Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 8 February - 14 February 2013

Well, in practical terms, this actually covers a shorter period, as there will effectively be no movies today (8 February) because of the blizzard and some studio movies will be opening next Thursday for Valentine's day. That just means we've got to do more in less time!

(Note: I haven't been calling theaters, so even if there's no notes on them being closed don't just assume that they're open and show up. Seriously, don't go outside if you don't have to; it may not look like much now, but everyone swears this blizzard will be an actual blizzard!)

• The Boston Sci-Fi Film Fest is at the Somerville Theatre this week, a run-up to next weekend's marathon. It looks even more uneven than most specialty festivals, with a pretty well-received French-Canadian film (Mars et Avril) opening the fest but some rough selections later and one notable movie dropped at the last minute. Still, there is often a gem or two hidden amid the rest. Note that the blizzard will see the theater close at 6pm on Friday, so the opening night screenings will be rescheduled (the Somerville Theatre website says Saturday, but the festival site has no details).
  
  It's a busy week for the Somerville; they'll be presenting two performances of The Vagina Monologues on Saturday, and on Valentine's Day there are two special screenings beyond the festival: Girl Shy, a pretty darn funny Harold Lloyd silent in 35mm on the big screen with Jeff Rapsis on the organ. There's a short, too, and it should look pretty good, between Dave Kornfeld likely digging the super-bright lamps out and Lloyd having taken good care of his films. Those looking for something a little more daring may want to head upstairs where Faith Soloway's Lesbian Cinema Schlock Treatment has its first(?) monthly show with Claire of the Moon getting what looks like a highly specialized live MST3K-ing from the local musician.
• In first-run presentations, Somerville opens Identity Thief, as does Boston Common, Fenway, and Fresh Pond. It features a couple reliably funny people (Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy) as a victim and perpetrator of credit card fraud, with the former trying to bring the latter to the police and both running from even worse folks.
  
  Looking more promising is Side Effects, the latest - and possibly last - film from Steven Soderbergh, with Rooney Mara as a woman put on an experimental new drug by her psychiatrist (Jude Law) only to find the cure may be worse than the disease. It plays the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Fenway, and Boston Common. Personally, I think Soderbergh will do another movie in a few years (not counting the Liberace biography he's doing for HBO), but he's earned a rest if he wants it.
  
  With a little more in the way of screens to fill, Boston Common also opens Lost In Thailand, a hit comedy from China starring and directed by Xu Zheng (whom Chinese film fans may remember from Crazy Stone, Crazy Racer, and Love in the Buff). He plays a businessman trying to meet up with a stockholder in Thailand before a rival despite one of those laid-back traveling companions who make everything go wrong.
• Kendall Square is closed on Friday and wn't open until 6pm on Saturday. It mostly keeps the same line-up. The new addition is pretty noteworthy, though: 56 Up, the latest installment of a series of documentaries made for British television starting in 1964, when a group of seven-year-olds were interviewed. Director Michael Apted has been revisiting those that still wish to participate every seven years since, so this is the eighth check-in with the group. Kind of an astonishing accomplishment, really.
• That movie will open at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in two weeks; this week, they pick up Quartet and the Oscar-Nominated Live Action & Animated Shorts (joining the documentary shorts that are already playing. Those don't start until Saturday, as the Coolidge is closed on Friday in anticipation of the blizzard.
  
  Its Saturday screening is also canceled, but Mary Poppins will still play as a Sunday morning kids' show. Sunday morning has a second movie featuring kids, but Lore is likely not for them, as the Talk Cinema presentation is about five children of Nazi SS officers making their way across Germany in the wake of World War II to join their grandmother and facing their parents' legacy. (Note: Lore has been postponed until the 17th)
  
  For the Saturday midnight screening (the Friday one is canceled), they continue Blaxploitation History Month with Sugar Hill, with Marki Bey seeking revenge on the gangsters that killed her boyfriend with voodoo - specifically, bringing forth zombies (in the original meaning of the word) to do her bidding! There's also a special "Deconstructing Sgt. Pepper" lecture by Scott Freiman on Monday night, which would normally be when "Big Screen Classics" is presented, but that series return will instead be on Thursday, so that Rebecca, the gothic romance that was Alfred Hitchcock's first American film, can run on Valentine's Day.
• The Brattle is also closed on Friday, meaning that the "(Some of) The Best of 2012" series loses How to Survive a Plague and The Raid. It has a busy Saturday, though, with two double features: Animated monster movies Paranorman and Frankenweenie in the afternoon and noteworthy directors sending limousines across a city (Leos Carax's Holy Motors and David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis) in the evening. Those will be introduced by members of the Boston Society of Film Critics, who will have their awards ceremony and a screening of How to Survive a Plague on Sunday evening, with director David France joining them. Another director, Carlo Guillermo Proto, will be on-site Monday to screen and discuss his documentary El Huaso as part of the DocYard series. That one follows a retiree who takes up competing in rodeos in case his short-term memory problems are a harbinger of full-blown Alzheimer's, which he has decided he would not live with.
  
  For Tuesday through Thursday - well, it's Valentine's Day, which means Casablanca on 35mm! The actual Valentine's Day shows will probably sell out, so buy tickets in advance; there are also Premium Tickets available for couples that include special gifts.
• The Arlington Capitol will be closing at 6pm Friday and opening late at 4pm Saturday, and will have another week of Capitol Classics double features mid-week, this set valentine-themed: Mystic Pizza & Four Weddings and a Funeral on Tuesday the 12th, Untamed Heart & The Apartment on Wednesday the 13th, and Moonstruck & A Fish Called Wanda on Thursday the 15th.
• The Harvard Film Archive will be closed on both Friday and Saturday, but will continue their mini-run of Bruno Dumont's Hors Satan on Sunday afternoon and Monday evening. The snow wipes out two screenings in the Raoul Walsh retrospective, but the one that remains, High Sierra on Sunday night, is a pretty good one, with a script by John Huston and Humphrey Bogart as a thief on the run with Ida Lupino. There's also a free VES screening of I Don't Want to Sleep Alone on Tuesday night.
• ArtsEmerson has a film, stage, and music program called The Next Thing Festival (TNT for short) over the next few weeks, and the film programming this weekend is a preview, with this weekend focused on "lighting the dynamite". Films scheduled include Brazil (35mm) Friday evening, Zabriskie Point (DVD) Friday night, Far From Heaven (DVD) Saturday afternoon, Swimming to Cambodia (DVD) Saturday evening, The Bride of Frankenstein (35mm?) Saturday night, and Month Python and the Holy Grail (Blu-ray) Sunday afternoon.
• The MFA has cancelled film programming on Friday and Saturday (sorry, Tiny Furniture fans), but The FIlms of Stanley Kubrick continues once the snow stops falling, with Lolita and Spartacus on Sunday and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb on Thursday. If you've seen the trailer, the way that subtitle is pronounced probably makes it seem even less apt for the 14th.
• iMovieCafe opens Special 26 (Special Chabbis on IMDB), which features Akshay Kumar as a thief who masterminds a jewel heist involving a gang of 26 who posed as tax collectors based on a real life incident. It also features Manoj Bajpai, Jimmy Shergill, Anupam Kher, and Kajal Aggarwal, and is written and directed by Neeraj Pandey. That's in Hindi with English subtitles, and shares the screen with Telugu film Mirchi and Tamil film Viswaroopam, neither of which appear to be subtitled.

