Wow, when did Starz/Anchor Bay pick this film up? It just played Sundance a couple weeks ago, so it must have been purchased before the festival in order to give it such a quick theatrical release. I'm kind of surprised that it got one at all, but glad; it's a good movie, if not quite a great one, and looks pretty nice on the big screen. It's certainly one that will encourage an audience to stay inside for the rest of the day, though!
One thing I did kind of dig was how, even though it was shot in Utah, it's got a lot of obvious New England DNA in it. The Holliston ski resort is named after director Adam Green's Massachusetts hometown. There's a big poster for Newbury Comics in the background of some scenes, and I wonder if that's product placement, an inside joke on Green's part that I'm not privy to, or a tip of the hat to them for how hard they pushed Hatchet after noting that one of the characters spent the movie wearing a t-shirt with their logo (I'll have to stop by one to see if they're pushing this movie, especially considering there are locations near both theaters playing it). The characters mention going to Papa Gino's for pizza.
Heck, they even off-handedly use "wicked" in a sentence without it being a goofy, "look at the funny New England accents" thing. I'm not sure I've ever seen that in a movie.
That's probably not really a great reason to like a movie, but I figure it's not a bad reason to like it a little more.
Frozen
* * * (out of four)
Seen 7 February 2010 at AMC Boston Common #3 (first-run)
Frozen is straightforward, at times almost to a fault. In short order, we get friends with a certain amount of tension between them, a situation we really wouldn't want to be in, and things getting worse. Fortunately, this is a case where "things get worse" means "things get good".
The friends are Joe Lynch (Shawn Ashmore), skiing enthusiast, Dan Walker (Kevin Zegers), snowboarder and Joe's best friend, and Parker O'Neil (Emma Bell), Dan's girlfriend hitting the slopes for the first time. Nice folks, although Joe's a little irritated about not getting to spend a lot of time with the guy who has been his best friend since first grade now that there's a girl involved, and about how Parker is keeping them on the beginners' slopes. That's why they beg the chair-lift operator to give them one last run as the Holliston ski resort closes early on Sunday night. There's a mix-up, though, and the lift is shut down while they're still halfway up. Naturally, the early closing was because of bad weather coming, and the place won't be open again until Friday.
Director Adam Green doesn't mess around trying to dazzle the audience with technique, allowing the story to play out in an almost completely linear fashion. There will be no flashbacks to the characters back at campus. There are no bursts of frantic action which "surprisingly" end back up in the lift as a character wakes from a dream or reconsiders a bad idea. A leads to B leads to C, in a more or less logical fashion given initial conditions, and Green doesn't feel the need to juice it up with shocking twists or jump music.
That gets the film off to sort of a slow, predictable start, but when things reach the getting worse stage, he doesn't mess around. A bad decision has immediate and ugly consequences, we've barely had time to adjust to how screwed the characters are now before the stakes are raised again, and then... Well, Green lets us see that the gloves are off. Some of what happens is not for the squeamish - whether you're talking about frostbite, the other effects of exposure, or more direct injuries - but Green and company are very canny with how they use the blood, nasty make-up, and the like. They never really focus on the immediate aftermath of something nasty, but make excellent use of a moment when the audience's imagination can come up with something worse than anything he could show.
The movie isn't really a horror show, though. Most of it is carried by the three main actors, who do a fine job of making their characters familiar, recognizable people rather than playing on one specific trait. Ashmore's Joe, for instance, is described as a pot-smoker early on, but rather than stumbling through the movie as comic relief, Ashmore plays him as a guy who bluffs his way through fear (though he is also the funniest of the group). Kevin Zegers is the straight man much of the time, but he plays the guy in the middle smoothly. Emma Bell (who gets an "introducing" credit), gets to be the one ready to freak out and cry, but does it in such a way as Parker never seems weak as opposed to the situation being tough.
It's not quite a perfect little thriller; Green will occasionally make a big deal of something - like skin staying stuck to the metal to which it was frozen before being pulled away - and then not pay a whole lot of attention to it later. Some audience members may look askance at the wolves who make the mountain a little more threatening in the second half, as it strikes me that most resorts would have fences to keep wild animals away from the slopes (although I'm willing to either believe that they do show up regularly when the courses are closed or posit that the bad weather knocked a fence down). We only get to the last sequence because of a bit of luck that runs against the rest of the movie's faith in Murphy's Law. And while the first act does a nice job of introducing us to the characters and getting us to like them, those who have seen enough movies will likely see the purpose of those scenes and want Green to get on with it.
Which he does, and does well. Frozen spins a fair amount of tension out of a simple situation - indeed, a story that many other movies would want to dress up. It may not quite be a nail-biter, but it also never lets go once it has grabbed the audience.
Also at EFC
Sunday, February 07, 2010
Thursday, February 04, 2010
Mystery Team
I'm not going to say much here, so that I can get it up during my lunch break and remind folks that Mystery Team is having its last three screenings at the Brattle tonight (4 February 2010), and if you're in the area and haven't seen it, you really should; it's funny.
Mystery Team
* * * (out of four)
Seen 2 February 2010 at the Brattle Theatre (first-run)
Aw, nuts. Granted, it's not as if I'm likely to ever actually be able to produce Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators movies, but it's on my list of things that I would like to do if I suddenly and inexplicably wind up in a position of power in Hollywood. But now it's even more unlikely, as the folks at Derrick Comedy have gone and spoofed the genre and done it well.
Jason (Donald Glover), Duncan (D.C. Pierson), and Charlie (Dominic Dierkes) have been playing at being kid detectives since they were little, but what was cute at the age of seven is more than a little weird a month away from graduating high school. They're still ready to answer the call whenever any neighborhood kid comes around, although when Brianna (Daphne Ciccarelle) asks them to find out who murdered her parents, their first reaction is that they are out of their league. Jason persuades them to take the case, though, saying that this is their chance to be taken seriously, and it doesn't hurt that Brianna's older sister Kelly (Aubrey Plaza) makes him feel kind of funny. But if they look like fools to start with, imagine how much trouble they'll be in when they do accidentally stumble across an actual clue.
Suffice it to say, a great deal. Most of the comedy comes from the fact that most of the characters are clueless - the Mystery Team are bizarrely unaware of how to be more than overgrown kids, their pal Jordy (Bobby Moynihan) is almost willfully arrested, and others are dangerous in how little they think. The bread and butter, though, is Jason, Duncan, and Charlie, and to a large extent, how much one enjoys the movie is going to depend on how much one enjoys watching them make asses of themselves. A good portion of that is more cringe-worthy than funny, but there is some inspired lunacy - such as the guys misunderstanding who would be the clientele of a gentleman's club - and each bit generally leads relatively quickly to another, so that jokes don't wear out their welcome.
Combining dumb-guy jokes with a mystery is tricky; it often leads to such relatively unsatisfying turns of plot as the characters suddenly getting much smarter or the villains having to be even stupider. There's bits of that here, but Pierson, Glover, and Dierkes (who, in addition to starring, wrote the screenplay, with director Dan Eckman and producer Meggie McFadden also contribution to the story) do an impressive job of getting these characters to the point where they could actually solve it, going from blind stumbling to doggedly following a trail of clues to actually figuring something out. It's not entirely smooth sailing; one pivotal scene requires Duncan to show a lot more self-awareness than one might expect, even considering that he seems to have that trait in abundance compared to Jason and Charlie.
Especially Charlie. Dominic Dierkes gives one of the funniest dumb-guy performances I've seen in a while, no mean feat considering that his straight men aren't exactly much brighter. It's often a display of pinpoint comic timing, combined with a total guilelessness and just enough of an ache to be something he's not to keep us from sneering at him. D.C. Pierson also does a good job of making Duncan comically awkward and deluded but just bright enough to have some idea of what their impending adulthood means. Aubrey Plaza, meanwhile, shows us Kelly understanding all too well what growing up means, but also makes us believe that she could, in fact, warm up to these guys as opposed to just look down on them.
In the middle of it all is Donald Glover as Jason, a pretty nifty performance. Jason's got to be clueless enough for us to get a lot of laughs at his expense, but smart enough to make progress on solving a murder. He's also got to hang around kids in a clearly inappropriate way but come across as more harmless than creepy. Glover hits the bulls-eye almost all the time, giving us a guy we can root for as well as laugh at. He's involved in most of the movie's jokes, and even the cringe-worthy ones are pretty funny.
A lot of Mystery Team can be cringe-worthy; it not only spends most of its time making sport of its main characters but also has no trouble going for the gross-out humor. But even as the movie is comedically savaging its characters for their avoidance of adulthood, it retains just enough fondness for mystery-solving kids to make the whole thing a sunny, upbeat experience, even when it realistically shouldn't be.
Also at EFC
Mystery Team
* * * (out of four)
Seen 2 February 2010 at the Brattle Theatre (first-run)
Aw, nuts. Granted, it's not as if I'm likely to ever actually be able to produce Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators movies, but it's on my list of things that I would like to do if I suddenly and inexplicably wind up in a position of power in Hollywood. But now it's even more unlikely, as the folks at Derrick Comedy have gone and spoofed the genre and done it well.
