This Week In Tickets: 8 November 2010 to 14 November 2010 - Including a new screen

I saw a fair amount of movies this week, and despite having to do the whole medical data thing to make money, they all get reviews, as I had something to say about most:



Before getting to the reviews, yes, there's a $15 movie ticket there for a regular movie, which isn't my usual thing (I'm cheap frugal!), but Regal re-opened screen #13 with enhancements, and I wanted to check it out.

The "Regal Premium Experience" screen (RPX) seems to be designed to tap the same wallets as the IMAX-branded digital screen across town at AMC Boston Common, although at first glance I'm not quite certain why the screen had to be closed down nearly a month for the upgrade. Screen 13 was already one of the "Screen Monsters" (although sometime between going from General City Cinemas to AMC to Regal, that cute local name seems to have vanished), a curved common-height screen that more or less filled the entire wall, and unless they've raised the ceiling, it's about the same size. It is, by necessity, a new surface, as the theater is advertising that 3D movies will play there, so the matte screen has been replaced by a reflective one. Maybe the curvature has increased a bit; I certainly noticed it more than I remember doing at other times. Switching that out is the work of a day or two, although it's possible that the actual seating was extensively rearranged, to the point of tearing out the stadium tiering and rebuilding it.

That is where a visitor notices the biggest improvements - the seating is all new, and comfortable. Some of that is likely entirely related to its newness - I can tell which seats in the Brattle Theatre are either seldom-used or recently replaced by how they feel when I drop my butt into them (similarly, I start moving around the Fantasia's Hall Theatre after a week or so because my usual seat has started to accommodate my shape too much) - but even after being broken in, they will still likely be thick and well-stuffed, with a nice leather-y covering as opposed to the usual fabric. I suspect/hope, considering the premium experience they're selling and price they're charging, that seats will be replaced more frequently than usual - heck, they may want to rotate materials with the seasons; as much as I liked the feel of the leather/vinyl on Saturday, I could see hating it next summer when I've just walked three miles there in shorts. For right now, though, they're some nice seats, an easy second place to the IMAX screen at Jordan's Furniture - which isn't bad, considering that comfortable chairs are what Jordan's does for a living.

The seats lack the "butt-kicker" subwoofers installed under every seat at Jordan's, but the sound is right up there with any other screen in the area, non-genuine-IMAX division. Unstoppable, with its constant sound of trains, proved a nice demo reel for the subs, and the room certainly makes a concerted effort to live up to its claim of being the best screen you've ever heard (or something like that; they've been pushing the sound). It's impressively clear even aside from the bass.

The picture... Well, it's bright, and sharp, and clear. It doesn't look quite so overtly digital once you get past the credits, and I'm starting to suspect that studios and distributors don't care about making those perfect any more (logos and credits are where it's easiest to notice staircases and jaggies, since they're relatively static images with non-horizontal/vertical straight lines). My preference is almost always going to be for film, but this looks pretty good, even on a big screen that I sat relatively close to.

Is it a worthwhile upgrade? I'm not sure. The presentation is as good as it gets at the multiplex, and $15.00 isn't that much more than the regular $11.50 that Fenway charges during the evening (though there will almost certainly be 3D surcharges on that when Tron Legacy, lest the RPX be only a token premium over the standard). During the day, when the matinee price is $9.00, they're still charging $15.00, a much more stark difference. In fact, let's revisit the chart from when AMC opened their "IMAX" screen, this time using Saturday's screenings of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1:

Screen	Price (before noon)	Price (afternoon)	Price (evening)
Somerville Theatre, 35mm	N/A	$7.00	$8.00
Arlington Capitol, 35mm/DLP	N/A	$7.00	$8.50
AMC Harvard Square, 35mm/DLP	$6.00	$8.00	$10.00
AMC Boston Common, 35mm/DLP	$6.00	$9.50	$11.50
AMC Boston Common, IMAX Digital	$10.00	$13.50	$15.50
Regal Fenway, 35mm/DLP	$9.00	$9.00	$11.50
Regal Fenway, RPX	$15.00	$15.00	$15.00
Jordan's Furniture Reading, IMAX	$11.50	$11.50	$11.50
New England Aquarium, IMAX	N/A	N/A	$12.95

Note: Somerville offers $5.00 matinees Monday-Friday, Arlington offers $6 matinees Monday-Friday. All prices are for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, except the Aquarium, which is for Inception (they'll likely pick up Harry Potter once Tron Legacy opens).

The RPX is the most expensive movie ticket in town before 4pm, barring festivals and special events, and darn close after. As of right now, it is a notable upgrade over everything but the genuine IMAX screens, but will that last? When I saw Megamind in the Imax-digital screen in Boston Common the other week, I was not blown away by the sound the way I was back when I saw Shrek 4 there. This is, sadly, the way things go - people complain that a theater is too loud, management turns the sound down, and it never gets turned back up again. Maybe in a couple of months the seats aren't as plush, or the projector's bulb starts getting turned down, or things generally start to slip. That, also, is the way things go, although by putting "premium" in the name, hopefully Regal will be motivated to keep on top of such things.

For what it's worth, I do think that the price is a factor - I saw Unstoppable at the 7pm Saturday show, generally one of the most busy, and I had a lot of elbow room. I can't compare how the regular 35mm show went at 6:30pm, but I suspect that without the IMAX branding, this may prove to be a bit more than audiences are willing to pay.

Well, at least for something second-tier like Unstoppable. Harry Potter is going to sell out no matter what, but it will be interesting to see if the higher price per ticket makes up for the smaller number of tickets sold for lesser draws.

Skyline

* ¾ (out of four)
Seen 13 November 2010 at Regal Fenway #2 (first-run)

A guy I follow tweeted about Skyline this weekend, saying to tune into his podcast to hear a review/takedown of the movie, and although I don't want to imply that it's a good movie, that rubbed me the wrong way. Calling your own work a "takedown" seems like braggadocio, and applying it to Skyline... Well, that's bullying. You take down those with inflated reputations, not the independent filmmakers whose weaknesses sadly don't make up for their strengths.

The movie starts out promising, with ships appearing in the sky above Los Angeles and dropping some sort of glowing payload on the city. Then, unfortunately, it flashes back thirteen hours or so, to artist Jarrod (Eric Balfour) and his girlfriend Elaine (Scottie Thompson) arriving from the other coast to visit their successful friend Terry (Donald Faison). They go to a party a Terry's place, find things awkward with his wife Candice (Brittany Daniel), "assistant" Denise (Crystal Reed), and friend Ray (Neil Hopkins). Eventually it breaks up, they hit the sack, and then the aliens invade, vacuuming people up into their ships en masse.

The writing for this movie, by Joshua Cordes and Liam O'Donnell, is pretty much terrible. It's generic, filled with people having incredibly stupid arguments, and not only that, rehashing the same ones within minutes of each other. But in the interest of fairness to all the independent filmmakers who can write but don't have the Brothers Strause's technical skills, how are they when the movie plays to their strengths - the parts that the audience is coming to see?

Complete review on eFilmCritic

Unstoppable

* * * (out of four)
Seen 13 November 2010 at Regal Fenway #13 (first-run, RPX)

Unstoppable isn't complicated. The filmmakers take a story about working class heroes facing long odds with high stakes and more or less lets it be, resisting the temptation to graft excessive contrivance or melodrama to an already thrilling situation. It's a fine example of how when a storyteller has a good story to work with and the means to tell it, everybody will be well-served by just getting out of the way - an apt metaphor for a story about a runaway train.

The train - filled with combustible and toxic chemicals! - is a runaway because Dewey (Ethan Suplee), a yard worker in central Pennsylvania, set the throttle in the wrong position when he hopped off to switch the tracks. Now it's picking up speed heading the wrong direction on the main line. Traffic supervisor Connie (Rosario Dawson) tracks the train but can't convince her boss (Kevin Dunn) to derail it early. Instead, it winds up on a collision course with a train driven by veteran engineer Frank (Denzel Washington) and rookie conductor Will (Chris Pine) - but Frank may be the guy who figures out how to stop it without major loss of life and property.

Part of the fun of a movie like Unstoppable is how, along with delivering an exciting thrill ride, it gives audiences an idea of the inner workings of something they tend to take for granted - railroads, in this case. Details can be fun, and both writer Mark Bomback and director Tony Scott do a good job of showing how this railway system works from top to bottom, doing it in context so that the information sinks into the audience's brains without dragging around a character whose entire purpose is to have things explained to him. Because of that, we're able to grasp the problems that the heroes are struggling with instinctively, and feel like we're working it right along with them.