My plans? Mostly living at the Sci-Fi Festival, though I will likely hit Lore and try for Lost in Thailand as well.

This Week In Tickets: 28 January 2013 - 3 February 2013

Folks, I have been watching movies and writing about them:



Kind of an eventful week, even aside from watching movies: Tuesday and Wednesday were company meeting days, which means everybody flew in from various parts of the country for a couple of all-day updates and workshops followed by dinner and sleeping fast to leave early the next morning. Fortunately, there wasn't a whole lot I wanted to see aside from Quartet, at least until Thursday.

That's when I scooted out of work a little early so that I could make it to the Coolidge in time for the Sundance USA screening, The Lifeguard. Not so hot, unfortunately, but at least it and the Q&A were short enough that I could turn around once I left and come back for Barbara. Good little movie, which I'm glad I saw on its very last show before leaving town (I'd been meaning to, but...).

I'd been surprisingly drawn by the Warm Bodies previews I'd seen, so that was the Friday night choice. I liked it enough to consider writing a full "rebuttal review" to the negative one on eFilmCritic, but someone else saved me from that. I'd initially meant to hit Stand Up Guys, which still hasn't been reviewed on the site, but the times didn't quite line up.

Saturday afternoon was spent watching Fear and Desire, Killer's Kiss, and The Killing at the MFA; slightly more Kubrick than I'd intended, but what the heck? I screwed up seeing a movie in the evening because I thought I'd forgotten my phone (needed for MoviePass activation). I didn't, but didn't find it in one of the thirteen pockets I had until I got home. I was going to call it a night, but that big bus accident was more or less just across the river from me, and have you ever tried to get to sleep with a helicopter hovering over your house trying to light a busy accident scene? No sleep means Coffy, evidently.

Sunday was a lay-around-reading-comics day, finishing up with a screening of The Thief of Bagdad at the HFA as part of a Raoul Walsh retrospective. From there, rather than support the life-shortening violence on display in the Super Bowl, I opted to watch Bullet to the Head (I'm pretty cool with pretend violence, obviously). The folks down in New Orleans were even considerate enough to delay the game for a half-hour with some power outage or something so that I could do some grocery shopping and still be home in time for Elementary. Thanks, guys!

So, busy week. And the next couple aren't going to be less so, but I'll worry about Next Week in Tickets when I've heard more in terms of cancellations and such. In the meantime...

Warm Bodies

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 1 February 2013 in AMC Boston Common #17 (first-run, 4K digital)

Funny thing: The posters had a logo for the Quebec film comission on them, which seemed unusual - that's a thing that usually shows up at the end of the credits, rather than with the vanity cards up front or on the posters. That alerted me to where it was filmed, and it became a fun game to spot how they tried to make Montreal into "generic North American city". I suspect half the movie's CGI budget was removing French-language signage, and I also wondered if this was the first time Stade Olympique had been set up for baseball since Les Expos left town. It was fun recognizing the spot where R and Julia sat in the last scene, though!

Also fun: The rest of the movie. It undeniably has some problems with tone in terms of genre - R's narration is pretty chatty and articulate for a zombie speaking in the present tense, although I think that's kind of difficult to avoid if you want a decent amount of zombie POV - and rules, but benefits tremendously from staying on-message. That message isn't terribly complicated - love and connection with other people is what you need to jolt you out of that state where time passes without meaning or joy - but there's not a moment in the movie that doesn't serve it, and so long as the filmmakers don't focus on the mechanics of things too much, that gets the audience through.

Plus, the thing is filled with great moments. Every time I thought the narration was undercutting the fact that zombies should be scary, Nicholas Hoult delivers a quip that justifies it. The entire cast - Hoult, Teresa Palmer, John Malkovich, even the usually tiresome Rob Corddry - is pretty great, and director Jonathan Levine (who found a different way to put genre conventions on unstable ground in All the Boys Love Mandy Lane) delivers honest quirk, charm, and some very amusing soundtrack choices. The climactic battle is pretty great, without throwing the rest of the movie away as often happens.

When I first saw the trailer, Warm Bodies struck me as the movie Zombieland wanted to be (if you liked that movie more than me, read "an even better version of Zombieland"), and the end results confirm that. It's one of late January/early February's several nice surprises.

Coffy

* * * (out of four)
Seen 2 February 2013 in Coolidge Corner #1 (@fter midnite, 35mm)

It's a funny thing about exploitation pictures, whatever the flavor - somewhere underneath, all the good ones (or at least the enjoyable ones) have aspirations of at least a little more than being low-budget delivery vehicles for sex and violence. They want to be that, no question, but there's at least a sort of ambiguity being poked at here, as Pam Grier's nurse-turned-vigilante title character does at least find herself concerned with the ethics of her actions. Maybe, if there was a little more time and talent and resources involved, they could have made a great movie about that.

Of course, Coffy doesn't have those things; what it has is Grier and a perfect understanding of what the audience is looking for: Righteous bloodshed and skin. That's why there's reason for everybody to become a target as the movie goes on; extra characters still standing at the end do the filmmakers no good. And it's kind of hilarious just how inevitable the many busty ladies' shirts getting ripped clean down the front is in any melee, for that matter. Writer/director Jack Hill believes in giving the people what they want, and for some reason - whether it be the funky soundtrack or the pure uninhibitedness of the time and place - allows blaxploitation to score points for its exuberance rather than lose them.

Is Coffy a great movie? Nah. It's fun, though, with its tongue moving just slightly toward its cheek - after all, a movie where the heroine stuffs razor blades in her afro because she understands the inevitability of a hair-pulling catfight has to be winking at the audience a little!

The Thief of Bagdad

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 3 February 2013 in the Harvard Film Archive (Action! Action! Action! The Cinema of Raoul Walsh, digital)

There are a number of enjoyable things in The Thief of Bagdad, but two and a half hours is a lot of silent movie, especially since a lot of the good stuff is loaded into the last hour (which I half-suspect played after an intermission in its original release). That's when all the crazy fantasy stuff with pretty darn good effects for 1924 starts in earnest.

The first hour and a half is still pretty good, though - the bit with the magic rope is fun and establishes what sort of rogue the Thief (Douglas Fairbanks) is before he becomes smitten with the Princess (Julanne Johnston). It's got the sort of grand scale that these epics did so well, along with plenty of amusing bits and Fairbanks's trademark athletic action. It's also noteworthy for two of the folks in the supporting cast: Sojin, a Japanese immigrant who would return home once silents gave way to talkies (and finished his career with a part in The Seven Samurai) plays the villainous Mongol Prince, with Anna May Wong as his spy within the Princess's chambers. Anna May Wong, as you may know, was awesome, especially when one considers that she was about 18 when she made this movie, and already stealing every scene she was in whether or not she was shot from an angle that showed just how deceptively skimpy her costume was.