Jason (Donald Glover), Duncan (D.C. Pierson), and Charlie (Dominic Dierkes) have been playing at being kid detectives since they were little, but what was cute at the age of seven is more than a little weird a month away from graduating high school. They're still ready to answer the call whenever any neighborhood kid comes around, although when Brianna (Daphne Ciccarelle) asks them to find out who murdered her parents, their first reaction is that they are out of their league. Jason persuades them to take the case, though, saying that this is their chance to be taken seriously, and it doesn't hurt that Brianna's older sister Kelly (Aubrey Plaza) makes him feel kind of funny. But if they look like fools to start with, imagine how much trouble they'll be in when they do accidentally stumble across an actual clue.
Suffice it to say, a great deal. Most of the comedy comes from the fact that most of the characters are clueless - the Mystery Team are bizarrely unaware of how to be more than overgrown kids, their pal Jordy (Bobby Moynihan) is almost willfully arrested, and others are dangerous in how little they think. The bread and butter, though, is Jason, Duncan, and Charlie, and to a large extent, how much one enjoys the movie is going to depend on how much one enjoys watching them make asses of themselves. A good portion of that is more cringe-worthy than funny, but there is some inspired lunacy - such as the guys misunderstanding who would be the clientele of a gentleman's club - and each bit generally leads relatively quickly to another, so that jokes don't wear out their welcome.
Combining dumb-guy jokes with a mystery is tricky; it often leads to such relatively unsatisfying turns of plot as the characters suddenly getting much smarter or the villains having to be even stupider. There's bits of that here, but Pierson, Glover, and Dierkes (who, in addition to starring, wrote the screenplay, with director Dan Eckman and producer Meggie McFadden also contribution to the story) do an impressive job of getting these characters to the point where they could actually solve it, going from blind stumbling to doggedly following a trail of clues to actually figuring something out. It's not entirely smooth sailing; one pivotal scene requires Duncan to show a lot more self-awareness than one might expect, even considering that he seems to have that trait in abundance compared to Jason and Charlie.
Especially Charlie. Dominic Dierkes gives one of the funniest dumb-guy performances I've seen in a while, no mean feat considering that his straight men aren't exactly much brighter. It's often a display of pinpoint comic timing, combined with a total guilelessness and just enough of an ache to be something he's not to keep us from sneering at him. D.C. Pierson also does a good job of making Duncan comically awkward and deluded but just bright enough to have some idea of what their impending adulthood means. Aubrey Plaza, meanwhile, shows us Kelly understanding all too well what growing up means, but also makes us believe that she could, in fact, warm up to these guys as opposed to just look down on them.
In the middle of it all is Donald Glover as Jason, a pretty nifty performance. Jason's got to be clueless enough for us to get a lot of laughs at his expense, but smart enough to make progress on solving a murder. He's also got to hang around kids in a clearly inappropriate way but come across as more harmless than creepy. Glover hits the bulls-eye almost all the time, giving us a guy we can root for as well as laugh at. He's involved in most of the movie's jokes, and even the cringe-worthy ones are pretty funny.
A lot of Mystery Team can be cringe-worthy; it not only spends most of its time making sport of its main characters but also has no trouble going for the gross-out humor. But even as the movie is comedically savaging its characters for their avoidance of adulthood, it retains just enough fondness for mystery-solving kids to make the whole thing a sunny, upbeat experience, even when it realistically shouldn't be.
Also at EFC
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
This Week In Tickets: 25 January 2010 to 31 January 2010
Unreal. I go pretty much all last year without losing a ticket stub, and this year I've lost two in the first month. I'm guessing that this one either wound up tossed in the trash with the little slip the concession stand at AMC Boston Common gives you so that you can claim your mozzarella sticks when they come out of the kitchen, or somehow slipped out when Matt and I went to the Elephant & Castle for lunch. There was a lot of paper moving around there.
I managed to keep a lid on a minor horrified reaction when I gave Matt the Red Sox tickets I got him and his finacée for Christmas, because he placed them in his wallet and folded them. They're going to be in rough shape three months ago, when the time comes to actually use them.
(It's a little amusing that the piece of paper that tells you how many MovieWatcher points you have - 393, a neat trick considering you get two per movie - has an exhortation to join MovieWatcher. Since that's the one I got when watching Edge of Darkness, it can sub for its ticket stub.)
Mostly empty space, since the Friday night Mystery Team with filmmakers in attendance was sold out by the time I got there, and the Chlotrudis Society nomination meeting ran long enough for me to miss Saturday's. It was fun, although I'll have to get there earlier next time, as when there are only a few seats left to choose from, the already-high probability of being caught in the middle of a conversation about cats climbs frighteningly close to certainty. Here's the results; sometime later this week I'll post my thoughts on them compared to the Oscar list.
One thing I'm a little disappointed that I missed was the AfterDark horror fest; unfortunately, it's just too difficult to get out to Revere for movies that, at least in recent years, have been far under the radar. The year it was at Fresh Pond, I actually went to Fresh Pond for quite a bit of it, but I'm kind of surprised that they can't get it booked someplace closer to Boston proper than Revere. Does it really draw such a small crowd that the Somerville, Arlington Capitol, Fresh Pond, Harvard Square Cinema, and the Coolidge all figure they're better off not giving it a screen? If so, I'd be surprised if they had any sort of theatrical release before the DVD release next year.
Edge of Darkness
* * * (out of four)
Seen 31 January 2010 at AMC Boston Common #10 (first-run)
Based upon the previews to this, I wondered a couple of things: Did Mel Gibson listen to anything but Kennedy speeches while working on his Boston accent? If so, bad choice, because I don't believe that anyone outside that family actually speaks that way. Also, how much Ray Winstone are we going to see, because he looked aces in the previews.
I suspect that there was more of Winstone's character in the original BBC miniseries, and not just because six hours of time lets you see more of everybody. At times we seem to be a bit too aware of the streamlining; it's the sort of movie where they'll show the villains discussing something and then cut to Gibson's Thomas Craven knowing it. It's not that he couldn't; it's just that you can see the filmmakers trying to save a little time.
It's a good role for Mel Gibson, who has been laying low for a while; he plays this sort of tough guy well. For much of the movie, I was thinking that it was too bad he hasn't played Mike Hammer (yet), as the plot of the movie reminded me of Kiss Me Deadly: Detective who tends to work as a blunt object winding up way over his head, dealing with conspiracies and nasty nuclear material. It works in large part because Gibson does great hard-boiled; give him a line filled with pulp and he will sell the heck out of it. And while I imagine that you could cut Winstone's character, I'm glad they didn't, because the scenes of them together are gold; two different varieties of tough guy who understand and respect each other, and thus aren't trying to outdo one another.
I managed to keep a lid on a minor horrified reaction when I gave Matt the Red Sox tickets I got him and his finacée for Christmas, because he placed them in his wallet and folded them. They're going to be in rough shape three months ago, when the time comes to actually use them.
(It's a little amusing that the piece of paper that tells you how many MovieWatcher points you have - 393, a neat trick considering you get two per movie - has an exhortation to join MovieWatcher. Since that's the one I got when watching Edge of Darkness, it can sub for its ticket stub.)
Mostly empty space, since the Friday night Mystery Team with filmmakers in attendance was sold out by the time I got there, and the Chlotrudis Society nomination meeting ran long enough for me to miss Saturday's. It was fun, although I'll have to get there earlier next time, as when there are only a few seats left to choose from, the already-high probability of being caught in the middle of a conversation about cats climbs frighteningly close to certainty. Here's the results; sometime later this week I'll post my thoughts on them compared to the Oscar list.
One thing I'm a little disappointed that I missed was the AfterDark horror fest; unfortunately, it's just too difficult to get out to Revere for movies that, at least in recent years, have been far under the radar. The year it was at Fresh Pond, I actually went to Fresh Pond for quite a bit of it, but I'm kind of surprised that they can't get it booked someplace closer to Boston proper than Revere. Does it really draw such a small crowd that the Somerville, Arlington Capitol, Fresh Pond, Harvard Square Cinema, and the Coolidge all figure they're better off not giving it a screen? If so, I'd be surprised if they had any sort of theatrical release before the DVD release next year.
Edge of Darkness
* * * (out of four)
Seen 31 January 2010 at AMC Boston Common #10 (first-run)
Based upon the previews to this, I wondered a couple of things: Did Mel Gibson listen to anything but Kennedy speeches while working on his Boston accent? If so, bad choice, because I don't believe that anyone outside that family actually speaks that way. Also, how much Ray Winstone are we going to see, because he looked aces in the previews.
I suspect that there was more of Winstone's character in the original BBC miniseries, and not just because six hours of time lets you see more of everybody. At times we seem to be a bit too aware of the streamlining; it's the sort of movie where they'll show the villains discussing something and then cut to Gibson's Thomas Craven knowing it. It's not that he couldn't; it's just that you can see the filmmakers trying to save a little time.
It's a good role for Mel Gibson, who has been laying low for a while; he plays this sort of tough guy well. For much of the movie, I was thinking that it was too bad he hasn't played Mike Hammer (yet), as the plot of the movie reminded me of Kiss Me Deadly: Detective who tends to work as a blunt object winding up way over his head, dealing with conspiracies and nasty nuclear material. It works in large part because Gibson does great hard-boiled; give him a line filled with pulp and he will sell the heck out of it. And while I imagine that you could cut Winstone's character, I'm glad they didn't, because the scenes of them together are gold; two different varieties of tough guy who understand and respect each other, and thus aren't trying to outdo one another.
Rann
I'm beginning to suspect that I will never understand movies from India.
(Come on, say the obvious comeback out loud. You know you want to. Heck, I just did and laughed. It's not good to keep responses to obvious straight lines bottled up, you know!)