Complete review on eFilmCritic

A New Leaf

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 14 November 2010 at the Harvard FIlm Archive (Elaine May)

There's a shortage of films like A New Leaf today, ones that are broad, absurd, and silly, but also refined in their way. These days, it's the other way around - broad comedies will go for anything, but figure it's okay so long as they tug at your heartstrings and impress you with their sincerity, rather than make the grudging allowance to sentiment that writer/director/co-star Elaine May makes here.

Henry Graham (Walter Matthau) has been a spendthrift his entire idle adult life, spending two hundred thousand dollars a year when his trust fund only generates about ninety thousand. Now, he's broke, although his butler Harold (George Rose), immediately after giving his notice, says that there is one time-honored solution - marry into wealth. Due to some conditions laid down by Harry's uncle Harry (James Coco), it must be done within six weeks lest Henry lose everything, which seems hopeless as a month passes. Then Henry meets Henrietta Lowell (Elaine May) - a mousy, clumsy, unrefined professor of botany with no need of the millions her family left her. She is easy to sweep off her feet, but the union is a perilous one - Henrietta comes with a Andy McPherson (Jack Weston), a lawyer whose entire practice has been managing the Lowell estate, and Mrs. Traggert (Doris Roberts), a housekeeper who runs a rather loose household; Henry, meanwhile, feels he'd be better off as a widower than a husband.

The Henry Graham model of rich buffoon is all but extinct in America, and likely endangered even in Britain. That's sad, because to watch Matthau in this film's opening act is to feast from a smorgasbord of tomfoolery: We start with a bit of banter that invites mockery with open arms, follow it up with Henry's accountant (William Redfield) pounding his head against Henry's obliviousness before delivering a tongue-lashing that only gets funnier as the distance between his even tone and his contemptuous words,grows, and chase it down with a laugh at Matthau's body language as he bids the beloved accouterments of his wealth a sad adieu. And that's before desperation brings a wily cunning to the character. It's an utterly delightful performance by Walter Matthau, as he plays his his loose, lanky frame and expressive face against his character's snobbish propriety. He's terrific whether playing silly or sophisticated.

Complete review on eFilmCritic

127 Hours

I've likely mentioned this before, but as much as I like Boyle's movies, I also love the shape his career has taken as a story: Starting out in British TV; gaining notice with a couple of well-regarded independent movies (Shallow Grave and Trainspotting); going to Hollywood with a pair of movies that are not only sort of spectacular box office bombs (A Life Less Ordinary and The Beach), but which mark the end of working relationships with writer John Hodge and star Ewan MacGregor; heading back to the UK to do a couple of TV-movies for the BBC; returning energized and independent again with 28 Days Later...; and following that up with a string of well-executed movies that are most united by an abject refusal to be pigeonholed into a single genre (Millions, Sunshine, Slumdog Millionaire, and now 127 Hours).

Sure, it would be a better story if that "exile" between The Beach and 28 Days Later... lasted more than a couple of years, but isn't it better for us as movie lovers that there is effectively no real pause in his career? Still, even without the storyline, it's a remarkably diverse career, and that's one of the reasons I'm so fond of Boyle - even though he has a few tropes he likes to come back to (the "bag of money" movies) and does have a recognizable style (high-energy, optimism where many other filmmakers would go for dark & gritty), he seems nearly as determined as the Coen Brothers to make a different movie each time. Fortunately, I like his style and attitude, and though sometimes I wish he'd repeat himself (I would really, really like another Sunshine - not a sequel, just another great-looking, exciting science fiction movie with interesting ideas and a great international cast), it's actually quite amazing that he can be this good so consistently, no matter what he applies himself to.

Now - to actually watch some of his earlier movies. I'm kind of ashamed that I haven't seen Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, or The Beach, despite being a fan.

127 Hours

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 14 November 2010 at Coolidge Corner Theatre #1 (first-run)

There is not a whole heck of a lot to 127 Hours, story-wise: Guy goes climbing on his own, gets pinned by a falling boulder, and has to figure out a way to get out of a thoroughly intractable situation. Filmmakers look at a story like that and figure getting ninety minutes of movie from it is either going to be all but impossible or a terrific challenge. Considering that Danny Boyle is one of those directors whose mission with each new picture seems to be pushing himself to do something he hasn't tried yet, it's not surprising that he both sees it as a challenge and does a fine job of rising to it.

Though Aron Ralston (James Franco) is a friendly and charming guy, he's too jittery and on-the-go to really set down roots or figure others into his plans. So, with the weekend off from his job at a sporting goods store, he heads into Utah's Canyonlands National park. He meets up with Kristi (Kate Mara) and Megan (Amber Tamblyn), a pair of cute hikers, but not long after showing them a cool swimming hole, and having them invite him to a party the next night, they split. He's miles away from anyone else at 3pm on Saturday when the boulder drops, pinning his right arm and trapping him in a narrow crevice, with provisions for maybe a couple of days.

127 Hours isn't really a movie about suspense; although a fair amount of people in the audience likely won't know what happens at the end of those 5+ days (though looking at the cover of the source material may tip them off). And while I've joked about wondering what this movie would be like had Werner Herzog been in the director's chair, it's not primarily a film about man versus nature. That conflict - the natural world's supreme indifference to whether any of its creatures (including human beings) live or die - is here just the catalyst for forcing Aron to think about the way he's been living his life.

Full review at EFC.

CineCaché #4: Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench

Ah, the first CineCaché that really felt like the Eye-Opener series - I was bored practically to tears and then trapped in a conversation about just how terrific the movie was!

I kid. A little. The conversation afterward was a really weird dynamic for me, though - it started with an acknowledgment that the film was flawed and imperfect, but as the discussion rolled along, it became more and more "isn't this amazing?" And while that was probably good for me to hear, in terms of tempering the overwhelming aggravation that was my main reaction (I think I basically liked the scene on the T that I describe in the review, but almost everything else just didn't work for me), it's a bit of an odd phenomenon - were people convincing themselves it was a good movie, or just letting how much they actually enjoyed it out even though they had felt the need to acknowledge its weaknesses.

There was also a fairly emphatic sideline onto whether or not Guy and Madeline is a musical or not, and how musicals after the sixties were different from musicals before, but... who really cares? Obviously, the people arguing, but what does arguing about or even deciding whether or not a movie fits in one specific genre really gain? I suppose it might matter if you're trying to talk about a specific genre, but the official stance of this blog is Making Lists Is Stupid, and this sort of nit-picking generally seems to be more about excluding than including, and there's no need for that.

Similarly, there was some talk about how well director Damien Chazelle faked the geography - if you know your way around the Greater Boston area, it's either hilarious or confusing how someone will turn a corner by Berklee and wind up near Alewife Station - but I don't know that it's such a big deal: The whole city is made of brick, after all; it's not hard for one neighborhood to blend with another.

The film opens for its regular run at the Brattle on 17 December, playing for the week leading up to Christmas. Obviously, I'm not recommending it, but my prejudices are fairly well established by this point: I like movies where people do things, as a result other things happen, and as a result the people do other things; movies like Guy and Madeline drive me nuts beyond all reason (check out the difference between my opinion of I Am Love and the general critical consensus). It's a film that is engineered to aggravate me but which will have a fair amount of fans, and I wouldn't really think that they're wrong - just that we enjoy movies in different ways.

Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench

* ¾ (out of four)
Seen 8 November 2010 at the Brattle Theatre (CineCaché)

First impressions can be a heck of a thing to shake. Even before talking to the other people at the screening, I knew there were a lot of things that rookie filmmaker Damien Chazelle did well in Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench. This one rubbed me the wrong way early, though, and then never rose high enough above average to earn its way back into my good graces.

Guy (Jason Palmer) plays jazz trumpet in Boston, scraping the odd gig together, either still in college or not long graduated. Madeline (Desiree Garcia) was his girlfriend, but they've recently broken up, so she's looking for a post-college place to live and job, and having trouble moving on. Elena (Sanddhha Khin) is Guy's new girl, and there doesn't seem to be much to her.

Nobody says "mumblecore" any more, except maybe when referencing certain specific filmmakers, and besides, that's a stripped-down style, and Guy and Madeline has a fairly elaborate score and impressively choreographed musical numbers for a film of its clearly minuscule budget. The promotion mentions other influences, such as the French New Wave and MGM musicals. However, there's a reason that the plot description doesn't go much beyond listing the characters who take center stage; they don't actually do a whole lot. It's a movie about underemployed young people who don't know what's next, and who aren't hugely proactive in going after it.