It's a big, fun adventure that isn't quite so overstuffed with awesomeness as it may appear, but it ramps up the spectacle when it needs to. Holds up pretty well after almost eighty years.

Bullet to the Head

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 4 February 2013 in AMC Boston Common #15 (first-run, 4K digital)

You know, Sylvester Stallone has kind of earned the purgatory he's been in for roughly the past fifteen years; he's made some pretty bad movies since Copland, only really getting noticed and into theaters when he's got a franchise to work with. And so, as Schwarzeneggar's The Last Stand did, Bullet to the Head sort of tanked at the box office.

It deserves a bit better; it's good pulp, and Walter Hill knows what the audience is looking for just as much Coffy's Jack Hill. As a result, the violence is big and lurid and when he can't blow something up or punctuate a sentence with a bullet, there's thoroughly gratuitous nudity. The poor by-the-book cop played by Sung Kang just doesn't stand a chance in this environment.

And that's kind of the movie's problem at times; it's so busy convincing us that Stallone's hitman character is the cool one that it tends to make Kang's Taylor Kwon look like a fool in a way that it seems like the same kind of puffing up the star's ego as Jack Reacher - it would actually be better if Kwon didn't look so helpless even in banter. There are times when it doesn't know what to do other than make Stallone look cool, especially as the various villains' alliances implode to the point where things can be settled by Stallone and Jason Momoa swinging axes at each other.

Let it be said: Sylvester Stallone and Jason Momoa swinging axes at each other is probably the best thing in the movie. Moma actually comes across as a guy who could be the next Stallone/Schwarzenegger-type star if that sort of physically imposing but charismatic type still became stars today, and it's an action scene that goes on long enough to express the characters' personalities, with Stallone's Jimmy Bobo being no-nonsense and Momoa's Keegan being energetic and kind of nuts. It's a great climax, and the route to it isn't bad either.

Early Kubrick at the MFA: Fear and Desire, Killer's Kiss, The Killing

I didn't really plan to spend the entire day at the Museum of Fine Arts watching Kubrick's movies. Originally it was going to be Fear and Desire, most likely Killer's Kiss - though I wasn't sure, what with there being a roughly 80-minute gap between the screenings - with The Killing a "what the heck, I haven't seen it in a while" last minute addition. Though that's only a bit north of three hours of movie, it's almost six hours of a Saturday and time on the T, which is not ideal.

(Oh, sure, I could have gone and looked around the museum, but that's not a great thing to do in one-hour chunks, especially since I tend to get lost when the movie there is in the Alfond Auditorium rather than the Remis. Or at least, that's what I told myself.)

It made for a pretty strong triple-feature, though - it shows just how strong Kubrick was technically from the very start, as well as how he learned to reconcile the weird, experimental things that grew in his mind for Fear and Desire with the commercial simplicity of Killer's Kiss to eventually come up with The Killing: Something that you can sell to a mainstream audience that will nevertheless burrow into their brains and stir something unexpected. I can't say I've always been a particular fan of Kubrick's - to be totally honest, I'd seen just five out of his thirteen films before adding two more on Saturday - but looking at how The Killing coalesces, it's not a particular surprise that he's the filmmaker that mass audiences grew to appreciate.

I kind of wonder if the fact that he was not terribly prolific helped his perception there. Although these early films came out in relatively rapid succession, it was twelve years between his last two, and half-decade gaps were not uncommon. Like Terrence Malick, his films became events, and both the perception and reality of all the time in-between being spent to get every little detail right doesn't hurt. It just means that we never got the Napoleon movie that Kubrick supposedly researched for decades, or his version of A.I. (though I'm quite fond of Spielberg's; not his fault that his real movie can never be as good as a hypothetical Kubrick masterpiece).

Ideally, I'd be reviewing the whole series, but the combination of the Boston Sci-Fi Film festival and a threatened snowstorm makes getting there, let alone having time to write, unlikely. I still highly recommend getting to the rest of the MFA's series, which runs through the last weekend of the month and covers his entire career. Many (Killer's Kiss, The Killing, Paths of Glory, Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut) will be showing in beautiful 35mm; Fear and Desire, Killer's Kiss, Lolita, 2001, A Clockwork Orange are projected digitally.

Yeah, 2001 will likely be off a Blu-ray. Just not right, I know.

Fear and Desire

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 2 February 2013 in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Remis Auditorium (Films of Stanley Kubrick, digital)

Fear and Desire would have enough of a place in history for being Stanley Kubrick's first film; that he found it embarrassing and thus did all he can to keep it out of circulation probably made film fans more curious about it. Over a decade after his death, it's easily available, and there's no reason not to satisfy one's curiosity.

Four soldiers have survived a plan crash behind enemy lines: Lieutenant Corby (Kenneth Harp), a well-educated officer; Sergeant "Mac" (Frank Silvera), a grizzled veteran; Private Fletcher (Stephen Coit), quiet and laid-back; and Private Sidney (Paul Mazursky), a nervous new recruit. The lieutenant thinks they can build a raft and float down the river to the other side of enemy lines under the cover of darkness, while Mac has spotted a plane and a general, and thinks they should strike a blow against the enemy even if they only have the lieutenant's pistol for weaponry.

The nationality of the soldiers is not merely kept vague, but entirely hypothetical, as an opening bit of narration states that this forest and this war exists entirely in the mind, and things like language and names have been presented as they are for nothing but convenience. It's a bit of a pretentious affectation, Kubrick wouldn't so much grow out of such things as stop announcing them in such a clumsy manner. He's still got a bit of growing to do as a filmmaker in other areas, too - for a movie that's just over an hour long, Fear and Desire can bog down at times, as abstraction doesn't involve the audience quite so much as detail.

Still, even if Kubrick-the-legend isn't immediately evident here, he's still obviously a guy who knows what he's doing. Serving as director, producer, photographer, and editor, he handles his tiny budget well, building a world that may be non-specific and sparsely populated by still feels solid enough. There's much less arguing of positions than one might expect from a movie this conceptual and a lot more doing, and while the depiction of violence can be kind of artsy, the aftermath can be surprisingly grisly for a film made in the early 1950s.

The script by Howard Sackler isn't necessarily the strongest, but it does give Kubrick four of the basic soldier archetypes to work with, and the cast does well by them. Kenneth Harp's lieutenant has a bit of upper-class detachment to him, but isn't cowardly or stupid; similarly, Frank Silvera plays every sergeant who's ever known what it's really like on the ground, and they naturally clash. It's dramatic and a bit familiar, but well-done without too much exaggeration. Paul Mazursky does well enough as the sweet-seeming kid who cracks, though he seems to be playing a type versus an individual more than the rest of the cast. Steve Coit is in the background for much of the film, but makes a nice impression when he is called upon later.