While I was walking back home from Rann, I pondered that Bollywood movies really are their own thing, to the point that even the people who only make it to a couple blockbusters a year mentally categorize movies as "American", "foreign", and "Bollywood". These folks likely haven't been exposed to enough to really have an idea of how different they are, and many probably don't consciously know that there's what amounts to an entirely separate distribution apparatus set up to get them to audiences away from the subcontinent, but just enough has seeped into the general consciousness to put these movies in a separate category.
Truth be told, I'm intensely jealous of that distribution system. Why the heck can't foreign movies from other places pop up in areas that have a local community large enough to support them, on the same day that they are released in their native land? I gather it's mainly because the money to be made from Miramax/IFC/Sony/Magnolia picking up one movie probably dwarfs the money that any individual Bollywood release makes here, and the negotiation is easier too. Would CJ Entertainment, Gaumont, or Toho rather deal with one contact who can get at least some of their movies onto shelves at Best Buy and maybe into boutique houses across the country, or would they rather deal with a different entrepreneur in each city and someone else to get their DVDs in ethnic grocery stores? It sounds like a pain.
I half-suspect that there's a cultural element to it, of course. I have no idea about the answer to this question, but do Indian-Americans maintain closer ties to their family and community back at home than, say, Korean-Americans, making them less interested in waiting (either for a US release or a DVD to stick in region-free players)? I have no idea.
What I do know is that watching these movies feels a lot more different to me than watching European, Japanese, or even Chinese movies (etc., etc.). Whenever I see one - admittedly, we're talking about a sample size of about four here - and talk about it, I talk about how Bollywood in general is different. I don't do that with movies from any other location. Part of it is the different culture, but is India that much more different than my usual experience than, say, Iran? I can generally just process Persian flicks as just another foreign movie, making note of the cultural differences but not feeling like I've got to re-learn how to watch movies.
I definitely do get that feeling with movies from India. It's brought into even sharper detail when I talk to the Indian-American folks in my office. Saying that I found Krrish kind of goofy didn't yield a "well, you can't judge it on the same standards as big Hollywood productions" or the like. These are fantastic movies. Brilliant, and without flaw.
And, no, I don't really see that. I keep finding reasons to snicker, and use words like "the musical cues of doom!!!", even on something meant to be as relatively serious as Rann
Rann
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 31 January 2010 at the Stuart Street Playhouse (first-run)
Say "Bollywood", and most American audiences will think of cheerful musicals with weddings and happy endings. That's not likely to be the entirety of a large country's film output, of course, and Ram Gopal Varma has built a career in part on grittier material. He opens Rann with a terrorist bombing, but what follows is not a thriller - or, at least, not that sort of thriller.
The bombing is reported on by two major television news networks - the sensationalistic Headlines 24 and the more reserved India 24x7. The former is fronted and run by Amrish Kakkar (Mohnish Bahl), a former employee of the face and soul of India 24x7, Vijay Harshvardhan Malik (Amitabh Bachchan). India 24x7 is hurting financially, and Malik's son Jay (Sudeep), who has returned from America to run the business side of things, is looking for ways to keep the network afloat. His brother-in-law, industrialist Naveen Shankalya (Rajat Kapoor), offers him a way, by getting into bed with political opposition leader Mohan Pandey (Paresh Rawal), who proposes that a story discrediting Prime Minister Hooda would be almost unquestioned coming from the respected elder Malik. A potential problem with this scheme, though, is that India 24x7 has just hired a young reporter, Purab Shastri (Ritesh Deshmukh), who idolizes Vijay Malik and has the same ironclad ethics about reporting the news - and has a sense that something isn't right.
That's a lot, and that's not all that's going on - there's a subplot involving corporate espionage between the two networks, for instance, and another about Jay's love for a Muslim woman (Neetu Chandra). We spend a fair amount of time on the latter, enough for it to be a second heavy-handed social message, with Bachchan actually delivering two separate speeches about how Hindus and Muslims should get along and not fear each other. That's a lot, considering that the central theme of the film, that operating news reporting organizations with a profit motive does a terrible disservice to the people, only gets one. It's the biggest storyline and character that winds up seeming sort of extraneous by the end of the film, adding loose ends and ambiguity to a movie that really doesn't seem to be the ambiguous type.
As you might gather from the talk of speeches, this isn't a particularly subtle movie, perhaps not even by Bollywood standards. It is not just a vehicle for getting the audience to consider the story's messages, but Varma and writer Rohit G. Banawlikar are going to make absolutely sure that you don't miss them. That extends to just about every facet of the production. I'll readily admit that it may just be my relative ignorance, but Pandy seemed almost ridiculously "gangsta" for somebody leading a political party - he always wears tinted sunglasses, even during television interviews, walks around with an Uzi-toting entourage, and otherwise just screams "obvious criminal" (maybe a lot of perfectly nice folks have that look in India, but nobody else in the movie does). The music often works like a hammer, too; though this isn't a musical, there are plenty of songs with thudding hip-hop baselines on the soundtrack that tell you exactly what the movie wants you thinking, and especially during the first half, any line or shot that might be a surprise or a betrayal (no matter how small) is accompanied by the Musical Cues of Doom. The filmmakers at times can't seem to decide whether they want Rajpal Yadav's character to be satirical or broad comic relief.
For all that, there are definite signs of why Varma is one of India's more celebrated directors of crime and thrillers. He does a nice job giving each of the film's dozen or so significant characters time, especially splitting time between Vijay, Jay, and Purab so that none of them dominates the film at the expense of the others. When the conspiracy story takes off during the film's second half, it moves along at a brisk clip and seems neither too complicated nor too obvious. And while things often seem somewhat exaggerated or loud, Varma and company make the theatricality work, once the audience is settled into that mode of storytelling.
It's not a bad cast he's working with, either. Sudeep especially does a nice job of playing Jay as having both noble and unpleasant facets; it's an impressively complex character and charismatic performance. Ritesh Deshmukh has a certain charm as Purab, especially in his scenes with Gul Panag as his girlfriend Nadita. Neetu Chandra is one of those inhumanly beautiful actresses Bollywood produces on a frighteningly regular basis, but makes Yasmin one of the more grounded and familiar characters in the film. And while Amitabh Bachchan at times stiffens up a bit too much, he does give off the trustworthy aura that Vijay Malik must have.
With around two hours and twenty minutes to share among many characters and their stories, Rann falls into the trap of being overstuffed for a straightforward drama and feeling a little too small to be epic. It's not a bad film, though, and a good example of the more serious side of Indian cinema.
Also at EFC
(Come on, say the obvious comeback out loud. You know you want to. Heck, I just did and laughed. It's not good to keep responses to obvious straight lines bottled up, you know!)
While I was walking back home from Rann, I pondered that Bollywood movies really are their own thing, to the point that even the people who only make it to a couple blockbusters a year mentally categorize movies as "American", "foreign", and "Bollywood". These folks likely haven't been exposed to enough to really have an idea of how different they are, and many probably don't consciously know that there's what amounts to an entirely separate distribution apparatus set up to get them to audiences away from the subcontinent, but just enough has seeped into the general consciousness to put these movies in a separate category.
Truth be told, I'm intensely jealous of that distribution system. Why the heck can't foreign movies from other places pop up in areas that have a local community large enough to support them, on the same day that they are released in their native land? I gather it's mainly because the money to be made from Miramax/IFC/Sony/Magnolia picking up one movie probably dwarfs the money that any individual Bollywood release makes here, and the negotiation is easier too. Would CJ Entertainment, Gaumont, or Toho rather deal with one contact who can get at least some of their movies onto shelves at Best Buy and maybe into boutique houses across the country, or would they rather deal with a different entrepreneur in each city and someone else to get their DVDs in ethnic grocery stores? It sounds like a pain.
I half-suspect that there's a cultural element to it, of course. I have no idea about the answer to this question, but do Indian-Americans maintain closer ties to their family and community back at home than, say, Korean-Americans, making them less interested in waiting (either for a US release or a DVD to stick in region-free players)? I have no idea.
What I do know is that watching these movies feels a lot more different to me than watching European, Japanese, or even Chinese movies (etc., etc.). Whenever I see one - admittedly, we're talking about a sample size of about four here - and talk about it, I talk about how Bollywood in general is different. I don't do that with movies from any other location. Part of it is the different culture, but is India that much more different than my usual experience than, say, Iran? I can generally just process Persian flicks as just another foreign movie, making note of the cultural differences but not feeling like I've got to re-learn how to watch movies.
I definitely do get that feeling with movies from India. It's brought into even sharper detail when I talk to the Indian-American folks in my office. Saying that I found Krrish kind of goofy didn't yield a "well, you can't judge it on the same standards as big Hollywood productions" or the like. These are fantastic movies. Brilliant, and without flaw.
And, no, I don't really see that. I keep finding reasons to snicker, and use words like "the musical cues of doom!!!", even on something meant to be as relatively serious as Rann
Rann
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 31 January 2010 at the Stuart Street Playhouse (first-run)
Say "Bollywood", and most American audiences will think of cheerful musicals with weddings and happy endings. That's not likely to be the entirety of a large country's film output, of course, and Ram Gopal Varma has built a career in part on grittier material. He opens Rann with a terrorist bombing, but what follows is not a thriller - or, at least, not that sort of thriller.