Full review at EFC.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 12 November - 18 November

New Danny Boyle this weekend! Regal opens their response to AMC Boston Common's IMAX-branded screen at Fenway! Tons of documentaries at Kendall Square! The Brattle and Coolidge splitting a small audience!

• As I mentioned about a month ago, Regal Fenway 13 has actually been a 12-plex for the past few weeks as Regal upgrades one of their two larger screens to something they're calling "Regal Premium Experience", or RPX. It looks like it's meant to be something roughly equivalent to the digital IMAX ("Liemax") screen at Boston Common, with digital projection and 3-D on a screen much larger and closer to the audience than is typical. Of course, there's a price difference - $15.00 as opposed to the usual $11.50 in the evening, and apparently the same price during the day (when the price is usually $9.00). No word yet on whether there will be additional surcharges for 3-D. Interestingly, Regal has been pushing the sound quality in the theater harder that the picture quality, though I guess that's not surprising - it was already a good-sized screen, so it's hard to see how going digital rather than 35mm will be an improvement.
  
  The movie they're opening with is Unstoppable, Tony Scott's new runaway train film with Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, and Rosario Dawson. It looks like it could be fun, although I'm curious to see how they make an entire movie out of it. The other mainstream openings are Skyline, the second nifty-looking alien invasion movie done on a budget by guys best known for their special effects work in as many weeks, and Morning Glory, which looks cute, although I never thought I'd see Harrison Ford as a supporting actor in a Rachel McAdams comedy.



• Strangely, the multiplexes aren't opening 127 Hours wide this week, although it looks pretty good - Danny Boyle directing James Franco in a very cool looking movie that has a nifty trailer and is reportedly intense enough that people are reported to have passed out while watching it at festivals. It's only opening at the Kendall Square and Coolidge Corner theaters, although it will probably expand in a couple weeks.
  
  Kendall Square also opens four other movies, including three documentaries - Cool It, about alternative methods for dealing with global warming; Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, which appears to depict both his attempts to handle the financial crisis and the scandal that took him down; and Tibet in Song, whose title is fairly self-explanatory. That's the one with the one-week-warning, and director Ngawang Choephel will be present for the 7:10pm show on Friday. The one-week warning likely also applies to Enter the Void, the latest from Gaspar Noe. He directed Irreversible, and his new film looks to be every bit the punishing mindbender as his previous work. Landmark is apparently serious about only adults getting in; not only are they treating it as an NC-17 film, but it's splitting a screen with Tibet in Song.



• The other film opening at the Coolidge is Boxing Gym, which will be opening in one of the video rooms. It is, as the title implies, a look at the regulars at Austin's Lord's Gym, and it's directed by Frederick Wiseman, who has made a great may documentaries in his day and is still cranking them out at the age of eighty. The movie also opens at the Brattle theater, and this afternoon and evening (Friday 12 November 2010), Wiseman will prove he's not slowing down by doing introductions at both locations - 7pm at the Brattle, and 4:40 and 9:20 at the Coolidge. I'm not sure how much Q&A there will be - even with the theaters just a couple miles apart, going back and forth will likely be tight. It's kind of surprising both are opening the film; hopefully they don't split a niche audience too badly.
  
  The Coolidge offers some special features - "Spike & Mike's Twisted Festival of Animation" returns for a second weekend of midnights, and The Room joins it on Saturday. Sunday Morning, they have a pair of screenings - a program of kids' shorts at 10:30, and German film Gravity at 11:00am. Monday night they have a live show, the "One-Man Star Wars Trilogy".
  
  The Brattle has a couple of documentary specials of their own: Enemies of the People, the much-awarded documentary about the Cambodian Killing Fields, will have single matinees Friday (4:30pm) and Saturday (1:00pm), with the director present on Friday. Sunday at 3pm, there is a screening of The Things We Carry, presented by the Boston Asian American Film Festival.



• If you missed Four Lions at the Kendall, it moves over the Somerville Theatre this weekend, where it will share a screen with Hereafter. It will probably only last one more week, but that's still seven more days to see a very funny movie. Also opening at Somerville - albeit in the video screening room next to the Museum of Bad Art - is BearCity. Apparently, this is a Sex and the City-inspired romantic comedy taking place in New York's "bear" scene. If you know what that is, you probably also know whether this sounds like a good idea to you or not.



• The Harvard Film Archive has guests again this weekend, but at least one is an order of magnitude less obscure than usual. Elaine May will be on-hand Friday and Saturday night, presenting Mikey and Nicky on Friday and Ishtar on Saturday. Yes, that's right, you can see Ishtar and demand explanations! She's not listed as hanging around for Sunday, but the Archive has two more of her films on tap that evening, A New Leaf and the original The Heartbreak Kid.
  
  On Monday, Harun Farocki returns with a pair of films, the short "I Thought I Was Seeing Convicts" and the featurette Images of the World and the Inscription of War, his best-known work according the the HFA website. The Archive also hosts a pair of free VES screenings, Spirit of the Beehive on Tuesday and Black Girl on Wednesday.



• For the next couple of weeks, Emerson's main stage features what looks like an amazing bit of puppet theater, "Petrushka", set to music by Igor Stravinsky, and thier film programming this weekend ties in. Saturday afternoon, there is Animation Brigade: Puppet Animation Shorts Program, an hour of family-friiendly films from Latvia. Saturday evening features a pair of Stravinsky documentaries from the mind-1960s: Stravinsky and A Stravinsky Portrait. Also playing Saturday evening (as well as Sunday evening) is Ken Russell's Stravinsky biopic, The Music Lovers, which I gather is not quite so exaggerated as Lisztomania!.
  
  Like the Brattle, Emerson is also presenting a couple films with the Boston Asian American Film Festival this weekend: Aoki, a documentary of Japanese-American Richard Aoki, who was one of the founding members of the Black Panther Party, runs Friday night. After that, they will be running "Got Shorts?", a group of seven films that runs a total of about 90 minutes.



• And, finally, the MFA wraps up its Boston Jewish Film Festival screenings on Sunday with Just Like Home and My Peristroika.

This Week In Tickets: 1 November 2010 to 7 November 2010

The end of Daylight Savings Time: Why a person can stay up late cleaning out the DVR/writing a review of Action Replayy on Saturday and still make it to downtown Boston for two "A.M. Cinema" screenings on Sunday.

... albeit being pretty much ready to crash after Fair Game:



No "stubless" movies per se, although when cleaning out the DVR, a lot of what I watched was feature-length episodes of Masterpiece Mystery! - specifically, the latest entries in the Wallander series and most of Sherlock. And while this was a pretty decent weekend at the movies, those GBH/BBC co-productions certainly help raise the average.

Wallander is based upon a popular series of Swedish detective novels and stars Kenneth Branagh as a detective with depressive tendencies, the sort who cares too much and obsesses about each case to an unhealthy degree. This cycle has him confronting death not just in the messy aftermath, but first-hand, as he's forced to fire his weapon when confronted with a killer and sees his already-ailing father (David Warner) further deteriorate.

I'm not certain how much of a prestige project Wallander is for the BBC, but it's one of the most impressively-produced series on the air. Three or four times an episode, there will be a shot of the gray sky and bleak landscape that just stuns, and WGBH and Comcast had the good sense to not ever hurt it with much compression. Though set in Gstad, neither Branagh nor anyone else in the fine cast affects an accent, but it doesn't take away from the Scandinavian chill (and charm) at all.

As for Sherlock... Well, anyone reading this blog last December recognizes that I am something of a fan of Sherlock Holmes, and when I saw that Steven Moffat and Mark Gattis would be doing a new series called Sherlock for the BBC, I was understandably excited; Moffat has tended to be responsible for the best episode of Doctor Who ineach of the revival's first four seasons (as well as the fun "Timecrash" special), and though I hadn't heard of Benedict Cumberbatch before, Martin Freeman seemed like a fine Watson. I hadn't heard that the new show would be contemporary until the press release that WGBH had picked up the U.S. rights, but that certainly gave me pause.

Not that Holmes hadn't been updated before - throughout the silent era and thirties, when Doyle was either still writing new Holmes stories or had passed relatively recently, the movies tended to be set in the present day, although that wasn't too much of a stretch. The first two Rathbone/Bruce movies (done for Fox) were set in Victorian England, but when Universal picked the series up in the early 1940s, it was moved to the then-wartime setting to save production costs. Still, the idea of putting Sherlock in the present day seemed a little more nutty, if only because one of the things that set Holmes apart in the nineteenth century was Arthur Conan Doyle's emphasis on what we now call forensics, and it might make Holmes seem less exceptionally brilliant.