Fear and Desire is an odd little thing, which probably would have been a film school project if Kubrick had come to cinema via a different route in a different time. Despite its obscurity (both deliberate and natural), it's still worth seeing just to watch, as opposed to only being studied in terms of what it says about the director's evolution.

(Formerly at EFC)

Killer's Kiss

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 2 February 2013 in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Remis Auditorium (Films of Stanley Kubrick, 35mm)

Killer's Kiss is the sort of crime flick that filled out the back end of a double feature, a true B-movie just long enough to satisfy the "feature" part of the term. It's notable because it was written, produced, photographed, directed, and edited by Stanley Kubrick, who would go on to make movies that didn't just fill out a program. And while it doesn't have the grand sweep of his later films, it's got the interesting choices and attention to detail that make it stand out among its peers.

Its story is told by Davey Gordon (Jamie Smith), a prizefighter of some one-time potential about to hop a train from Grand Central Station back to his family farm in Idaho, but waiting until the last minute. There's a girl, of course, Gloria Price (Irene Kane), who lives in the apartment facing his, works in a dance hall, and is one of the favorites of proprietor (and gangster) Vincent Rapallo (Frank Silvera). One night, Davey sees a fight start to get ugly and rushes to break it up, and while it might be nice to be on Gloria's radar, being on Vinny's more than makes up for that.

Aside from the peculiar Fear and Desire, most of Kubrick's work up until this point had been as a photographer for the magazine Look, and that part of his career isn't far behind him here. Killer's Kiss is just a wonderful movie to look at, whether it's the nighttime photography of a busy New York City where the grain makes the scene feel even more alive, sharp black-and-white images like the tiled entryway to Rapallo's club, or rooftop chases and boxing matches that are shot in long takes from a camera giving a God's-eye-view. Kubrick knows exactly what to do with a movie camera, and the beauty of his work certainly enhances what could otherwise be a standard bit of pulp.

Full review on eFilmCritic.

The Killing

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 2 February 2013 in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Remis Auditorium (Films of Stanley Kubrick, 35mm)

The plan in The Killing isn't a great one, but it looks like one that a group of crooks looking for a big score might think has potential. The real prize is in the telling, which doesn't so much tweak its genre trappings as much as find the most entertaining version of them.

As laid out by professional crook Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden), the plan is reasonably straightforward despite featuring a large number of moving parts: He's going to rob the racetrack during a big race, with the help of a couple of major drawing the guards away from the vault and a little help from inside man George Peatty (Eisha Cook Jr.). There's space for things to go wrong even if Peatty didn't tell his wife Sherry (Marie Windsor) what he was in on, so there's a good chance that things will go wrong at some point.

Crime stories like The Killing, especially while the Hays Code was in effect, were sometimes clumsy affairs, reconciling the excitement of breaking the law with the mandatory admonition that the culprits will not get away with it. Screenwriter/director Stanley Kubrick plays with that somewhat here, peppering the story with narration that sounds like a police report whose author wants to be a pulp novelist, or the true-crime magazines popular at the time. The narration may have come as the result of the studio fearing the audience wouldn't keep up with Kubrick's jumping back and forth in time, and some say that he made them sarcastically obvious as a way to get the studio to reconsider, but that seems unlikely - not so much because Kubrick wouldn't antagonize the studio on his first major feature, but because it works, camouflaging the movie's wit on the first viewing and providing amusing contrast afterward.

Full review on eFilmCritic.

Barbara

This thought didn't really strike me until I was standing in line to buy a ticket for the last local screening of Barbara, but this very serious, Germany's-Oscar-Submission film sort of has the same plot as Doc Hollywood. Granted, the addition of secret police makes the movies not at all alike

The funny thing is that as silly a comparison as Barbara and Doc Hollywood are, seeing the parallels between them (hotshot doctor winds up in small town, meets nice person of opposite sex, eventually... well, spoilers) gave me a way to think and write about the movie. Maybe not the one that the person who responded to a few posts here recommending it was thinking of, but seeing it as a twist on something familiar did make things a little more interesting.

Plus, we get to imagine David Ogden Stiers siccing a goon squad on Michael J. Fox, so that's fun.


Believe it or not, this was the first time I've been in the Coolidge's GoldScreen room that I still think of by its original "MiniMax" name. Nice enough room with comfortable seats, although at that size and with the projection either coming from a Blu-ray or being roughly that quality, it does feel a lot like watching something at home. Still, I'm glad I saw this right before it left, especially after the letdown that was The Lifeguard. The mid-week double feature can make for a long day, but I've got a ton of those coming up, so I might as well get used to it!

Barbara

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 31 January 2013 in Coolidge Corner Theatre's GoldScreen (first-run, digital)

Barbara starts at an interesting place; others with its basic template will set things up, give the audience a sense of who its characters are before putting them in a new situation. Writer/director Christian Petzold goes a different way, and it makes for a frequently compelling bit of drama.

As Barbara (Nina Hoss) starts her first day working in a rural East German clinic, her supervisor André (Ronald Zehrfeld) is being told she's a difficult clock-watcher. To be fair; she's got more reason than most to not want to be there; she was until recently in Berlin, but transferred to the country when she applied for an exit visa to leave with her West German boyfriend (Mark Waschke), with regular inspections by Klaus Schütz (Rainer Bock) and his Stasi team to make sure she's not trying to escape. Still, she's a good doctor, and smart enough to wait for her opportunity.

In other hands, Barbara could have wound up a very self-aware black comedy; it's got the structure of a movie where a big-city hotshot learns to stop, smell the roses, and connect with people in a small town, but the Hollywood version of those stories seldom has the secret police barging into the heroine's apartment, slicing open her mattress, and having a matron perform a much closer search. That Petzold instead plays things straight is somewhat interesting and disturbing; the justification that the workers and farmers paid for Barbara's education is, as the characters point out, not wrong. All the familiar motivators in this story - the nice new man who likes her, the patients who need her - become twisted when played against the traditional Western/post-Cold War ideals of individual freedom and the forceful measures used to keep her in place.

Full review on eFilmCritic.

Sundance USA: The Lifeguard

Two years in a row that the Coolidge gets disappointing movies for Sundance USA. Part of me wonders if a Robert Redford retrospective sometime this summer would help.

I must admit, this was a little more of a bummer because I really like Kristen Bell; she was fantastic on Veronica Mars and has had the occasional noteworthy movie role since, but I suspect that there's a reason why she says a movie that follows up on that series is still a possibility whenever someone asks: She's probably not going to get another role that good again, and just like Arnold Schwarzenegger never shut the door on Conan the King and Vin Diesel worked hard to make a third Riddick movie happen, that part can't help have a draw on her.

But, Ms. Bell wasn't there - director Liz W. Garcia was:



I really should have brought my real camera, shouldn't I? And maybe find a better vantage point where the microphone doesn't blot out the face of a petite guest in 90% of my shots. Ah, well.