The bombing is reported on by two major television news networks - the sensationalistic Headlines 24 and the more reserved India 24x7. The former is fronted and run by Amrish Kakkar (Mohnish Bahl), a former employee of the face and soul of India 24x7, Vijay Harshvardhan Malik (Amitabh Bachchan). India 24x7 is hurting financially, and Malik's son Jay (Sudeep), who has returned from America to run the business side of things, is looking for ways to keep the network afloat. His brother-in-law, industrialist Naveen Shankalya (Rajat Kapoor), offers him a way, by getting into bed with political opposition leader Mohan Pandey (Paresh Rawal), who proposes that a story discrediting Prime Minister Hooda would be almost unquestioned coming from the respected elder Malik. A potential problem with this scheme, though, is that India 24x7 has just hired a young reporter, Purab Shastri (Ritesh Deshmukh), who idolizes Vijay Malik and has the same ironclad ethics about reporting the news - and has a sense that something isn't right.
That's a lot, and that's not all that's going on - there's a subplot involving corporate espionage between the two networks, for instance, and another about Jay's love for a Muslim woman (Neetu Chandra). We spend a fair amount of time on the latter, enough for it to be a second heavy-handed social message, with Bachchan actually delivering two separate speeches about how Hindus and Muslims should get along and not fear each other. That's a lot, considering that the central theme of the film, that operating news reporting organizations with a profit motive does a terrible disservice to the people, only gets one. It's the biggest storyline and character that winds up seeming sort of extraneous by the end of the film, adding loose ends and ambiguity to a movie that really doesn't seem to be the ambiguous type.
As you might gather from the talk of speeches, this isn't a particularly subtle movie, perhaps not even by Bollywood standards. It is not just a vehicle for getting the audience to consider the story's messages, but Varma and writer Rohit G. Banawlikar are going to make absolutely sure that you don't miss them. That extends to just about every facet of the production. I'll readily admit that it may just be my relative ignorance, but Pandy seemed almost ridiculously "gangsta" for somebody leading a political party - he always wears tinted sunglasses, even during television interviews, walks around with an Uzi-toting entourage, and otherwise just screams "obvious criminal" (maybe a lot of perfectly nice folks have that look in India, but nobody else in the movie does). The music often works like a hammer, too; though this isn't a musical, there are plenty of songs with thudding hip-hop baselines on the soundtrack that tell you exactly what the movie wants you thinking, and especially during the first half, any line or shot that might be a surprise or a betrayal (no matter how small) is accompanied by the Musical Cues of Doom. The filmmakers at times can't seem to decide whether they want Rajpal Yadav's character to be satirical or broad comic relief.
For all that, there are definite signs of why Varma is one of India's more celebrated directors of crime and thrillers. He does a nice job giving each of the film's dozen or so significant characters time, especially splitting time between Vijay, Jay, and Purab so that none of them dominates the film at the expense of the others. When the conspiracy story takes off during the film's second half, it moves along at a brisk clip and seems neither too complicated nor too obvious. And while things often seem somewhat exaggerated or loud, Varma and company make the theatricality work, once the audience is settled into that mode of storytelling.
It's not a bad cast he's working with, either. Sudeep especially does a nice job of playing Jay as having both noble and unpleasant facets; it's an impressively complex character and charismatic performance. Ritesh Deshmukh has a certain charm as Purab, especially in his scenes with Gul Panag as his girlfriend Nadita. Neetu Chandra is one of those inhumanly beautiful actresses Bollywood produces on a frighteningly regular basis, but makes Yasmin one of the more grounded and familiar characters in the film. And while Amitabh Bachchan at times stiffens up a bit too much, he does give off the trustworthy aura that Vijay Malik must have.
With around two hours and twenty minutes to share among many characters and their stories, Rann falls into the trap of being overstuffed for a straightforward drama and feeling a little too small to be epic. It's not a bad film, though, and a good example of the more serious side of Indian cinema.
Also at EFC
Friday, January 29, 2010
Police, Adjective
At one point, I wasn't sure I was going to get to this. I missed the Chlotrudis screening earlier in the week (I just can't do Monday movies, it seems), and the snow came down like crazy on the bus ride from Waltham to Cambridge; crazy wind and the amount of white stuff just jumped. Must have been a passing squall, though. This, naturally, comes just a couple days after the temperature climbed high enough to melt what snow was left on the ground. New England weather.
I don't have much to say about this that isn't in the review, other than mentioning that the similarity between this film's last act and that of the director's previous work, 12:08 East of Bucharest, didn't really occur to me until I did a quick scan of eFilmCritic to see if I'd reviewed that one. It really is kind of striking, now that I think of it. I may keep it in my pocket as ammunition for tomorrow's Chlotrudis nomination meeting for when people make the inevitable drive-by comments on Avatar (and I know they'll be coming; even otherwise classy, intelligent people can't resist trying to imply that they're better than the rabble by making snarky comments about something popular). See, this art-house guy is kind of a one-trick pony too; you just happen to like that trick.
Speaking of which, I should go fill out my nomination form. Sadly, I don't think Police, Adjective pushes me quite to the 110-eligible-movie level, so I'll only get 21 nominations per category rather than 22. I will attempt to use them for good.
Including nominating Sam Rockwell for both Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor in one of my favorite movies of the year - because I can and he deserves it!
Politist, adj. (Police, Adjective)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 28 January 2010 at Landmark Kendall Square #5 (first-run)
The title of Police, Adjective comes from a scene almost at the end of the movie, and based upon the definitions read out in that scene, it's interesting that the film was not named "Police, Noun" or "Police, Verb", at least if one is into self-referentiality. The first description of the world "police" as an adjective refers to a type of movie, and while this one technically fits the category, it tends to focus on different aspects of police-work than the typical procedural.
Cristi (Dragos Bucur) is a young detective in a smallish Romanian city. He is currently assigned to tail Victor (Radu Costin), a high-school student whose smokes a bit of hash with a couple of friends, one of whom - Alex (Alexandru Sabadac) - has ratted him out to the police, saying Victor's brother supplies him. Cristi has been following Victor for a week, and though he figures that they technically have enough to bust the kid for distribution, he doesn't want to move in with a sting just yet: It doesn't net him the brother they figure is the real dealer, there's something off about why Alex would squeal, and, besides, why bother when no other country in Europe prosecutes for this anyway?
While most procedurals involve surveillance and stake-outs to some extent, they tend to focus on the moment when something is about to happen, or play up the stultifying boredom of it by showing time passing. Writer/director Corneliu Porumboiu takes a different tack here, giving us many scenes of Cristi taking up a spot in the background while the teenagers do their thing, then wordlessly following as he trails them. Proumboiu and cinematographer Marius Panduru frame things carefully, almost exquisitely, to keep the tail on one side of the screen while the person being followed is at the other edge. We pick out tradecraft without being told - how Cristi tries to keep another person between himself and his target, or how to allay suspicion when a third party starts noticing that he's hanging around. It's an intriguing combination of interesting and tedious, and even though the we aren't given the message directly, we start to notice how just how much time and resources are being spent on this one kid.
Despite the precision present in how Porumboiu presents his police-work, in many ways it is the other half of the title that he is truly concerned with. Not adjectives specifically, but language. The above-mentioned scene between Cristi and his boss (Vlad Ivanov) is, in some ways, the culmination of others where characters ask each other to speak plainly, or Cristi and his wife Anca (Irina Saulescu) debating the meaning to a song's lyrics. There's another scene between them where she points out that out that the grammar in his report is out of date, that what had been two words was now supposed to be one, according to the Romanian Academy. So when all is said and done, we've got the curious idea that laws are made out of language, but language itself can change for political reasons.
That's something to chew on, although even without the way the dialogue occasionally goes into oddly formal territory, it's interesting to watch these debates play out on the face of Bucur's Cristi. Bucur doesn't feel the need to do much to ingratiate Cristi with the audience, allowing the character to come off as fussy or demanding. There's the constant implication that Cristi is smart, but in a bit over his head, and even if the audience doesn't always quite warm to the man, we can find ourselves empathizing with him about his questions, even as we sometimes have trouble deciding whether they are emotional or intellectual. He's given good characters to play against, too - Irina Saulescu manages both intellectualism and warmth as Cristi's wife, while Ion Stoica is a simple presence as the fellow officer he shares an office with. And while I believe that Ivanov only has that one scene, it's a big, meaty one that he absolutely dominates.
I notice, upon re-reading what I wrote about 12:08 East of Bucharest, Porumboiu's previous film, that it too was built around one big scene, staged in a fairly similar way: What amounts to a long-held shot of three men involved in a relatively formal discussion. It's a format that works for him, apparently, although I think it works better here because the scenes leading up to it are much more focused - there can be no doubt that this is Cristi's story - and it leads directly to a conclusion. Indeed, what could be a stiff, purely intellectual story winds up somewhat fascinating by how well Porumboiu and Bucur put us in Cristi's shoes.
It still winds up being rather on the formal side; those looking for a conventional crime movie will likely be disappointed. It offers plenty of food for thought for those with a fair amount of patience, though, whether it be ethical or intellectual.
Also at EFC
I don't have much to say about this that isn't in the review, other than mentioning that the similarity between this film's last act and that of the director's previous work, 12:08 East of Bucharest, didn't really occur to me until I did a quick scan of eFilmCritic to see if I'd reviewed that one. It really is kind of striking, now that I think of it. I may keep it in my pocket as ammunition for tomorrow's Chlotrudis nomination meeting for when people make the inevitable drive-by comments on Avatar (and I know they'll be coming; even otherwise classy, intelligent people can't resist trying to imply that they're better than the rabble by making snarky comments about something popular). See, this art-house guy is kind of a one-trick pony too; you just happen to like that trick.