And it does, to a certain extent (as does Rupert Graves's Lestrade not coming off as a buffoon or goon); the producers and cast compensate by pushing Holmes's antisocial tendencies more than usual. But not so much that we ever lose track of how Holmes and Watson are among the best characters ever created. I wouldn't be shocked if Moffat and Gattis came to the BBC with a nameless pitch ("an army doctor back home after being wounded in Afghanistan teams with an antisocial genius to solve crimes too sensitive or strange for Scotland Yard") before telling them it was Sherlock Holmes. It's a great hook, and the producers do a fine job of building it into a contemporary series while still remaining true to the characters.

Oh, and the last fifteen minutes of the finale (which has enough going on for six episodes of most television series), where Holmes confronts Moriarty, is likely the best use of Moriarty ever. He's an overused character, especially compared to how seldom he appears in the canon, and I'm not sure his plan here makes senes, but the phrase he uses to describe himself makes it worthwhile.

This past summer/fall of Masterpiece Mystery! was outstanding all around, actually - though I didn't pay much mind to Miss Marple or Inspector Lewis, it still gave me new installments of Foyle's War, David Suchet in Poirot, Branagh as Wallander (again, honestly, one of the best-looking shows ever produced), and this new Sherlock. So if you missed any of it, use the Amazon links as something other than decoration.

Due Date

* ½ (out of four)
Seen 6 November 2010 at AMC Harvard Square #1 (first-run)

Speaking of Sherlock Holmes, Robert Downey Junior is usually worth checking out. Sadly, that's not the case here. While I can't literally say that I didn't laugh once during Due Date, the moments were, shall we say, well-spaced. What's worse is that the bit that generally had me laughing during the previews (Jamie Foxx speeding through a drainage ditch to toss Zach Galifianakis around in the back of his truck) turned out to be far less enjoyable during the actual film. Instead, they became examples of just how mean-spirited and dumb the movie is.

And it really is unpleasant. I don't require a movie to give me someone to root for, but I get the sense that director Todd Phillips and his co-writers really did want us to like Galifianakis's and Downey's characters, but it never happens for me: Galifianakis's idiot never grows on me, and Downey's high-strung guy still has me worried - this is a guy who gut-punches an annoying kid toward the start and alludes to a severe rage problem several times (as in, he apparently doesn't even remember the times he snaps) - and we're supposed to be rooting for him to get home to his wife and new child? Sure, the idea is that spending time with this goofball makes him a better man, but I never believe it.

For what it's worth, I didn't much like Phillips's previous film, The Hangover, very much either. Both movies share a crude, mean-spirited, black little heart, and seem to be built on people doing things that just make no sense other than the filmmakers needing other characters to accidentally be screwed over. Everybody's got their own line between amusing absurdity and lazy idiocy, of course, and Due Date consistently lands on the wrong side for me.

Megamind

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 7 November 2010 at AMC Boston Common #2 (first-run, 3-D, digital IMAX)

As expected, Megamind is akin to Monsters Versus Aliens - an affectionate pop-culture spoof with a decent combination of comedy and action, along with DreamWorks's trademark star-studded cast. Of course, big stars aren't always great voices, as evinced by how, when Megamind disguises himself as another character and I have no idea whether it's Will Ferrell or Ben Stiller speaking. And as much fun as some of the script's riffing on Superman is, it does mean it's a very specific parody. The details are kind of fun, though; it doesn't require knowing comic book minutiae.

It's nice enough, and along with superstar voices, DreamWorks is rapidly establishing good use of 3-D as one of their calling cards. It's not flashy, but it's well-done. It's an entertaining movie, not quite so good as some of the company's other animated films (such as How to Train Your Dragon), but it works well enough.

Political science: Fair Game and Gerrymandering

I don't like talking about politics nearly as much as I did back when I was in high school and knew a heck of a lot less. In fact, I get fairly uncomfortable when I see politically-oriented movies in a group; here in the so-called People's Republic of Cambridge, both a lot more passion and a somewhat more left-leaning philosophy are expected.

Not that I'm thinking either Fair Game, which targets the George W. Bush administration directly, or Gerrymandering, which is fairly balanced but seems a little inclined to make Tom DeLay the villain of one segment, is cheering for the wrong side. Still, my reaction to seeing both the same day is that I'd be much more likely to vote Republican on occasion if they didn't get caught doing so much of this shit.

And that's about all I'm going to say about that. After all, saying more isn't going to gain me readers and the politics that goes along with these is fairly depressing.

Fair Game

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 7 November 2010 at AMC Boston Common #19 (first-run)

Fair Game is a good movie that is going to have a target on its back for all the wrong reasons. If the story were relocated and names were changed, both its issues and its strengths would be thrown into sharper relief (along with how they are inextricably tied to each other), but it's contemporary enough and the current state of political discourse is contentious enough that folks may overlook that it tells the story it aims to tell rather well, with a couple of excellent performances.

We start in fall of 2001, with CIA operative and analyst Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts) using her cover as a venture capitalist to help track potential sales of atomic materials in the middle east. Intelligence isn't quite the family business, but word of Iraq potentially putting together materials for a weapon of mass destruction leads to her and the Agency recruiting her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson (Sean Penn), to use his contacts to find out if yellowcake uranium is being smuggled out of Niger. The investigation strongly suggests that it is not the case, so Joe, Valerie, and her colleages are shocked when the President announces the exact opposite during the State of the Union address. Joe writes an article in the New York Times describing his trip to Niger, and in seeming retaliation, Administration officials leak that Plame is a field agent to the press - which not only endangers ongoing operations, but multiplies to the strain on their marriage that Joe's article had created.

(Please don't send me mail about that description; it is the plot of the movie, not a definitive history of this affair. Similarly, what follows is opinions on how the movie works as drama. I'm sure most reading this far understand that, but I really don't want my inbox filled by people who think they know what sort of ax I have to grind.)

The first half of the film is an engrossing look at the process of gathering intelligence. Director Doug Liman has made a career of directing and producing spy movies that, while occasionally more grounded than the James Bond franchise, are still escapist fantasies. Here, he places the focus on an intelligence professional's primary job, procuring information and trying to form a larger picture from it. The details are interesting, giving us perspectives on "human intelligence" rarely seen in the movies, where even though the agents and assets are often quite smart, they are far from superhuman, and seeing the different sources it comes from, as well as the demands placed upon these people from the bureaucracy.

Full review at EFC.

Gerrymandering

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 7 November 2010 at the Brattle Theatre (Special Engagement)

Disdain for the technique of redrawing voting districts in strange ways for political gain ("gerrymandering") doesn't unite America's political parties, so much as alternate between them as convenient. Because of this, Gerrymandering-the-movie actually has a better chance than many politically-oriented documentaries to interest a large audience. How much new information that audience will receive is the question.

The term "gerrymandering" comes from Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry (whose name, as footage of President Kennedy and some Massachusetts schoolkids remind us, was pronounced with a hard G), famously called out in an 1812 Boston Gazette editorial cartoon for creating a salamander-shaped district to benefit his Democratic Republican party. It pervades American politics, as districts at the national, state, and local level are redrawn every ten years, with very few safeties to prevent those in power from influencing the process to their own benefit. As we see in an opening montage, Presidents from both parties (from Kennedy to Reagan to Obama) have decried the process, although few politicians actually do anything about it, as it may benefit them the next time around.

Filmmaker Jeff Reichert frames his movie in part by following a group attempting to do something about it, most notably Kathay Feng of Common Cause. In 2008, they put an initiative on the California ballot that would place the job of redistricting in the hands of an independent commission, and though they have the support of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, most career politicians oppose them. The film also covers the Texas state legislature's walkout in 2006, where Democratic representatives left the state in an effort to kill a Republican attempt to redistrict the state to its own advantage. They aren't necessarily the easiest things to make into a movie - the Texas segments are all done after the fact, and the last four weeks of a ballot initiative mainly consist of working phones and making rote speeches.

Full review at EFC.

Fantasies from around the world: Kuroneko, Monsters, and Action Replayy

... and I would have included Megamind in here, but I don't feel like giving it a full write-up and thus give it apparent short shrift as a capsule.