Ms. Garcia seemed like a nice-enough person and mentioned that, yes, certain bits of this movie are autobiographical - she worked as a lifeguard when she was younger, lived in a small town in Connecticut, and felt a bit of malaise at times - although that's about as far as it goes. She also called another guest up, co-star/producer/husband Joshua Harto:



Thankfully, nobody asked for a repeat of Harto's most memorable moment in the movie (which I wouldn't be shocked to see cut, even though this is getting an R regardless; it's a weirdly crude moment that, like so much of the rest of it, goes nowhere).

The Q&A session was pretty standard, though happily lacking the "what did this cost" question and non-answer. They did get asked how long it took, and 21 days is a pretty respectable answer for a movie like this, especially since they only had one day in New York for a fair number of scenes. That brought up one of the more amusingly specific "people notice everything" questions, that an early scene showed Leigh on a southbound train when she should have been heading north, with the answer being that they were shooting that semi-guerrilla style (the transit agency would have charged a fair amount of money) on their way into the city for the day of shooting.

Another question, about how Garcia would often leave things out of focus at unusual times, led to a lot of praise of the focus puller, and how lucky they were to get this guy. It was kind of cool, actually - it's really easy to forget just how many different jobs there are on a movie set, and just how many things have to be done right for each scene to be usable, or even great. I will, maybe, have some small opinion of a movie's cinematography when I see a movie, but seldom really have any conception of what each person's job in that part of the crew was, and that this particular effect needed a crack focus puller.

Being reminded of that mountain of effort makes saying "it's not very good at all" feel even more lousy, but what can you do, other than hope they get the chance to do something better soon.

The Lifeguard

* ¾ (out of four)
Seen 31 January 2013 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #1 (Sundance USA, digital)

It is, almost undoubtedly, a sign of encroaching middle-age that the first thing that annoyed me about The Lifeguard was the way that the characters not even a full generation younger than me acted. But I figured, hey, I watch movies about different cultures all the time; just treat them like they're from some weird European country that has "Connecticut" and "Vermont" as place names. Do that, and, well, it's still not a very good movie, but at least it got a fair shot.

29-year-old Leigh London (Kristen Bell) has always been a smart and capable young woman, and she's slowly working her way up to better assignments for a New York newspaper, but this June has been rough - a story that shook her badly was treated as something lightweight, and the editor she'd been seeing has gotten engaged to someone else. So, she packs up her things (and her cat) and heads back home to Connecticut, where she moves back into her old bedroom, reconnects with friends Todd (Martin Starr) and Mel (Mamie Gummer), and returns to her old summer job as a lifeguard at the community pool. She also starts hanging out with the son of the maintenance man, Jason (David Lambert), and his friends who want drop out of high school and move to Vermont - which doesn't impress her mother Justine (Amy Madigan) or Mel's husband John (Joshua Harto) much at all.

Writer/director Liz W. Garcia doesn't necessarily have a bad set-up here, even if a viewer doesn't particularly have to strain to see how what sort of parallels she's making between characters running away from their fears and other problems. The trouble is, a lot of the pieces don't seem to fit together: We're told that Leigh has always excelled, for instance, and part of the conclusion depends on her being pretty good at the job she walked away from, but we never see that. Coming from the other direction, she's almost thirty; is this particular set of disappointments really the first or worst she's encountered? Plus, there's a sequence that doesn't make a lot of sense unless she hasn't had this job before, since Garcia doesn't seem to be trying to point out that she's over-romanticized that time in her life. There's similar issues with Jason, although they can be chalked up to differing perspectives.

Full review on eFilmCritic.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 1 February - 8 February 2013

There are angles aplenty for this weekend's releases: Oscar-nominees, those who had hoped for that status, and other best-ofs; an early and unconventional Valentine's Day movie; another 1980s star trying to reclaim his former juice.

• The weird love story is Warm Bodies, in which Nicholas Hoult plays a zombie whose heart starts beating again once he meets but does not eat a girl (Teresa Palmer). It's also got John Malkovich, Rob Corddry, and Lizzy Caplan, with Jonathan Levine (who has done a few odd youth-oriented movies) behind the camera. It's going for something obvious, sure, but still looks like a better use of its premise than Zombieland. It plays the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Fenway (including the RPX screen), and Boston Common.
  
  Meanwhile, Sylvester Stallone hopes his 80s-throwback action flick does better than Arnold's sadly-underseen The Last Stand. Sly's Bullet to the Head has also got a guy who is really good at this sort of action directing in Walter Hill; the story involves a hitman teaming up with a detective (Sung Kang) to rescue his daughter and get revenge. Bloody violence ensues at Boston Common, Fenway, and Fresh Pond.
• Speaking of old criminals, Stand Up Guys opens at Kendall Square, Boston Common, and Fenway, with Al Pacino as a con released from prison after 28 years and Christopher Walken as the old friend come to pick him up (and represent organized crime in less amiable ways), with Alan Arkin as an old partner in crime because he makes this sort of movie better. It apparentlly had an awards-qualifying run in December but not the kind that gets the ensemble recognition.
  
  Kendall Square also lets you check out the 2013 Oscar-Nominated Short Films, with programs for both live-action and animated shorts. Each program has five films , though they're splitting a theater, so check when they're playing (they will also play at Coolidge Corner and the ICA later). There's also a one-night screening of Please Subscribe, a documentary about YouTube artists, on Tuesday the 5th at 7:30pm.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre doesn't have those programs this week, but they have the 2013 Oscar Nominated Documentary Shorts programs - two of them, since those tend to bump much closer to the 40-minute maximum than the fictional films. Program "A" is two hours long and features three shorts; program "B" is an hourt wenty and features two. They'll be moving between the Screening Room and GoldScreen depending on the day, splitting the screen between them. The other video screen will feature Rust and Bone.
  
  In perhaps less highbrow fashion, February's midnight movie schedule honors Black History Month with Blaxploitation. This Friday & Saturday nights' selection is Coffy, with Pam Grier as a nurse looking for revenge on the dealers who put her sister in the hospital.
• The Brattle runs their (Some of) The Best of 2012 series this week, with many films featuring introductions by members of the Boston Society for Film Critics. Most are double features, and all (as of right now) are playing in 35mm: Friday is kids on their own with Beasts of the Southern Wild and Moonrise Kingdom; Saturday is superheros with The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises; Sunday is rediscoveries with Wake in Fright and Daisies; Monday is imprisoned-artist docs with This Is Not a Film and Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry; Tuesday is just Seven Psychopaths; Wednesday is people wandering in what initially appears to be an aimless fashion with The Day He Arrives and Oslo, August 31st; and Thursday is Joseph Gordon-Levitt night with Looper and Premium Rush. There's also a special Sunday show of Franklin Wunder at noon; director Chris Lang will be there to introduce the locally-produced film.
• The Harvard Film Archive begins a month-long retrospective of one of Hollywood's most reliable (and underrated) workhorses: Action! Action! Action! A Raoul Walsh Retrospective. This weekend's selections include They Drive by Night & Manpower on Friday and The Thief of Bagdad & Objective, Burma! on Sunday. Drive and Burma! are 35mm, Manpower is 16mm, Thief is a new digital restoration.
  