Speaking of which, I should go fill out my nomination form. Sadly, I don't think Police, Adjective pushes me quite to the 110-eligible-movie level, so I'll only get 21 nominations per category rather than 22. I will attempt to use them for good.
Including nominating Sam Rockwell for both Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor in one of my favorite movies of the year - because I can and he deserves it!
Politist, adj. (Police, Adjective)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 28 January 2010 at Landmark Kendall Square #5 (first-run)
The title of Police, Adjective comes from a scene almost at the end of the movie, and based upon the definitions read out in that scene, it's interesting that the film was not named "Police, Noun" or "Police, Verb", at least if one is into self-referentiality. The first description of the world "police" as an adjective refers to a type of movie, and while this one technically fits the category, it tends to focus on different aspects of police-work than the typical procedural.
Cristi (Dragos Bucur) is a young detective in a smallish Romanian city. He is currently assigned to tail Victor (Radu Costin), a high-school student whose smokes a bit of hash with a couple of friends, one of whom - Alex (Alexandru Sabadac) - has ratted him out to the police, saying Victor's brother supplies him. Cristi has been following Victor for a week, and though he figures that they technically have enough to bust the kid for distribution, he doesn't want to move in with a sting just yet: It doesn't net him the brother they figure is the real dealer, there's something off about why Alex would squeal, and, besides, why bother when no other country in Europe prosecutes for this anyway?
While most procedurals involve surveillance and stake-outs to some extent, they tend to focus on the moment when something is about to happen, or play up the stultifying boredom of it by showing time passing. Writer/director Corneliu Porumboiu takes a different tack here, giving us many scenes of Cristi taking up a spot in the background while the teenagers do their thing, then wordlessly following as he trails them. Proumboiu and cinematographer Marius Panduru frame things carefully, almost exquisitely, to keep the tail on one side of the screen while the person being followed is at the other edge. We pick out tradecraft without being told - how Cristi tries to keep another person between himself and his target, or how to allay suspicion when a third party starts noticing that he's hanging around. It's an intriguing combination of interesting and tedious, and even though the we aren't given the message directly, we start to notice how just how much time and resources are being spent on this one kid.
Despite the precision present in how Porumboiu presents his police-work, in many ways it is the other half of the title that he is truly concerned with. Not adjectives specifically, but language. The above-mentioned scene between Cristi and his boss (Vlad Ivanov) is, in some ways, the culmination of others where characters ask each other to speak plainly, or Cristi and his wife Anca (Irina Saulescu) debating the meaning to a song's lyrics. There's another scene between them where she points out that out that the grammar in his report is out of date, that what had been two words was now supposed to be one, according to the Romanian Academy. So when all is said and done, we've got the curious idea that laws are made out of language, but language itself can change for political reasons.
That's something to chew on, although even without the way the dialogue occasionally goes into oddly formal territory, it's interesting to watch these debates play out on the face of Bucur's Cristi. Bucur doesn't feel the need to do much to ingratiate Cristi with the audience, allowing the character to come off as fussy or demanding. There's the constant implication that Cristi is smart, but in a bit over his head, and even if the audience doesn't always quite warm to the man, we can find ourselves empathizing with him about his questions, even as we sometimes have trouble deciding whether they are emotional or intellectual. He's given good characters to play against, too - Irina Saulescu manages both intellectualism and warmth as Cristi's wife, while Ion Stoica is a simple presence as the fellow officer he shares an office with. And while I believe that Ivanov only has that one scene, it's a big, meaty one that he absolutely dominates.
I notice, upon re-reading what I wrote about 12:08 East of Bucharest, Porumboiu's previous film, that it too was built around one big scene, staged in a fairly similar way: What amounts to a long-held shot of three men involved in a relatively formal discussion. It's a format that works for him, apparently, although I think it works better here because the scenes leading up to it are much more focused - there can be no doubt that this is Cristi's story - and it leads directly to a conclusion. Indeed, what could be a stiff, purely intellectual story winds up somewhat fascinating by how well Porumboiu and Bucur put us in Cristi's shoes.
It still winds up being rather on the formal side; those looking for a conventional crime movie will likely be disappointed. It offers plenty of food for thought for those with a fair amount of patience, though, whether it be ethical or intellectual.
Also at EFC
Ong Bak-2-Bak
The subject line shows that the folks at the Brattle clearly have more restraint than I have; that's a bad pun I would have slapped right on the calendar right where they usually stick "Double Feature".
(Yes, I'm inordinately proud of coming up with that.)
Let me say this: Ong Bak 2 is dozens of times more comprehensible when you haven't spent the whole day traveling from Boston to Austin, walking from the motel to downtown to pick up credentials, then from there to South Lamar because you haven't caught on with the shuttle schedule yet, and then waiting for the show to start because the Alamo guys are doing a fun intro until 12:30am (which is sitll like 1:30am Eastern Time on the first day). One is far more likely to intermittently fall asleep under those conditions than a Brattle showing that starts right on time at 9:30pm. It cleared things up enough to raise the rating a good half-star from when I first saw it.
Of course, time has chipped away at a little bit of the enthusiasm I displayed for the original Ong Bak when I saw it at the inaugural Boston Fantastic Film Festival back in 2004. Of course, back then, muay thai was something we hadn't seen on film, and I hadn't yet stumbled upon Twitch or made my first trip to Fantasia or NYAFF yet, so crazy martial arts on the big screen was an even more rare treat. I hope not to become jaded about it, because even as Jaa and company improved on their technique for this follow-up (you can't really call it a sequel), there is still a raw energy to people first making their mark to the first one that is very difficult to resist.
Ong Bak 2
* * * (out of four)
Seen 26 January 2010 at the Brattle Theatre (Brattle Selects 2010)
I haven't actually run the numbers, but I suspect that martial arts action has an unusually high number of movies titled as though they were sequels but only vague connections to each other, and that's even before considering how things get retitled for foreign markets. Ong Bak 2 is a fairly obvious example; despite the title, it is not a continuation of the story of the first; in fact, it takes place some 550 years earlier. Still, it's hardly like Ong Bak's story mattered, and this movie does offer more of what the first delivered: Tony Jaa, demonstrating amazing athletic and martial arts skills.
In 1431, a young boy named Tien (Natdanai Kongthong) escapes when his noble father and bodyguards are assassinated, but it's a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire as he falls into the hands of slavers before being rescued by Chernang (Sorapong Chatree), head of a group of bandits. Tien is offered the chance to stay, learn their ways, and train with them, growing into a man (Tony Jaa) who is groomed to take Chernang's place as bandit king. And he intends to, but the men who killed his parents are still out there, amassing more power...
Though the story is not the complete mess it appeared to be on my first go-round (it was effectively 2am after a full day of travel when I saw it at SXSW last year), it has its problems. I imagine the bulk can be traced to the tumultuous shoot: Star Tony Jaa apparently bit off more than he could chew in attempting to make his directorial debut, flaking on the production until the producers dragged him out of seclusion and hired Panna Rittikrai to take over directing duties. Getting it done required some script changes and as a result, there's an occasional disjointed feel; we spend a fair amount of time with Tien's childhood friend Pim in flashbacks, only to see her briefly as an adult (Primorata Dejudom may not actually have any lines, though she dances well). New villains appear during the last action sequences without any sort of introduction, and the film stops abruptly.
Though the movie's story suffers a bit for Jaa overextending himself, the actual direction is actually fairly impressive. In many ways, even beyond the time period, Ong Bak 2 is the opposite of Ong Bak - where the previous movie was rather good-natured (even the villains were amusingly over-the-top) and shot in a straightforward manner with few stylish flourishes beyond the occasional "instant replay", there's a grim earnestness about this one, and a melodramatic tone enhanced with frequent use of slow motion. Jaa, Rittikrai, and cinematographer Nattawut Kittikhun use a lot of stark blacks and whites in their color palette, creating plenty of striking images. It's hard to know where Jaa's work stops and Rittikrai's begins, but if he matures a little and grows into the role, Ong Bak 2 indicates that there may be more to Jaa as a filmmaker than just knowing to point the camera at himself in the action sequences.
And, yes, he has quite the knack for that. Jaa and Rittikrai are credited as splitting those duties as well (Jaa as "action director", Rittikrai as "fight choreographer"), and in this category, at least, there can be little doubt that Ong Bak 2 is worth the price of admission. Jaa's athleticism is on full display, and the film makes a point to show that several different techniques and weapons are in play (as excellent as the action in Ong Bak was, it got a bit predictable: Don't let Jaa get any vertical lift, or you will take elbows to the top of the head). The last half-hour is close to non-stop martial arts, and Jaa does some absolutely amazing things on, under, and around an elephant.
Get right down to it, that's what you want from this movie - Tony Jaa doing a bunch of crazy martial arts with an elephant. Looking great is a bonus. A story that is completely coherent would be fantastic, but you can't have everything.
Also at EFC
(Yes, I'm inordinately proud of coming up with that.)