So, three days, three fantastical films that demonstrate just how broad the genre can be: A black-and-white ghost story set in historic Japan, partially incorporating the style of traditional Japanese theater; a contemporary, independent US/UK science fiction film shot in Central America for not much money; and a Bollywood fantasy that mostly takes place during the 1970s. It is really kind of amazing that we can get all three in the space of a week or so. It's potentially a nice crash course in understanding a broad range of cinema for the person used to blockbusters. Each, in its way, is accessible enough, and can be sold as sounding familiar, but I'm pretty sure that certain friends, upon buying tickets, would say they'd never seen movies like that.

Kuroneko, as I mention in the review, is tremendously formal; Kaneto Shindo and company are very deliberate and artificial at times, especially with the ghosts: They tend never move casually; in fact, they almost always seem to walk straight lines and right angles even when not constricted by the architecture of their house which encourages that. Their make-up strongly implies a mask without being one. While writing the review, I hit Wikipedia's entry on Noh theater up, and while much of what I observed as unusual in the film was probably just Shindo doing his thing rather than consciously integrating Noh, it's still very much the result of a movie being made by a different culture. It's fascinating for that, though; it made me consider how movies work while I watched it, but without feeling pedantic.

For pedantic, I give you something that bugged me about Monsters: If these creatures are basically things that grew from spores or eggs that came from Europa, who come they're menacing us on land at all? Although Europa is the most likely place in the Solar Sytem to find extraterrestrial life, that life would most likely be aquatic, living in an ocean submerged under a three-kilometer-deep layer of ice. And to give Gareth Edwards credit, he seems to be thinking at least partially along those lines - they are shaped like squid, and they are bio-luminescent, which would probably be pretty useful in that sort of "hollow-world" environment. Of course, they're running around on land, and one has to wonder why they would have evolved legs which can support them. After all, there's a reason that terrestrial fish, octopi, and cetaceans don't have them; they're not useful. But even assuming that there's a reason for them to be amphibious - Europa has even less gravity than Earth's moon; why would they be able to run around in gravity seven times what natural selection has prepared them for?

Remember - this is what you get for reading a movie review blog by a guy who still basically thinks like a math/science person. Similarly, I note that Action Replayy has the same plot hole as Back to the Future - if Bunty changes the past, then when he returns, why isn't there another Bunty who hasn't gone back in time, because why would he if his parents get along now. Well, maybe old Doc Brown Gonsalves leaves a note saying to make sure Bunty gets in the time machine, but where and when to? I mean, if he goes back to 1975, he's not the same Bunty, so there's two now. But there's a throwaway line about how the same person can't be in the same time twice - so maybe Gosalves tosses that timeline's Bunty much farther into the past or future, which potentially sucks for him, doesn't it?

(Yes, I have a couple time-travel screenplay ideas like this kicking around. Maybe getting the one that can be done as a short film written would be a good use of NaNoWriMo for a guy who just doesn't have time for a novel.)

Of course, the other way that the movie could have played it is as a predestination paradox, that Bunty's parents were never destined to get married until he pushed them at each other, and their mutual disdain is due to them being a bad match. Of course, that would not just be a lot darker than the makers of this musical comedy was going for, but it would maybe mean that the movie isn't playing up one of its themes - that love-marriages are preferable to arranged marriages.

At least, I think that's part of what the movie is going for; I really don't know Indian society close to well enough to know if there has been that sort of general shift over the past thirty-five years. It's something that I suspect would make the movie much more interesting if I knew one way or another; it's a film that makes reasonable assumptions of its audience, ones which non-Indian audiences may not fully get.

Yabu no naka no kuroneko (aka Kuroneko, or Black Cat)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 4 November 2010 at Landmark Kendall Square #9 (special engagement)

Kaneto Shindo's Kuroneko is a ghost story that derives its horror not from sudden shocks, but from the inevitability of events. It is as familiar as folklore and often seems staged in a way meant to remind the audience of its artifice, but it sucks the viewer in. It doesn't create an atmosphere of panic, but one of distinct unease.

The film opens with tired, bedraggled samurai emerging from the woods, drinking from a stream near a small farmhouse, and then going in. A mother (Nobuko Otowa) and her daughter-in-law (Kiwako Taichi) are having their supper, and it doesn't take long before the soldiers sate their appetites. They burn the evidence, but a black cat chances upon the bodies. Later, a palace samurai happens upon a beautiful woman near Rajamon gate; he offers to protect her as she walks through the woods, only to find he's been lured into a trap. Many more samurai perish; the lord demands that Raiko (Kei Sato), the head of his army, get to the bottom of it. This, he decides, is a job for "Gintoki of the Glade" (Kichiemon Nakamura), the sole survivor or a battle in the north. Gintoki has his own mystery to solve, though - what happened to his mother Yone and his wife Shige when their home burned a year ago.

Though a ghost story, Kuroneko is certainly an art-house film by today's standards, and probably the standards of its time (originally released in 1968 Japan, a restored 35mm print is currently touring North America). Its sets and cinematography sometimes bring to mind a stage production more than those associated with film, a feeling enhanced by the stiff posture and occasionally flat, declarative manner of speech (which likely extends beyond period accuracy). Shindo will show things to the audience for a few seconds longer than need be to get the point across, or change from a full set to a plain black background with a smoke machine running. It's a deliberate formalism, likely more than a bit foreign for western audiences, but often fascinating and engrossing to watch. It enhances the folkloric feel of the story without relying on crutches like narration or captioning.

Full review at EFC.

Monsters

* * * (out of four)
Seen 5 November 2010 at Landmark Kendall Square #4 (first-run)

Movies like Monsters often get graded on a curve because of how much they do with relatively little. Gareth Edwards shot it guerrilla-style and had to cram a fair amount of effects shots into a five or six-figure budget, but put together a polished and entertaining movie, and that's well worth celebrating. The end result has its flaws, but to put that achievement in perspective, he's made a better movie than others have with a thousand times the resources.

A probe sent to Europa (a moon of Jupiter) to gather samples crashed in northern Mexico six years ago, and wouldn't you know it, not only is there life on Europa, but it grows to the size of five-story buildings. Photojournalist Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy) is getting pictures of the devastation when his publisher tells him to check on his daughter, Samantha Wynden (Whitney Able), and then get her home safely. However, there's no direct route between Mexico and the U.S. any more - the creatures' migration patterns make the entire northern part of the country unsafe - so they have to make their way to the coast and the last ferry out - and then, when that fails, up the river and over land.

Though it involves gas masks, alien megafauna, and tramping through the jungle under the dubious protection of men with guns, Monsters's formula is as much romance as kaiju horror. It is, when you get down to it, less about trying to find a way to defeat these marauding beasts than about a pair of intelligent people meeting by chance and getting to know each other. They both have things that they're initially reluctant to talk about - Andrew his estrangement from his son, Sam her distance from her family and fiancé - but they've got nothing but time to talk and a simmering attraction despite Sam being engaged and a certain amount of class envy on Andrew's part.

Full review at EFC.

Action Replayy

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 6 November 2010 at Entertainment Cinemas Fresh Pond #5 (first-run Bollywood)

Western movie fans may have some doubts about the provenance of Vipul Amrutlal Shah's new film, Action Replayy. It's an adaptation of a 1994 play with almost the same name (the play spells it correctly), although Warner Brothers, apparently not aware of this, made vague comments earlier this year about their lawyers being ready if it turned out to be a remake of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Seeing the movie, it appears Universal might have more of a case vis-a-vis Back to the Future. Probably not, though - the basic story has been used in a lot of places, and Action Replayy would be a much better movie if it had ripped off some details from Robert Zemeckis's film.

Bunty (Aditya Roy Kapoor) is a good-looking young man with a beautiful, outgoing girlfriend, Tanya (Sudeepa Singh), and he'd like things to stay that way; his constantly-bickering parents certainly doesn't suggest that he'd be happy after marriage. After a particularly ugly fight at their 33rd anniversary party, Bunty decides to fix things. Fortunately, Tanya's grandfather, Professor Anthony Gonsalves (Randhir Kapoor), has invented a time machine, which Bunty uses to go back to 1975, where father Kishen (Akshay Kumar) is a milksop and mother Mala (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan) is a bully, with the goal of making a love-marriage out of the one Kishen's father (Om Puri) and Mala's mother (Kirron Kher) had arranged.

Action Replayy isn't a fatally flawed movie, but it's one that frequently feels somewhat off-kilter. There are numerous examples of how, somewhere between the script and the editing room, the filmmakers make some odd choices about what is going to stay in and what was going to go out. For instance, when the professor is explaining his time machine to Bunty, the director and cinematographer frame the shot so the Bunty's phone is in the foreground, recording it, and we see the professor on the device's screen; it's a strange and awkward enough shot that one expects the video to be played back later, perhaps to convince the younger Gonsalves that he did in fact invent time travel Doc Brown-style. Doesn't happen. Similarly, when we first see Mala's friend Mona (Neha Dhupia) in the past, it's clear that she's attracted to Bunty, but the movie never does anything with that, at least not until the film is nearly over.