  On Saturday, they have two screenings of Bruno Dumont's Hors Satan, in which a mysterious stranger with apparently supernatural powers arrives in a desert town; it will also have a mini-run there next weekend. And on Monday, Romuald Karmakar and Professor Eric Rentschler will be on-hand for screening of Karmakar's The Deathmaker, which depicts the interrogation of the serial killer who was the inspiration for Peter Lorre in M. There's also a Tuesday-night VES screening of Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love (a regular part of the curriculum, though it's open to the public).
• That film also plays ArtsEmerson's Bright Screening Room this weekend (Saturday evening in 35mm). There doesn't seem to be an overarching theme to this weekend's programming aside from noteworthy directors. There's Luis Buñuel (Los Olvidados, Friday evening, DVD); Satyajit Ray (The Music Room, Friday night, Blu-ray); Ingmar Bergman (Fanny and Alexander, Saturday afternoon, 35mm); David Lynch (Blue Velvet, Saturday night, Blu-ray), and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Syndromes and a Century, Sunday afternoon, 35mm)
• The MFA will be spending much of February screening The Films of Stanley Kubrick, starting with the disowned but newly-restored Fear and Desire (Friday,Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday, and Thursday). This week's screenings also include Killer's Kiss and The Killing (both Saturday and Sunday). Saturday and Sunday both also feature screenings from The 2nd Annual ReelAbilities Boston Disabilities Film Festival - The Straight Line, Body and Soul, and Me, Too. All are open-captioned, with The Straight Line also audio-described for the visually impaired. Lena Dunham will be in town Thursday afternoon for a screening of Tiny Furniture, although since that is listed as sold out, this just serves as a heads-up for those who already have tickets.
• The Regent Theatre has one film screening this weekend, a bicycle-oriented exploration film called Reveal the Path on Thursday evening.
• The Arlington Capitol picks up Rust and Bone and Hyde Park on Hudson this weekend, although Rust and Bone and Parental Guidance are only playing Friday through Sunday; they will be screening Capitol Classics Double Features in their (pretty darn nice) main auditorium once the work week begins. Those double features include Pulp Fiction & Reservoir Dogs (Monday), Kill Bill I & II (Tuesday), Robocop & The Terminator (Wednesday), and A Fistful of Dollars & For a Few Dollars More (Thursday). Screenings are probably digital, with more planned for next week.
  
• iMovieCafe has five different movies splitting what looks like two screens at Fresh Pond - David, Kadal, Ongole Githa, Race 2, and Viswaroopam - but off all those, I think only Race 2 has subtitles.

My plans? Geez, I'm going to have to play it by ear; I'm basically starting with the new releases, maybe the rare Kubricks, Coffy, Oslo, and whatever is easiest to get to on any given night.

Quartet

I had a pass for a preview downtown, but it was pretty clear even before heading to work that I was not getting there by the time the movie starts, let alone in time to wait in a line full of other passholders. Heck, I was kind of shocked that I managed to make it to the 7:05 screening of Quartet.

Then, it came time to sleep fast, because company meeting was the next day and I had to be at work an hour earlier than usual for a day that wouldn't end until nine pm.

Quartet

* * * (out of four)
Seen 28 January 2013 in Landmark Kendall Square #2 (first-run, 2K digital)

Quartet is directed by Dustin Hoffman, who has spent roughly the last forty-five years in front of the camera with just one abortive attempt to go behind it. So it should be no surprise at all that he sticks to what he knows and makes a movie that is just full of acting. The good news is, it's also full of fine actors who are well worth the price of admission.

The Beecham Home for Retired Musicians is pretty nice, as those places go: A beautiful old house, well-maintained grounds, and a chance to live out one's latter years surrounded by friends with whom one shares a common interest. Among the residents are Wilfred Bond (Billy Connolly), whose roguish nature is only exaggerated by the stroke he suffered some years back (or so he says); Reginald Paget (Tom Courtenay), Wilf''s best friend who fills his time teaching opera to local teenagers; Cicely "Sissy" Robson (Pauline Collins), a bubbly sort whose dementia is getting worse; and Cedric Livingston (Michael Gambon), who is busily planning the annual fundraising gala held on Verdi's birthday. They're soon joined by Jean Horton (Maggie Smith), famous in part for a Verdi quartet she performed with Reg, Wilf, and Cissy - and for having briefly been married to Reg - who naturally has trouble adjusting to her new circumstances.

There is, of course, talk of how Beecham may have to close without the funds raised by the gala, and wouldn't a reunion of these four great operatic voices on stage be a fantastic draw, but to the credit of Hoffman and Ronald Harwood (adapting his own play), that's not a source of suspense so much as it's a reason to keep the characters from staying where they start the movie - a little push in the right direction, not a large one. It's there, it gives the movie a logical place to end and reason to do certain things simultaneously rather than in sequence, but the problem to be solved never comes close to overshadowing the actors and their performances.

Full review on eFilmCritic.

This Week In Tickets: 21 January 2013 - 27 January 2013

I've been seeing a whole bunch of people talking about the pace at which they're seeing movies to start the year, and I must admit that I am not keeping up a comparable pace:



Just a couple of movies seen this week: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters on Friday and Parker on Saturday. Truth be told, there wasn't a whole lot playing before they opened that I was excited to see even if the commute didn't tend to work out as too late or too early depending on the theater. There was Amour, but it's kind of hard to psych oneself up to see Michael Haneke's latest crushing opus.

I wound up writing eFilmCritic reviews for both, likely in part because the guy who normally covers the new releases, Peter Sobczynski, is one of a number of Chicago critics who is helping Roger Ebert out while he's at reduced capacity. So, while he's doing work for the Sun-Times, there's a hole to be filled at EFC (which may be getting a few more visitors with one of its main guys having a higher profile). That led to mornings and early afternoons the next day spent writing, followed by... well, spending a few hours reading comics. The French sci-fi I read Sunday was particularly fun.

I was going to see one more, but Sunday night was kind of a mess. I kind of knew I was cutting my attempt to see Barbara close, at least by the times listed on the phone's bus-tracker app, and as I stood waiting and rode on the bus, it slipped until "five minutes to spare" became "ten minutes late", which doesn't get you into one of the small screening rooms even if you're inclined to miss the first few minutes. So, onto the T to head downtown, where I figure I'll use MoviePass to see Movie 43, but the universe appeared to have pretty strong ideas on that: First, the mobile site wouldn't confirm my location, forcing a call to customer service. Then the kiosks were having connection issues with the credit card company, then one wouldn't authorize payment from the card, prompting another call to customer service. Then I tried the box office, where the person manning it said they'd been having trouble with cards all day, then no authorization, then when I call customer service, the system appears to be flooded or down, so... Well, back home. From the reviews, I was done a favor. And since I'm not likely to have a lot of time this week to catch it again, I'll never know how big a favor.