Let me say this: Ong Bak 2 is dozens of times more comprehensible when you haven't spent the whole day traveling from Boston to Austin, walking from the motel to downtown to pick up credentials, then from there to South Lamar because you haven't caught on with the shuttle schedule yet, and then waiting for the show to start because the Alamo guys are doing a fun intro until 12:30am (which is sitll like 1:30am Eastern Time on the first day). One is far more likely to intermittently fall asleep under those conditions than a Brattle showing that starts right on time at 9:30pm. It cleared things up enough to raise the rating a good half-star from when I first saw it.
Of course, time has chipped away at a little bit of the enthusiasm I displayed for the original Ong Bak when I saw it at the inaugural Boston Fantastic Film Festival back in 2004. Of course, back then, muay thai was something we hadn't seen on film, and I hadn't yet stumbled upon Twitch or made my first trip to Fantasia or NYAFF yet, so crazy martial arts on the big screen was an even more rare treat. I hope not to become jaded about it, because even as Jaa and company improved on their technique for this follow-up (you can't really call it a sequel), there is still a raw energy to people first making their mark to the first one that is very difficult to resist.
Ong Bak 2
* * * (out of four)
Seen 26 January 2010 at the Brattle Theatre (Brattle Selects 2010)
I haven't actually run the numbers, but I suspect that martial arts action has an unusually high number of movies titled as though they were sequels but only vague connections to each other, and that's even before considering how things get retitled for foreign markets. Ong Bak 2 is a fairly obvious example; despite the title, it is not a continuation of the story of the first; in fact, it takes place some 550 years earlier. Still, it's hardly like Ong Bak's story mattered, and this movie does offer more of what the first delivered: Tony Jaa, demonstrating amazing athletic and martial arts skills.
In 1431, a young boy named Tien (Natdanai Kongthong) escapes when his noble father and bodyguards are assassinated, but it's a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire as he falls into the hands of slavers before being rescued by Chernang (Sorapong Chatree), head of a group of bandits. Tien is offered the chance to stay, learn their ways, and train with them, growing into a man (Tony Jaa) who is groomed to take Chernang's place as bandit king. And he intends to, but the men who killed his parents are still out there, amassing more power...
Though the story is not the complete mess it appeared to be on my first go-round (it was effectively 2am after a full day of travel when I saw it at SXSW last year), it has its problems. I imagine the bulk can be traced to the tumultuous shoot: Star Tony Jaa apparently bit off more than he could chew in attempting to make his directorial debut, flaking on the production until the producers dragged him out of seclusion and hired Panna Rittikrai to take over directing duties. Getting it done required some script changes and as a result, there's an occasional disjointed feel; we spend a fair amount of time with Tien's childhood friend Pim in flashbacks, only to see her briefly as an adult (Primorata Dejudom may not actually have any lines, though she dances well). New villains appear during the last action sequences without any sort of introduction, and the film stops abruptly.
Though the movie's story suffers a bit for Jaa overextending himself, the actual direction is actually fairly impressive. In many ways, even beyond the time period, Ong Bak 2 is the opposite of Ong Bak - where the previous movie was rather good-natured (even the villains were amusingly over-the-top) and shot in a straightforward manner with few stylish flourishes beyond the occasional "instant replay", there's a grim earnestness about this one, and a melodramatic tone enhanced with frequent use of slow motion. Jaa, Rittikrai, and cinematographer Nattawut Kittikhun use a lot of stark blacks and whites in their color palette, creating plenty of striking images. It's hard to know where Jaa's work stops and Rittikrai's begins, but if he matures a little and grows into the role, Ong Bak 2 indicates that there may be more to Jaa as a filmmaker than just knowing to point the camera at himself in the action sequences.
And, yes, he has quite the knack for that. Jaa and Rittikrai are credited as splitting those duties as well (Jaa as "action director", Rittikrai as "fight choreographer"), and in this category, at least, there can be little doubt that Ong Bak 2 is worth the price of admission. Jaa's athleticism is on full display, and the film makes a point to show that several different techniques and weapons are in play (as excellent as the action in Ong Bak was, it got a bit predictable: Don't let Jaa get any vertical lift, or you will take elbows to the top of the head). The last half-hour is close to non-stop martial arts, and Jaa does some absolutely amazing things on, under, and around an elephant.
Get right down to it, that's what you want from this movie - Tony Jaa doing a bunch of crazy martial arts with an elephant. Looking great is a bonus. A story that is completely coherent would be fantastic, but you can't have everything.
Also at EFC
Monday, January 25, 2010
This Week In Tickets: 18 January 2010 to 24 January 2010
This weekend is as pure an example of laziness as you will find. No movies interested me enough to actually get out of the house, but while there, did I do any of the cleaning and stuff that needed to get done? No. Apparently, I need the imminent threat of visitors for that to happen.
I didn't stay in the house for the entirety of the weekend, though...
Stubless: Trucker (21 January 2010) and As You Like It (22 January 2010) on DVD.
... My friend Justin plays bass in Girls Guns And Glory, so I went to the Paradise to see them. Nice band; they're going to be at South by Southwest this March. I think they were booked just after I decided that I couldn't go to the film festival because of all the travel to various weddings I have planned this year (ironically, including his). But, anyone who is going there should check them out, especially if you like roots.
No other reviews this week. I was going to try and plow through some screeners, but even the ones that were likely NTSC wouldn't play on my HD-DVD or Blu-ray players, and the SlingCatcher which puts stuff from the computer out to the TV was balky. Actually, more likely the video drivers on the computer, but I wasn't feeling like screwing with them at the time. Hopefully, I'll get to some of them this week, although the Asylum Sherlock Holmes is on the docket as well.
I didn't stay in the house for the entirety of the weekend, though...
Stubless: Trucker (21 January 2010) and As You Like It (22 January 2010) on DVD.
... My friend Justin plays bass in Girls Guns And Glory, so I went to the Paradise to see them. Nice band; they're going to be at South by Southwest this March. I think they were booked just after I decided that I couldn't go to the film festival because of all the travel to various weddings I have planned this year (ironically, including his). But, anyone who is going there should check them out, especially if you like roots.
No other reviews this week. I was going to try and plow through some screeners, but even the ones that were likely NTSC wouldn't play on my HD-DVD or Blu-ray players, and the SlingCatcher which puts stuff from the computer out to the TV was balky. Actually, more likely the video drivers on the computer, but I wasn't feeling like screwing with them at the time. Hopefully, I'll get to some of them this week, although the Asylum Sherlock Holmes is on the docket as well.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
As You Like It
Oh, my. This has been sitting on my coffee table for a bit more than two years, most likely. I have loved Branagh's other Shakespeare adaptations - one of my fondest memories of high school was going out to see Much Ado About Nothing with a bunch of friends who were taking the same Shakespeare class, I took the bus to Boston to see Hamlet while going to college in Worcester because the Landmark Theater brought in 70mm projection especially for it, and I remember dragging my brother Matt to Love's Labour's Lost because, darn it, he had to see how gorgeous it was, with Branagh making sure to do things like match the colors of the ladies' dresses and drinks. The soundtrack to that one was in heavy rotation for a while, too, goofy showtunes and all (though I absolutely loved how "You Can't Take That Away From Me" was used in it). I defend Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. If Dead Again were to come out on Blu-ray, I am pretty sure that I would not remember actually purchasing it, because it would be done entirely by my involuntary nervous system.
So, yes, I am a fan. Fan enough to pre-order As You Like It, and then keep it near the TV rather than the shelf of movies in the back room because watching it is a priority, but with the sort of addiction to buying movies much faster than I can actually watch them that keeps me from actually sticking it into a player for over two years. I'm a bit ashamed of that.
Now... Does anybody know where I can find the Japanese HD-DVD of The Magic Flute for a reasonable price? Because that looks like the only version available that I can watch without a region-free player, and the fact that something by Branagh (and Stephen Fry!) has not gotten American distribution in the three-plus years since it started trickling out in other markets is tremendously disappointing.
Next up, as I try to plow through my unwatched DVDs: The fifteen or so unwatched festival screeners I've amassed over the last couple of years. And that's just DVD; there's some VHS ones that I'd have to hook something up for.
As You Like It
* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 January 2010 in Jay's Living Room (upconverted DVD)
Thus far, the twenty-first century has not been kind to the films Kenneth Branagh directed. If you blinked, you missed his remake of Sleuth; if you're in North America, you haven't even had a chance to see his 2006 production of The Magic Flute (which, as far as I can tell, has yet to play theaters, television, or home video here). As You Like It fell somewhere between them, premiering on pay cable a month before being released on DVD. I suspect this explains why Marvel has tapped him for their Thor movie - he can use the boost in visibility as much as they can use somebody who can breathe life into things that the general public might assume to be stuffy and boring. Such as, say, Shakespeare, for the fifth time as director.
One of the ways he does this is by taking them out of their Elizabethan setting and placing them in new contexts to show the universality of the ideas behind them. With As You Like It, he moves the action to nineteenth-century Japan, where English traders had set up enclaves in port cities. As the film opens, a well-liked Duke (Brian Blessed) is removed from power by a group of ninjas and ronin in the service of his evil brother Frederick (also Blessed). The Duke and much of his court is sent into exile in the forest of Arden, but his daughter Rosalind (Bryce Dallas Howard) is kept as a companion to her cousin Celia (Romola Garai). This sort of jealousy among brothers appears to be common, as Frederick's ally Oliver De Boys (Adrian Lester) plots to kill his youngest brother Orlando (David Oyelowo). Orlando captures the affection of Rosalind, which enrages Frederick, who banishes her. Celia refuses to abandon her best friend, and they bring court jester Touchstone (Alfred Molina) along with them into exile.