Full review at EFC.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 5 November - 11 November

It's November, which is sort of like May in that studios tend to wake up and stop screwing around, both with award-worthy films and blockbusters, as folks are either making best-of lists (for the high-class stuff) or finding more excuses to go to the movies (days off, holidays, it's too chilly and miserable to do warm-weather activities but not yet worth barricading oneself in the house and hibernating).

• Before getting to the blockbusters, let's start with the Brattle, which has a tribute close to my heart on Wednesday and Thursday (10-11 November) with Paprika. It's what looks to be the last film by Satoshi Kon, who lost a battle with pancreatic cancer earlier this year. It's a devastating loss, as Kon made animated films for adults in a way that few others did, even in his native Japan; his films are mature, rather than just filled with R-rated content (although, interestingly, the one he was working on at the time of his death was family-friendly). Paprika is a great movie, well worth seeing on a big screen even if you've got it on Blu-ray.
  
  Before that, they'll be spending the weekend alternating shows of the documentary Gerrymandering (which, I remember from junior-high social studies, is the practice of assigning voting districts to achieve a political end) and Edgar Wright's extremely fun Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. It's a worthy adaptation of source material I loved, and Mr. Wright will be at the theater Saturday night to introduce the film, maybe take a few questions afterward, and then present a screening of Flash Gordon afterward. Monday is the next entry in the CineCaché series, which has not been nailed down yet, but the folks I talked to the other night seem to feel that they've got winners on their hands for the rest of the year.



• A few big movies open up on Friday. The most screens seem to be going to Due Date, the big Robert Downey Jr./Zack Galifianakis comedy that looks a lot like a riff on Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. I feel somewhat sad that the previews seem to have mostly obscured Michelle Monaghan being in the movie, although it's probably representative of her actual screen time. This makes me sad, because I wouldn't even be thinking of whether or not I could fit it in if it was sold to me as a Kiss Kiss Bang Bang reunion.
  
  Also opening on a ton of screens, including most of the 3-D ones, is Megamind, which looks like it'll be in the Monsters Vs. Aliens category of DreamWorks Animation pictures: Fun, well-rendered, with a voice cast that has stars who are noteworthy in live action but really don't have distinctive voices. Also, if you're particular on the format you see it in, choose your theater accordingly: It's playing in 2-D at Fresh Pond and Fenway; Real-D digital 3-D at Fresh Pond, Fenway, Harvard Square, and Boston Common; IMAX-branded digital 3-D at Boston Common; and genuine on-giant-film IMAX at Jordan's Furniture. It'll likely only last a couple of weeks on the IMAX screens, what with Harry Potter 7 due for release on the 19th.
  
  Huh - this is the first time I can remember the same movie opening at both Harvard Square and Fresh Pond. That explains why it didn't show up at the Arlington Capitol despite being in their "coming soon" email last week; even if regional exclusives aren't being enforced, that would be a lot of screens within a couple miles or so.



• You can tell it's getting close to Oscar time when the openings at mainstream and boutique houses start to overlap. Take Fair Game, a movie directed by Doug Liman with a pretty A-list cast; it's opening at Boston Common, the Coolidge, and the Kendall this week, although I suspect it may move to more mainstream theaters in the coming weeks - indeed, it wasn't on the Kendall's "coming soon" list earlier in the week, suggesting that they only picked it up when neither Harvard Square nor Fresh Pond booked it (Conviction is also sticking around despite being labeled "Must End Thursday!" on their site earlier this week, knocking Hornet's Nest down to one theater rather than two and Welcome to the Rileys down to one matinee per day). For Colored Girls (aw, why not stick with "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf" as the title?) is only playing at more mainstream plexes (Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway), but it's getting much better buzz than Tyler Perry films usually get.
  
  Also worth mentioning: Despite my pessimism at only seeing four other people in the theater when I went to see Aftershock last weekend, it's sticking around with an early matinee and a late show for a few more days, at least, though I suspect it's just occupying space until Morning Glories opens Wednesday.



• Even aside from Fair Game, there's a fairly mainstream vibe to the Kendall this week - two of the movies they're opening seem like they certainly could play the multiplexes. Four Lions is a hilarious slob comedy, albeit one in which the comedic morons happen to be prospective suicide bombers. I saw it at a preview Tuesday night, and it is well worth dropping cash on. Also opening is Monsters, a sci-fi movie notable for apparently being fairly polished on a low budget and being as much a romance as a post-apocalyptic thriller. The one-week warning is attached to a more conventional boutique film, Vision, a German film about a nun who was also a scholar and healer even before she started believing that God spoke with her directly.



• The Indian movies at Fresh Pond turn over this weekend. I've got no idea what Golmaal 3 is, but that the series has made it to a third entry probably means it's got some fans and is doing something right. The other Bollywood screen will be used for Action Replayy, which looks like a Hindi riff on Back to the Future with a man using a time machine to make sure that his folks get together in the flashy, colorful 1970s. I'll probably check it out, because it's sci-fi-ish and co-stars Aishwarya Rai. Plus, if you think I either didn't notice the boost in hits I got from that review of Endhiran or don't want another, you are sadly mistaken.



• I'd like to apologize to the Boston Jewish Film Festival for only noting their first screening at the MFA last week. They opened at other locations a day or two before that, including at the Coolidge, where they will take up residence in the main auditorium for most of this week. In addition to the MFA and Coolidge, the festival is having screenings at a couple other venues that us T-bound folks have trouble reaching (such as West Newton and Danvers), so when you plug titles into Festival Genius, make sure you can get there.
  
  The MFA also continues screening Hyman Bloom: The Beauty of All Things and Johnny Mad Dog at odd intervals.
  
  In addition to the BJFF, the Coolidge has a few other activities going on this weekend: The 5+ hour cut of Assayas's Carlos has been extended through Saturday, there will be a Talk Cinema preview of Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer on Sunday morning, and the night-owls can go to midnight showings of Spike & Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation on Friday and Saturday. It does not appear to be the same program I saw back in February at the Regent; the Coolidge lists their line-up here.



• And speaking of the Regent, they've got a couple screenings this week: Please Remove Your Shoes, a documentary on airport security (and secuirty theater) that played the Boston Film Festival (but which I missed because documentaries basically got hidden in the afternoon), plays Thursday evening. An encore of last Thursday evening's film, Beneath the Blue, plays Sunday afternoon.
  
  (And if you like dolphins, the Aquarium swapped "Dolphins & Whales: Tribes of the Deep" into their IMAX rotation at the start of the month, at the expense of "Ultimate Wave 3D". "Hubble 3D", "Under the Sea 3D", "Sea Rex 3D", and evening shows of Inception also continue.)



• The Harvard Film Archive has guests again this weekend: German filmmaker Harun Farocki on Friday and Saturday, with Portugese filmmaker Pedro Costa in town on Sunday with his new film, Ne Change Rien. Monday wraps up their Robert Gardner restrospective with Forest of Bliss.



• And, finally, Emerson presents a weekend of auteur movie stars: On Friday and Saturday night, an episode of Godard's L'histoire du Cinéma follows Orson Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons. Saturday afternoon and Sunday night, they shift gears and present Jerry Lewis in The Errand Boy.

CineCaché #3: Four Lions

(Devin Faraci of Badass Digest/Drafthouse Pictures and writer/director Christopher Morris)

Sooner or later, CineCaché is going to get its feet under it, but this preview of Four Lions was certainly the best-attended yet. Part of this was because it was also promoted by The Boston Underground Film Festival, the tickets were free, and Drafthouse has been working hard to get the word out about this movie. It will be very interesting to see how well this promotional work scales come Friday, when it's released in the top ten or so markets. It's one thing to pack a 200-person theater with the folks on your mailing lists for one screening; getting a broad audience to see your weird film that's showing five times a day is something else.

But, if anyone can do it, it might be the Drafthouse people. As much as I like the Alamo Drafthouse - I'm seriously thinking about going there again next year, perhaps for Fantastic Fest - and think that they're one of the exhibitors that really gets the challenges that today presents in getting people to go to the movies (in short, you have to make your theater a destination worth paying for), they're probably not quite the magical group that enthusiasts often portray them to be, and distribution has clobbered a lot of well-financed, well-meaning people. Evokative Films out of Montreal are doing much the same thing as Drafthouse, and they're asking for help.