Parker

Does one movie being released help get related ones on video any more? Because if so, maybe Parker can do the world a little good by getting Point Blank released on Blu-ray. And maybe the original theatrical cut of Payback as well (I like the "Straight Up" Director's Cut quite a bit, but wouldn't mind having both in HD). And the ones with Jim Brown and Robert Duvall as well. Similarly, I'd love it if The Last Stand convinced some enterprising distributor to finally put A Bittersweet Life out on region 1/A-friendly media, especially with Lee Byung-hyun showing up in a couple English-language movies this year as well (G.I. Joe: Retaliation and Red 2).


But, anyway, about Parker: There's a moment in this movie (mentioned in the review) which feels tremendously off to me to the point where I want to figure out who, exactly, is to blame, because it seems like it represents a fundamental bad decision being made, and I don't know whether it was casting Jennifer Lopez or what the writer and director wanted her to do. It's when she's figured out that Parker isn't who and what he says he is, confronts him, and she takes him up to the office to lay her situation in front of him. She gives a pretty great speech, about how her ex-husband and divorce put her in debt, she's pushing 40 and knows her opportunities aren't going to keep coming, and she's stuck with her mother who won't kick off, and it's during that last bit that the words, at least, suddenly resolve themselves as being noir as hell - it is a classic femme fatale "this is what turns a woman hard and now I'm just as dangerous as any man" monologue. I suspect it comes straight from the book, and the only problem is that Jennifer Lopez seems all wrong for it; too nervous and almost sobbing and vulnerable. Was she just the wrong choice here, or did Hackford and writer John J. McLaughlin have the wrong approach, trying to make too many of the characters in a hard-edged crime novel nice?

Admittedly, I haven't read any of the Parker novels recently; my exposure to the character mostly comes from Darwyn Cooke's great comic adaptations and the two filmed versions of The Hunter, but there's a reason Payback was tagged with "time to root for the bad guy": Parker's code is less moralistic and more stubbornly about seeing that accounts are square with him. The way he talks to hostages isn't necessarily a sign that he's a nice guy underneath, but a skill he's developed to keep the situation under control because cops spend a lot more time on crimes where civilians die than where they don't.


It does kind of strike me, though, that there aren't a whole lot of great choices for casting someone like Parker right now. The joking about Mel Gibson having a real cro-magnon look to him in Payback was funny but also sort of exposes that there aren't necessarily a whole lot of rugged-looking guys playing lead parts in the movies right now. Daniel Craig and Clive Owen could be Parker, I guess (as could Gibson if he wasn't utterly radioactive), but who from the US? We seem to be cranking out blandly handsome leading men these days without a whole lot of variety. My first thought when trying to figure out who'd be better than Statham was Matthias Schoenaerts, but if Statham's accent struck me wrong...

Oh, and speaking of casting: I like Jennifer Lopez, but the shots of her butt in this were kind of weird. I get that a big part of her appeal is that particular asset, but there was a shot or two that was just 'hey, Leslie's got J-Lo's ass!" that, aside from getting a few whoops from the audience kind of take the viewer out of the movie for a second, reminding them of the actress rather than the character. Seems like something you shouldn't be looking to do.

Parker

* * (out of four)
Seen 26 January 2013 in AMC Boston Common #19 (first-run, digital)

On its own, Parker isn't a particularly terrible movie. It's kind of filler on the calendar, and not close to the best work of stars Jason Statham and Jennifer Lopez, but also far from their worst. There's worse ways to spend two hours. But consider that this can be considered a sequel to Point Blank or Payback, and it's apparent just how far off the standard it is.

Parker (Statham) is a veteran thief who, working with a new crew, heists roughly a million dollars from an Ohio state fair as the movie begins, although it doesn't go as smoothly as he would like - and that's before Melander (Michael Chiklis), one of his fellow thieves, pulls a double-crosses, takes the money to invest in a new caper, and leaves Parker for dead. He should know better, as Parker survives and tracks Melander and company to their next job in Palm Beach, eventually falling in with struggling realtor Leslie Rodgers (Lopez) as he plans to hijack the new score.

The protagonist of a long-running series of novels by Donald E. Westlake writing as Richard Stark, Parker has come to film before in many forms and under a variety of names (the only time Westlake allowed the character to be called "Parker" in an adaptation is in Darwyn Cooke's graphic novel versions; this adaptation of Flashfire was produced after Westlake's death), and that puts Jason Statham in an tough spot - Lee Marvin especially casts a long shadow (not to mention Mel Gibson, Robert Duvall, and others) even though Statham is playing a very different conception of the character. Statham's Parker has not so much been softened as smoothed out compared to the blunt force of nature he is elsewhere, and even done well, that's going to seem less exciting.

Full review on eFilmCritic.

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

I try to ignore box-office stuff, but I just read that Mama is leading the weekend again, and... really? It's kind of a not-good mess, and it's going to beat out both The Last Stand - which is a darn good action movie - and Hansel & Gretel - which is far from perfect but does as good as any movie at delivering loopy fun? That's just not right. It's not right at all.

Anyway, I talk in the review about how Hansel & Gretel director Tommy Wirkola has some pretty clear Sam Raimi influence in his work, but stopped after a bit because if I don't control myself, I'll look at the entire genre through Sam Raimi-tinted glasses. Still, it's pretty direct. I mentioned in my review of Dead Snow that bits of that reference Evil Dead 2 directly enough that I expected to learn the Norwegian word for "groovy"; that makes Hansel & Gretel something akin to his Army of Darkness - set in medieval times, taking great pleasure from tossing his stars around, and lots of big practical-make-up monsters and witches. It's also pretty funny.

I kind of wish this was the sort of movie that could do well enough to really boost some careers. Not necessarily Jeremy Renner's - I sort of waver between thinking he's kind of bland here and that he's doing something really clever in playing Hansel as a weirdly virginal swashbuckler who just represses everything. He doesn't talk about his parents, seems just thoroughly confused by a girl showing interest in him, and states that he tends toward the set on fire and ask questions later school when it comes to accused witches. I half-think that the movie was going for a spoof on religious zealotry, where people with little experience with human interaction try to determine what is and isn't reasonable behavior, but it never quite comes together. Meanwhile, Gemma Arterton is pretty darn good, although her accent distracted me a bit; I know she's English but she goes North American to match Renner, and it's almost like she gets all the inflections right but doesn't quite know how to emote with it, so her normal accent pops back up in spots. I liked her here, but I think I'd kind of like to see her in something more challenging again; looking at her filmography, there's not much there that's nearly as good as The Disappearance of Alice Creed (although Tamara Drewe is pretty decent). She's certainly built for this sort of mainstream part, and you might as well do them while people are paying you to be pretty, but enough of that may make people forget you're capable of more.