There is more, of course - Shakespeare filled his plays with characters and subplots! So we have a pair of country lovers (Alex Wyndham and Jade Jefferies); the lusty Audrey (Janet McTeer), who hooks up with Touchstone; and the melancholy Jacques (Kevin Kline). Rosalind disguises herself as a boy, as a clown would be small discouragement to any bandits who might attack two women on their own, and teases the lovesick Orlando, who also finds himself in the woods. And if the material that Shakespeare came up with wasn't enough, Branagh fleshes the story out a bit with scenes of his own invention, depicting things which previously occurred off-stage. That's how you get ninjas in Shakespeare.
You can spot those scenes because they have no dialogue - adding one's own words to Shakespeare is just not done, after all. Though he doesn't do that, he is, as usual, well aware that he is adapting the Bard's work to film, rather than simply recording a play. Lines that simply describe what the audience can see are cut, scenes are re-arranged, action is shown rather than related, and the camera follows people around. Characters speak in verse, of course, but it comes across as conversational as well as larger-than-life. And while the story is far from completely modernized, the script manages to excise some of the aspects of the last act that are downright silly and weird without losing sight of the fact that the story is intended to be funny. The whole plot about Rosalind disguising herself as the boy "Ganymede" could fall into that category, but the film manages to acknowledge that without falling into self-parody.
That's in large part due to Romola Garai. Celia is the supporting female role, but this version of the story gives Garai a lot of chances to be more than just the friend Rosalind confesses her feelings to; she's given enough slapstick and double-takes to be near the top of the list of funny people in the cast. Alfred Molina isn't far behind; he delivers Touchstone's lines with the timing of a veteran stand-up, especially when he's allowed to just take control of a scene (or has McTeer's assistance in taking things over the top). Bryce Dallas Howard doesn't get quite so many jokes as them, but she shows a tremendous mischievous charm when in disguise as Ganymede that puts a smile on one's face even though she's not going for laughs as directly as the others.
The actors in more serious roles do well, too. Brian Blessed has shown up in a number of Branagh's films, and he's well-used here; his dual role gives him a chance to use that booming voice to both make the exiled Duke jolly and gregarious and cast Frederick as a frightening maniac. David Oyelowo brings plenty of sex appeal to the part of Orlando (he makes a sumo loincloth work for him early on), and manages to be head over heels for Rosalind without chipping away at his cool too much. And while I suspect that the part of Jacques has been pared down in the adaptation (though it's been some time since I've read the play or seen a different version), Kevin Kline makes up for any lost lines with his body language and general performance, and makes the famous "all the world's a stage" speech sing.
Does Branagh's grasp of what makes a good movie as opposed to a good play, visual flair, and quality multi-ethnic cast yield a version of As You Like It that could appeal to a general audience? Maybe. Truth be told, the cross-dressing plots in many of the comedies become harder sales with every year that passes from the time when only men and boys performed on stage, and the incredulous looks Garai as Celia gives Orlando, Rosalind, and the audience only gets us most of the way to really buying into it. And as nifty as the Japanese setting frequently looks, it often feels like a gimmick that won't bring in as many newcomers as it will alienate purists.
Their loss, if so. Branagh has filmed five of Shakespeare's plays, and all five times he has produced something that is no less an entertaining movie for being an adaptation of four hundred year-old works. As You Like It is no exception.
Also at EFC
So, yes, I am a fan. Fan enough to pre-order As You Like It, and then keep it near the TV rather than the shelf of movies in the back room because watching it is a priority, but with the sort of addiction to buying movies much faster than I can actually watch them that keeps me from actually sticking it into a player for over two years. I'm a bit ashamed of that.
Now... Does anybody know where I can find the Japanese HD-DVD of The Magic Flute for a reasonable price? Because that looks like the only version available that I can watch without a region-free player, and the fact that something by Branagh (and Stephen Fry!) has not gotten American distribution in the three-plus years since it started trickling out in other markets is tremendously disappointing.
Next up, as I try to plow through my unwatched DVDs: The fifteen or so unwatched festival screeners I've amassed over the last couple of years. And that's just DVD; there's some VHS ones that I'd have to hook something up for.
As You Like It
* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 January 2010 in Jay's Living Room (upconverted DVD)
Thus far, the twenty-first century has not been kind to the films Kenneth Branagh directed. If you blinked, you missed his remake of Sleuth; if you're in North America, you haven't even had a chance to see his 2006 production of The Magic Flute (which, as far as I can tell, has yet to play theaters, television, or home video here). As You Like It fell somewhere between them, premiering on pay cable a month before being released on DVD. I suspect this explains why Marvel has tapped him for their Thor movie - he can use the boost in visibility as much as they can use somebody who can breathe life into things that the general public might assume to be stuffy and boring. Such as, say, Shakespeare, for the fifth time as director.
One of the ways he does this is by taking them out of their Elizabethan setting and placing them in new contexts to show the universality of the ideas behind them. With As You Like It, he moves the action to nineteenth-century Japan, where English traders had set up enclaves in port cities. As the film opens, a well-liked Duke (Brian Blessed) is removed from power by a group of ninjas and ronin in the service of his evil brother Frederick (also Blessed). The Duke and much of his court is sent into exile in the forest of Arden, but his daughter Rosalind (Bryce Dallas Howard) is kept as a companion to her cousin Celia (Romola Garai). This sort of jealousy among brothers appears to be common, as Frederick's ally Oliver De Boys (Adrian Lester) plots to kill his youngest brother Orlando (David Oyelowo). Orlando captures the affection of Rosalind, which enrages Frederick, who banishes her. Celia refuses to abandon her best friend, and they bring court jester Touchstone (Alfred Molina) along with them into exile.
There is more, of course - Shakespeare filled his plays with characters and subplots! So we have a pair of country lovers (Alex Wyndham and Jade Jefferies); the lusty Audrey (Janet McTeer), who hooks up with Touchstone; and the melancholy Jacques (Kevin Kline). Rosalind disguises herself as a boy, as a clown would be small discouragement to any bandits who might attack two women on their own, and teases the lovesick Orlando, who also finds himself in the woods. And if the material that Shakespeare came up with wasn't enough, Branagh fleshes the story out a bit with scenes of his own invention, depicting things which previously occurred off-stage. That's how you get ninjas in Shakespeare.
You can spot those scenes because they have no dialogue - adding one's own words to Shakespeare is just not done, after all. Though he doesn't do that, he is, as usual, well aware that he is adapting the Bard's work to film, rather than simply recording a play. Lines that simply describe what the audience can see are cut, scenes are re-arranged, action is shown rather than related, and the camera follows people around. Characters speak in verse, of course, but it comes across as conversational as well as larger-than-life. And while the story is far from completely modernized, the script manages to excise some of the aspects of the last act that are downright silly and weird without losing sight of the fact that the story is intended to be funny. The whole plot about Rosalind disguising herself as the boy "Ganymede" could fall into that category, but the film manages to acknowledge that without falling into self-parody.
That's in large part due to Romola Garai. Celia is the supporting female role, but this version of the story gives Garai a lot of chances to be more than just the friend Rosalind confesses her feelings to; she's given enough slapstick and double-takes to be near the top of the list of funny people in the cast. Alfred Molina isn't far behind; he delivers Touchstone's lines with the timing of a veteran stand-up, especially when he's allowed to just take control of a scene (or has McTeer's assistance in taking things over the top). Bryce Dallas Howard doesn't get quite so many jokes as them, but she shows a tremendous mischievous charm when in disguise as Ganymede that puts a smile on one's face even though she's not going for laughs as directly as the others.
The actors in more serious roles do well, too. Brian Blessed has shown up in a number of Branagh's films, and he's well-used here; his dual role gives him a chance to use that booming voice to both make the exiled Duke jolly and gregarious and cast Frederick as a frightening maniac. David Oyelowo brings plenty of sex appeal to the part of Orlando (he makes a sumo loincloth work for him early on), and manages to be head over heels for Rosalind without chipping away at his cool too much. And while I suspect that the part of Jacques has been pared down in the adaptation (though it's been some time since I've read the play or seen a different version), Kevin Kline makes up for any lost lines with his body language and general performance, and makes the famous "all the world's a stage" speech sing.
Does Branagh's grasp of what makes a good movie as opposed to a good play, visual flair, and quality multi-ethnic cast yield a version of As You Like It that could appeal to a general audience? Maybe. Truth be told, the cross-dressing plots in many of the comedies become harder sales with every year that passes from the time when only men and boys performed on stage, and the incredulous looks Garai as Celia gives Orlando, Rosalind, and the audience only gets us most of the way to really buying into it. And as nifty as the Japanese setting frequently looks, it often feels like a gimmick that won't bring in as many newcomers as it will alienate purists.
Their loss, if so. Branagh has filmed five of Shakespeare's plays, and all five times he has produced something that is no less an entertaining movie for being an adaptation of four hundred year-old works. As You Like It is no exception.