I do find it curious that neither the trailers I've seen at the Kendall nor the print that screened at the Brattle has had a Drafthouse vanity card. I suspect that the Alamo Drafthouse brand isn't quite as well-known outside of Texas as you might think from reading film sites on the internet, but it seems like they might want to build their brand early, unless the material in Four Lions is more hot-button than they'd like. As much as it's cool that they're starting with a terrorist comedy, they may not want to be defined by the terrorist comedy.

If there's any justice, they won't be - as audacious as Four Lions is, it's twice as funny. And while I say this in the review itself, it's worth mentioning here, not as a critique of the film, but in terms of its subject matter: Mockery is in many ways the best response to something horrible. Laughing at a thing diminishes its power over you. During his introduction and Q&A, director Christopher Morris talked about how much of what happens in Four Lions came from watching trials or talking to policemen and reporters who had dealt with would-be terrorists - many of them are just not that bright, or able. The messed-up young men far outnumber the masterminds, and in many ways that makes me hate the leaders even more for how they twist the normal frustrations of the young and their faith in a philosophy meant to provide assurance and peace.

Laugh at them. This stuff is ridiculous and should be treated as such.

Four Lions

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 2 November 2010 at the Brattle Theatre (CineCaché)

Before getting upset at the very existence of terrorist comedy Four Lions, remember one thing: Most criminals are idiots. If they were smart, they'd likely be putting their talents to use doing something much more lucrative with much less risk of injury and/or incarceration. This applies to heinous as well as petty crimes, perhaps even more so, as using the clever ones to deliver a suicide bomb is not great use of resources. The guys stumbling through this movie are definitely not the smart ones, but they are hilariously dim.

Omar (Riz Ahmed) isn't quite so dim as the others. Of Pakistani descent and living in the north of England with his supportive wife Sophia (Preeya Kalidas) and son Mahmood (Mohammad Aqil), it's not clear why he's dedicated to jihad, but he is. He and his friend Waj (Kayvan Novak) go to Pakistan for training, which doesn't go well, and when the come back, the other members of his cell have been busy - Fessal (Adeel Akhtar) has obtained the raw materials for homemade bombs, and Barry (Nigel Lindsay) has recruited a new member to their cause, Hassan (Arsher Ali). They're about to get serious, even though they really shouldn't be crossing the street unattended, let alone working with explosives.

This leads to some dark, dark comedy, although perhaps not all that much darker than British comedies from Kind Hearts and Coronets to A Fish Called Wanda. The often-morbid slapstick complements some occasional sharp satire and points worth pondering - such as the contrast between Omar and his peaceful brother Ahmed (Wasim Zakir), who is nevertheless far more observant of the Sharia traditions. It's not completely nihilistic humor - while director Christopher Morris and his three co-writers get the audience to laugh at some terrible things, they never lose sight that what these guys are doing is as potentially tragic as it is absurd.

Full review at EFC.

This Week In Tickets: 25 October 2010 to 31 October 2010

A little slow this week - the World Series started Wednesday, and though it was a pretty short one, it occupied a few evenings. And while I'm not sure that Fox pushed the schedule around so that it wouldn't interfere with Glee (how is it fair or right that I don't get to see Fringe for a couple of weeks, but that thing continues uninterrupted?), it certainly seems that way. Still, good series, and my friend who roots for the Giants is probably still on cloud nine.



Stubless: Trick 'r Treat (31 October 2010, about 6:30pm)

Nothing really big-time this week - one movie I didn't really feel like talking about, one I wanted to talk about a lot, and one I went to in part because I figured few in the mainstream American blogosphere would be covering it (laugh all you want, but Endhiran drove people to this blog like crazy, relatively speaking). It's starting to get to be time to really pay attention to the multiplexes again - I really should get around to The Social Network and Hereafter while they're still playing theaters and the crush of other stuff isn't too heavy.

The one I felt talking about, Never Let Me Go, is in part because of something that gets under my skin more than it should: Nearly every write-up or review I've seen has said, more or less, to not worry about the science-fictional aspects of it, or used a euphemism like "speculative fiction", or, the one that really gets my goat, used some variation of "it transcends/is more than science fiction."

Look, I'll be the first to admit that there's a reason Sturgeon's Law was first applied to science fiction: 90% of it is crud. But, some of the other ten percent is like Never Let Me Go, fantastic. And for good science fiction to be taken seriously, it needs to stake a claim to things like this. Sure, the movie's trailer may have tried to downplay the science fictional aspects, but it was still pretty obviously a movie about clone kids created as raw materials for organ transplants (an art-house version of The Island, if you want to be sarcastic about it). Sci-fi fans should step forward and own that.

Or maybe it wasn't so obvious - before the screening, one of the trailers was for Monsters, an independent film which wears its genre trappings on its sleeve. It got a couple snickers from the audience, although it may just have been at the incongruity of one of the quotes being Ain't It Cool with "The greatest giant monster movie in years", or something like that. Still, I hear that, and I do have to wonder whether that person knows that they were settling in for science fiction themselves.

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

* * (out of four)
Seen 25 October 2010 at Landmark Kendall Square #5 (first-run)

It's no fun reviewing Woody Allen movies any more, even on the odd occasion when it's actually rewarding to watch them. About ten years ago, with Small Time Crooks, I found myself disliking the quite pessimistic take he seemed to have on life; the end result of the movie seemed to be the universe smacking characters down for any sort of ambition. Not just the characters plotting a robbery, but any attempt to rise above one's station would be punished. And every film of his to come out in the past decade seems to conform to this, though I haven't seen Scoop or Whatever Works. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger is not the film which breaks the streak.

It is, however, unusually frustrating, in that it's pretty darn inert. There's not really a story for the quality ensemble to act out, just parallel situations of temptation that ultimately leads to destruction. Random, chaotic destruction, rather than smiting directly connected to ambition, but make no mistake - happiness will only come as the result of self-delusion.

Still, there are worthwhile moments. The awkward last scene between Naomi Watts and Antonio Banderas, for instance, as she tries to act on her attraction when they both know it's too late, even though she knows it's the first moment when she feels she can, while he just won't rise to it. That's a brief moment of quiet, almost beautiful tragedy, one of the few that stands out among the uninteresting selfishness and delusion that the movie otherwise settles for.

Never Let Me Go

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 29 October 2010 at Landmark Kendall Square #4 (first-run)

Never Let Me Go is the sort of science fiction that tends to hide its genre or go by another name - "speculative fiction" or "slipstream" - because it wants to associate itself with a different audience. Science fiction is considered to be stories about gadgets and things, while this work is about people, and relationships, and ideas. It's a false distinction, but even if one buys into it, all of the best science fiction has been about ideas, and this one is about people treated as things.

In its world, organ transplants became much safer much earlier, and cloning was apparently mastered not long after Crick and Watson discovered the double helix. Thus, by the late 1970s, Britain's National Donor Program has facilities of various types scattered around the country. Hailsham looks like a boarding school, but its charges have no parents to go home to. Three children on the cusp of adolescence are brought into focus: Tommy (Charlie Rove), a volatile but sensitive boy; Kathy (Isobel Meikle-Small), a curious young girl who finds herself attracted to him; and Ruth (Elle Purnell), her best friend. It's Tommy and Ruth who eventually pair off, though, and as they grow up and are moved to "The Cottages" to await their first "treatments", Kathy (now played by Carey Mulligan) opts to train as a "Carer". The three go their separate ways, until Kathy meets Ruth (Keira Knightley), who suggests they reunite with Tommy (Andrew Garfield) while they can.

Director Mark Romanek, novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, and screenwriter Alex Garland set the story in an alternate history rather than the future, and the speculative elements are all the chillier for it. A potential future, after all, is something that we can avoid; this world is so familiar that it feels like the way that the twentieth century would have inevitably run with those key differences in medical science. The world-building is deceptively meticulous - we hear little technical jargon and few details that the audience could trip on, but the details of the clones' lives at Hailsham and after always ring true. They cheat a little, perhaps, by having characters take note of their unusual psychology, but they also sneak things in that show that the world isn't standing still, and as horrible as the idea of Hailsham is, the setting implies things that are even worse.

Full review at eFilmCritic.

Trick 'r Treat

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 31 October 2010 in Jay's Living Room (Halloween! blu-ray)

How, I wonder, does Trick 'r Treat not get actual theatrical distribution? It's got a couple of of notable production companies behind it (Legendary Pictures and Bryan Singer's Bad Hat Harry). It's got some reasonably recognizable faces for the trailer. The effects are slick. It markets itself as a Halloween movie, a more fun alternative to the annual Saw release. Is there really no room for a horror-comedy more interested in freak-outs than gross-outs?

