and distinction."
- Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

“District 9 is an amazing movie, one that will sweep you up emotionally and intellectually, that will give you plenty to think over and even more to marvel at. It's an achievement that needs to be seen to be believed, and once it's seen it's guaranteed to be beloved.”
-Devin Faraci, CHUD

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard (Neal Brennan)

“As anyone who has seen Robert Zemeckis’ 1980 cult classic Used Cars or John Landis’ fascinating 2003 documentary Slasher can attest, the milieu of used car salesmen can inspire great comedy but the funniest thing about The Goods is that the presence of James Brolin pretty much ensures that Barbra Streisand will have to sit through it at least once.”
- Peter Sobczynski, eFilmCritic.com

“The movie gores many sacred cows, insulting families, capitalism, sexual responsibility, political correctness and smoking bans, with glee if not originality.”
- Colin Covert, The Minneapolis Star Tribune

The Time Traveler’s Wife (Robert Schwentke)

“If you allow yourself to think for one moment of the paradoxes, contradictions and logical difficulties involved, you will be lost. The movie supports no objective thought.”
- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Ponyo (Hayao Miyazaki)

“Far more upbeat than much of Miyazaki’s oeuvre, limned in bright pastel colors where even destruction is golden, Ponyo possesses an almost demonic childish energy and a delight in form stronger than reason or narrative.”

- Ronnie Scheib, Variety

BEST BET(S): Ponyo with your kids. District 9 without your kids. The Goods if you don't have kids/are desperate.