Also at EFC
Friday, January 22, 2010
Trucker
At first, I was kind of surprised that Trucker didn't get into more theaters before hitting DVD. Not just because the publicists who have my email address filled it with a lot of invitations to press screenings (in New York, of course) and EPK materials and, temptingly, an interview opportunity with Michelle Monaghan that had my heart skip a beat before I realized that it would likely be by phone or email and, really, Seaver, what do you think is going to happen beyond an interview straight out of "The Chris Farley Show", since you stink at talking to people? But the two top names on it are Michelle Monaghan and Nathan Fillion, and people like them. Maybe once you get past the sci-fi geeks who recognize Fillion from his Joss Whedon and James Gunn stuff, not by name, but once you remind folks of the roles they played ("the girl in the Santa dress in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang", "the doctor in Waitress", "Tom Cruise's girlfriend in Mission Impossible 3", "Castle", "the partner in Gone Baby Gone","Mal Reynolds", "the person who didn't make you want to drive a sharp stick into your eye in The Heartbreak Kid"), the reaction is almost always "him and her? Yeah, I really like them!".
But, I guess that's not really name recognition. And as much as I'm usually one to say that the doomsayers are exaggerating when they say how bad distribution and ticket sales are for independent films these days, I have to admit that I've sat in very small crowds for movies that have what I'd consider a pretty decent cast - folks people would recognize. Skin the other night; The Canyon a couple months ago. As much as I like Michelle Monaghan, this is the first time where the movie she's in has really been about her, so I'm not sure how much of a draw she could possibly be.
Of course, if this were released beyond New York/L.A., and it got some critical acclaim and maybe made her a dark horse candidate for a Best Actress Oscar (and, yeah, she is that good here), she might be a draw for her next movie. But getting to that next level isn't easy, and clearly takes nearly as much luck as it does doing good work.
Trucker
* * * (out of four)
Seen 21 January 2010 in Jay's Living Room (upconverted DVD)
Trucker is a working-class drama, and that may be a factor in why it didn't get released on more screens. Dig into it a little, and it's similar to Up in the Air - a story about a contentedly itinerant person changing by forming attachments - but without the jet-set gloss. It's got a nice cast, doing fine work, and hopefully those recognizable names will lead to people giving it a shot on video.
The trucker of the title is Diane Ford (Michelle Monaghan). She's an independent, both in terms of owning her rig and not being tied to any man for longer than a night. Well, there's her neighbor and best friend Runner (Nathan Fillion), but he's married and that's half a step farther than she's willing to go. That's about to be challenged, though, as her ex-husband's girlfriend Jenny (Joey Lauren Adams) has just popped up to drop off Peter (Jimmy Bennett), the 11-year-old son that Diane hasn't seen since he was a baby. His father Len (Benjamin Bratt) is being treated for colon cancer, and Jenny has family obligations of her own, so Diane's stuck with the kid for three weeks.
One thing that's well-done and maybe a bit unusual about Trucker is that, even though it's natural for for the sympathy in a situation like the one with Diane and Peter to be heavily slanted toward the child, Peter initially gets on our nerves. And not in an annoyingly precious child-actor way; Jimmy Bennett turns in a very good performance as a kid that takes some effort to warm up to. He's angry, lashes out, and does stupid things; Bennett captures something akin to a justified brattiness, the sort where you can understand where the kid's coming from but can also recognize that this particular attitude isn't going to make anything better. It's quite the naturalistic performance for one so young.
He gets to have most of his scenes opposite Michelle Monaghan, and that brings out the best in both of them (if not their characters). If this movie had managed a higher profile, there's no doubt that this would be a breakout role for her. Monaghan has made a career out of being likable on-screen, and Diane is the sort of role that gets people to realize that it's not just good looks; she knows how to act well enough to get her hooks into people. Here, writer/director James Mottern gives us plenty of reasons to look down on Diane; Monaghan finds ways to present it that don't so much have us liking her, but figuring that she has certainly been led to this point by decisions that must have made sense at the time. She gets that the things that make Diane able to stand on her own two feet and the things that keep her alone are two sides of the same coin.
Nathan Fillion is another guy who has built up a reputation based on likability, and he puts it to good use here; his Runner is an amiable person for Diane to talk to. He's full of charm, the sort that makes it very easy for the audience to avoid asking the question "but what about his wife?" Joey Lauren Adams is in and out fairly quickly as Jenny, and Benjamin Bratt isn't around for much longer as Len, but it's plenty long enough to get a sense of them. Bratt especially does good work, using just words to sell his relationships with the women in the cast, and giving a sense of just how Len is doing without a whole lot of visible suffering or an emotional death scene.
That's one of the things I like about Mottern's film; it doesn't feel the need to drag every single plot thread out to its eventual conclusion. What he does isn't always subtle - he actually has the kid tell Diane that she's "the most scared person" he knows, briefly hitting the "too-wise child" and "obvious statement of theme" buttons simultaneously. But he recognizes his production's strengths, letting his cast do their thing without spending a whole lot of time jerking them from story point to story point. He shows us the world his characters live in without passing a whole lot of judgment, letting it be complicated but not compromised.
This is the sort of picture that could have netted Michelle Monaghan some awards or nominations, if a few things had broken right business-wise. They didn't, apparently. Hopefully the right people will see it anyway, and recognize that Monaghan has a ceiling well above "cool but secondary girl who looks good in a Santa dress", because she's certainly shown herself capable of bigger things here.
Also at EFC
But, I guess that's not really name recognition. And as much as I'm usually one to say that the doomsayers are exaggerating when they say how bad distribution and ticket sales are for independent films these days, I have to admit that I've sat in very small crowds for movies that have what I'd consider a pretty decent cast - folks people would recognize. Skin the other night; The Canyon a couple months ago. As much as I like Michelle Monaghan, this is the first time where the movie she's in has really been about her, so I'm not sure how much of a draw she could possibly be.
Of course, if this were released beyond New York/L.A., and it got some critical acclaim and maybe made her a dark horse candidate for a Best Actress Oscar (and, yeah, she is that good here), she might be a draw for her next movie. But getting to that next level isn't easy, and clearly takes nearly as much luck as it does doing good work.
Trucker
* * * (out of four)
Seen 21 January 2010 in Jay's Living Room (upconverted DVD)
Trucker is a working-class drama, and that may be a factor in why it didn't get released on more screens. Dig into it a little, and it's similar to Up in the Air - a story about a contentedly itinerant person changing by forming attachments - but without the jet-set gloss. It's got a nice cast, doing fine work, and hopefully those recognizable names will lead to people giving it a shot on video.
The trucker of the title is Diane Ford (Michelle Monaghan). She's an independent, both in terms of owning her rig and not being tied to any man for longer than a night. Well, there's her neighbor and best friend Runner (Nathan Fillion), but he's married and that's half a step farther than she's willing to go. That's about to be challenged, though, as her ex-husband's girlfriend Jenny (Joey Lauren Adams) has just popped up to drop off Peter (Jimmy Bennett), the 11-year-old son that Diane hasn't seen since he was a baby. His father Len (Benjamin Bratt) is being treated for colon cancer, and Jenny has family obligations of her own, so Diane's stuck with the kid for three weeks.
One thing that's well-done and maybe a bit unusual about Trucker is that, even though it's natural for for the sympathy in a situation like the one with Diane and Peter to be heavily slanted toward the child, Peter initially gets on our nerves. And not in an annoyingly precious child-actor way; Jimmy Bennett turns in a very good performance as a kid that takes some effort to warm up to. He's angry, lashes out, and does stupid things; Bennett captures something akin to a justified brattiness, the sort where you can understand where the kid's coming from but can also recognize that this particular attitude isn't going to make anything better. It's quite the naturalistic performance for one so young.
He gets to have most of his scenes opposite Michelle Monaghan, and that brings out the best in both of them (if not their characters). If this movie had managed a higher profile, there's no doubt that this would be a breakout role for her. Monaghan has made a career out of being likable on-screen, and Diane is the sort of role that gets people to realize that it's not just good looks; she knows how to act well enough to get her hooks into people. Here, writer/director James Mottern gives us plenty of reasons to look down on Diane; Monaghan finds ways to present it that don't so much have us liking her, but figuring that she has certainly been led to this point by decisions that must have made sense at the time. She gets that the things that make Diane able to stand on her own two feet and the things that keep her alone are two sides of the same coin.
Nathan Fillion is another guy who has built up a reputation based on likability, and he puts it to good use here; his Runner is an amiable person for Diane to talk to. He's full of charm, the sort that makes it very easy for the audience to avoid asking the question "but what about his wife?" Joey Lauren Adams is in and out fairly quickly as Jenny, and Benjamin Bratt isn't around for much longer as Len, but it's plenty long enough to get a sense of them. Bratt especially does good work, using just words to sell his relationships with the women in the cast, and giving a sense of just how Len is doing without a whole lot of visible suffering or an emotional death scene.
That's one of the things I like about Mottern's film; it doesn't feel the need to drag every single plot thread out to its eventual conclusion. What he does isn't always subtle - he actually has the kid tell Diane that she's "the most scared person" he knows, briefly hitting the "too-wise child" and "obvious statement of theme" buttons simultaneously. But he recognizes his production's strengths, letting his cast do their thing without spending a whole lot of time jerking them from story point to story point. He shows us the world his characters live in without passing a whole lot of judgment, letting it be complicated but not compromised.
This is the sort of picture that could have netted Michelle Monaghan some awards or nominations, if a few things had broken right business-wise. They didn't, apparently. Hopefully the right people will see it anyway, and recognize that Monaghan has a ceiling well above "cool but secondary girl who looks good in a Santa dress", because she's certainly shown herself capable of bigger things here.
Also at EFC
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