That's not to say the movie is perfect, although of the four or five interconnected stories, only one - a serial killer with a really annoying kid - falls flat, and that one at least gives Dylan Baker a good, nasty-funny role. Similarly, there's a fairly notable lapse in logic to the young t(w)eens collecting pumpkins and going to a haunted quarry, but the atmosphere is more than good enough to cover it. And there's nothing wrong with Brian Cox under siege from a demonic trick-or-treater and Anna Paquin as a college girl put upon by her more experienced sister and friends.

For any faults it has, though, it's a fun ride. Writer/director Michael Dougherty is good at tingling the spine; the expectation of what may happen next is built up very well. He's also good at having the humor come from the characters as opposed to making fun of the genre. He takes his scares seriously, but populates the stories with funny people.

Aftershock, and mainstream-foreign distribution

A few weeks ago, I went to a screening of Endhiran that was packed even though it was not even the movie's opening weekend and wondered what the heck Indian films have that other foreign and independent films don't. The answer, I figure, is a combination of day-and-date releases and local marketing. It probably also doesn't hurt that they have been a staple of whatever theater they were running in at any given point over the past few years: If you've wanted to see an Indian movie in the Greater Boston area, there's been one playing.

Still, I figured Aftershock might have a chance to do pretty well. The Boston Common theater where it is playing is very close to Chinatown. The movie was a big hit in China this summer, had the look of an epic that needs to be seen on the big screen, and as it had only played there a few months ago, I figured it might not have been completely undercut by large chunks of its audience already having the movie on DVD. Heck, I saw larger-than-expected crowds at Formosa Betrayed and 71: Into the Fire, and figured it had a pretty good shot of doing well. I planned to write something about the irony that the big chain theater could open this movie up while the independent cinema a block away apparently can't.

Instead, I sat down to the 1:45pm show with only four other people, I think only one or two looking Asian. Part, I suspect, is that I was wrong about those DVDs: They apparently have some amazingly short release dates in China; though IMDB shows the movie as having been released on 22 July 2010 in both the PRC and Hong Kong, YesAsia shows 17 September 2010 releases for the DVD and Blu-ray in Hong Kong, 30 September for the DVD in China, and 15 October release for the Blu-ray in China (and the Hong Kong VCD, yes, really, VCD). So, even with an unusually aggressive American release, Aftershock was still competing with import DVDs, and Chinese DVDs are as cheap as they have to be to compete with ubiquitous piracy. (Apparently Blu-ray piracy is still lagging, as those retail for about twice as much as DVDs in China, as opposed to the 15-30% markup in the U.S.)

But I also have to wonder how well-supported the release was. Was there signage in Chinatown businesses, or ad buys on websites frequented by the target audience? I've got no idea. What I do wonder is if bigger audiences would result if AMC (or the Stuart Street Playhouse) made Chinese films a regular thing. Even if you can't get day-and-date releases, just try having something there for a couple months during a down period (September/October or February/March, maybe) or have it be a regular weekday series.

Fresh movies would likely help, but I suspect it would be hard for any local exhibitor (except maybe Austin's Tim League) to convince Asian studios to do so. After all, intuitively, the collapse of Asian films in the U.S. home video market over the past five or ten years does not seem to argue for a more aggressive, expensive courting of that market, no matter how successful Indian films have been using the same model. But I suspect Bollywood is ahead of the curve, albeit accidentally - they didn't so much anticipate a world where the internet allows fans around the world to follow foreign movie industries as closely as the local one, or where region-free DVD players allowed hardcore fans to bypass licensing agreements that don't get struck for every title (and where the ones they are struck for take forever to come out and may show up in edited form); they just saw an audience not being served and went after it in the most straightforward way possible.

Now, I suspect that it's time for everyone else to see that this is the best model - rather than waiting to strike deals with Magnolia and IFC after the buzz on your property has peaked, market directly to American fans, including day-and-date releases in theaters in or near large Chinese-American communities (this applies equally-well to Korea, Japan, heck, even France). Delays give audiences time to focus on something else, and while profits may down on the big movies, I suspect that the mid-range films will make up for it.

Also, I suspect that if foreign studios offer favorable terms to the AMCs and Landmarks of the world, there's a good chance that they'll be able to get their movies in front of audiences that might not otherwise see them. Right now, the chance of the average guy who likes movies finding these works is low - they don't show up in multiplexes, Best Buy is cutting shelving, video rental stores are imploding, Redbox doesn't stock niche, and Amazon and Netflix isn't likely to show you these movies unless you're already browsing something similar. Ironically, theatrical might be the easiest for foreign studios looking to increase their presence in the U.S. to crack, especially if they're smart about how they go about it. It will take a serious and sustained effort, though - getting the base there will require doing more than putting one movie out a month after the DVD is available.

It's also worth remembering that this will take time, because there are a few different audiences that would hopefully come in order. First, the immigrants and the hardcore fans (the guys a few notches above me) - the people who follow the Chinese film industries as closely as Hollywood if not closer. These people can potentially form a solid, predictable base if courted well (for Bollywood films, they appear to be all you need). After that, you get the adventurous movie fans - the guys who come to the multiplex and maybe will drop nine bucks on the film with a cool name and cool poster that starts in ten minutes. Having the occasional 3-D movie wouldn't hurt (and as a bonus, that's cheaper than shipping film). Then, maybe, that group will start recommending the foreign-but-mainstream movie to his or her friends, especially after he or she has seen a few that impress.

This would take time, though, and probably an unusual run of good movies. Would any theater be willing to take this chance? It seems like it could be high-risk, except for theaters with 20+ screens that are willing to take a chance on what they show on the smaller ones and places like Fresh Pond that are likely running close to the edge anyway. But with foreign film distribution falling apart in the US, it's possible that being bold is better than trying to shore up the current system.

Aftershock

* * * (out of four)
Seen 30 October 2010 at AMC Boston Common #1 (first-run)

It's not hard to get the wrong impression of Aftershock; the poster in the theater lobby notes that it was released in IMAX (interestingly, though showing the North American release date, the text on that one-sheet is almost entirely Chinese), and while director Feng Xiaogang has directed a wide range of films in all genres, it has been his grand spectacles such as Assembly and The Banquet (aka Legend of the Black Scorpion) that have gotten the most attention overseas. So it may be a bit surprising when, with roughly a half hour down and nearly two to go, the film shifts gears to become a family melodrama, and stays one to the end. Fortunately, it's a pretty good one as such things go.

The film starts in Tangshan on 26 July 1976, where we meet Fang Qiang (Zhang Guoqiang) and his wife Yuan Li (Fan Xu), as well as their twin children, Fang Da and Fang Deng. Sadly, early the next morning the date and place of perhaps the most devastating earthquakes of the twentieth century: Roughly a quarter of the of this city's million inhabitants died when it struck as they slept. As the city crumbles around her, she is faced with an impossible choice - a piece of rubble rests on both her children; lift it from Da and Deng will be crushed, lift it from Deng and Da dies. Ultimately, she says "save my son". Fortunately, the men working to dig the children out are neither engineers nor doctors, and Deng lives. The silent child is adopted by two of the soldiers (Chen Daoming and Chen Jin). We next catch up with them about ten years later, when Fang Da (Chen Li), who lost an arm in the quake, is chafing at his mother's obsessive attention, while sister Wang Deng (Zhang Jingchu) is making plans to apply to medical school, though her nightmares indicate that she remembers much more about the night of the quake than she's let on.

All the characters are deeply affected by that night, and it's something we will watch them deal with practically to the present day; the English-language title turns out to be quite descriptive. This is a film not about a disaster or even just its immediate aftermath, but how a single event can affect a person profoundly. The script by Su Xiaowei spans thirty-two years and does a remarkable job of keeping the focus on its main characters even though there are ample opportunities to go off on tangents or have the main cast grow to an unwieldy size; supporting characters are rotated in and out naturally. There are some odd pacing issues, though, almost as though Feng and Su felt they had plenty of time in the beginning but pressure to wrap it up toward the end: There's a lengthy sequence with Qiang's mother and sister, for instance, that ultimately doesn't change anything, although this may be a sequence the film's main audience expects to see. At the other end of the movie, certain major emotional moments happen just off-screen. They are not bad choices; the restraint actually works very well. It's odd, though, in that there are times that restraint is not the word one would use to describe Feng's work here.

Full review at EFC.