Speaking of, I saw on IMDB that Famke Janssen took the villain role because her house needed paying off. Gotta respect that, actually, especially since she didn't half-ass her way through it. It was odd seeing her use an accent, though - I've been a fan since she appeared on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the only time I can recall her sounding anything other than American is GoldenEye, where the Russian accent was rather put-on. Heck, when she appeared at IFFBoston for Turn the River, she sounded like a native rather than someone from the Netherlands.

Anyway, I had fun with this, and it was nice to hit the Somerville Theatre again for the first time in a while (MoviePass's changes have really skewed where I see movies over the past few months). Dave The Projectionist mentioned on the Boston SF message board that he had the 3D looking pretty good for digital, and it did look fairly good for 2K resolution. I half-wonder how adjustable the lighting is for digital projectors and if Dave cranks it up for 3D; he's known for projecting things bright while 3D is known for suffering for lack of brightness. I've read a few comments in various places about how 3D-ifying a movie that has so much action at night was a horrible idea because as a result you can't see much, but I didn't have any issues with that.

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

* * * (out of four)
Seen 25 January 2013 in Somerville Theatre #5 (first-run, RealD 3D)

When last we saw Tommy Wirkola, he took the high concept of "zombie Nazis" and made Dead Snow, a low-budget Norwegian action-horror movie that made up for a lot of shaky elements with sheer enthusiasm. It got Hollywood's attention, and after a bit of a delay he's back with Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, whose high concept is right in the title, and while more in the way of resources doesn't mean perfection, the glee at making a nutty movie still helps a lot.

The Brothers Grimm published the fairy tale two hundred years ago: A brother and sister are left in the woods, find a house made of candy with a witch who wants to fatten them up and eat them, only to have the tables turned and wind up in her own oven. After the fairy tale ends, the orphans kept killing witches, and making good money at it to. Now, the mayor of a small German town has hired Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton) to find the witch who has kidnapped ten local children. The Sheriff (Peter Stormare) thinks an immigrant, Mina (Pihla Viitala), to be a likely suspect, but the siblings soon find something bigger is going on: Grand Witch Muriel (Famke Janssen) has big plans for the upcoming Blood Moon.

The tone of the movie is established early on - yes, the young Hansel and Gretel have a decidedly non-slapstick fight for their lives, but the audience's first glimpse of the movie's "present day" is illustrations of the missing children tied to glass milk bottles in a bit of obvious but kind of amusing anachronism. Historical verisimilitude is not given a whole lot of consideration, especially once you get to Hansel's machine guns and the generally informal twenty-first century speech. It gives the movie a laid-back feel - they're not even pretending that this fits in any unnoticed corner of real history, just going for what's going to be fun for the audience.

Full review on eFilmCritic.

Talk Cinema: Blancanieves

I missed the last Talk Cinema screening while I was in London, but since Quartet opened today, that's just money spent rather than opportunity lost. I actually didn't get much of a chance to look forward to this one, since it wasn't announced until pretty much the day before. The description didn't even say that it was an actual silent, just that it was silent-influenced, so that was a nifty surprise.

Gerald Peary introduced, and I kind of groaned a bit when he spent a lot of time talking about The Artist both before and after the movie. Sure, it's the obvious comparison, but it seems like an easy one that doesn't really tell us anything, especially since the two films were made roughly simultaneously. It seems like there would be much more to talk about by discussing the influences, both general and specific.

Also, it's not like The Artist is the only recent silent film. I get that very few people have had a chance to see Louis - from what I gather, it's not getting a release until it can play with Bolden!, which has finished shooting but the filmmaker anticipates screwing around with editing and post-production for another six months to a year - but Call of Cthulhu exists and I've seen a fair amount of silent shorts at festivals. Heck, just last year two Chinese films used silent movie bits for flashbacks (The Bullet Vanishes and Tai Chi Zero) - there's actually enough modern silent stuff to talk about to notice patterns.

For instance, one thing I've noticed is that expository intertitles are almost non-existent in modern silents compared to those made back in the day. If you watch an old silent movie, the title cards are actually used for much more than just dialogue, or introducing a character (which does occasionally happen in the new ones). At times, those old movies can feel a little like reading a book, as the scripter expands on a character's motives, explains what's going on, or fills in things that happen off-screen. Some of this is material that sound films will use dialogue to fill in, but modern silents will try to depict it visually in one way or another - either by doing the "show a newspaper" or adding an extra scene scene or just expecting the audience to take in and process more background detail. In some ways, it resembles how modern comics differ from their "Golden Age" ancestors (including the elaborate newspaper strips that preceded original comic books) - static images with captions has given way to dynamic action, thought balloons (often serving more as asides to the reader than what the character would actually be thinking) are gone, etc. Part of it's technology and budget; you can shoot (or draw) more elaborate things because of new devices, more comfort in reproduction, and longer schedules with more resources. But it's aesthetic, as well - modern moviegoers really do expect to be shown rather than told.

Anyway, there's a starting point. Here's the review of the movie for EFC; if you've seen the movie, stick around afterward for discussion of the ending, where the movie really lost me.

Blancanieves

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 January 2013 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #2 (Talk Cinema, digital)

Two movies based on Snow White came out in the United States last year, and that seemed a little excessive. That wasn't the extent of it, though - aside from the inevitable direct-to-video knock-offs, Blancanieves came out in Spain, and was even submitted as the country's entry in the Oscars' Foreign-Language Film category. And give it its due - as a silent, black-and-white film that imagines the characters as bullfighters, it won't be easily confused with other versions.

Once upon a time (roughly 1910), there was a great bullfighter, Antonio Villata (Daniel Giménez Cacho), who had a beautiful wife (Inma Cuesta), but their child would enter the world in tragic circumstances. As "Carmencita" (Sofia Oria) is raised by her grandmother (Ángela Molina), Antonio is seduced by his nurse Encarna (Maribel Verdú). Eventually the three are all living in the same house, and Encarna sees her now-grown stepdaughter Carmen (Macarena García) as a threat, and sends her driver and lover into the woods to dispose of her. Left for dead, she's discovered by a traveling troupe of midget bullfighters, who nurse her back to health and make her part of the act.

"Snow White" has been adapted as a feature-length film any number of times not just because it's public domain and famous and thus very appealing to cheap, risk-averse producers, but because the idea at its core - an woman who used her looks to get where she is feeling threatened by a younger, prettier girl - will probably always be something the audience will be able to hook onto. The trouble with the story is, it can tend to leave the Snow White character something of a blank, since any sign of actual ambition would serve to legitimize the villainess's fear and potentially make her too sympathetic a character. Sometimes the queen/stepmother/witch ironically makes Snow into an enemy by her actions, but that's not what happens here - Berger actually seems to go out of his way to prevent Carmen from actually doing anything besides learn bullfighting: He spends a long time on her childhood, doesn't establish a strong personality before the attempted murder, and then finds a reason for Carmen to just hang out with her new friends rather than address it.

Full review on eFilmCritic.

SPOILERS!

Blancanieves is a pretty good movie, even if it does have the Snow White problems I mentioned in the main review. I really do think they're kind of intrinsic to the concept and tough to get around - I remember being kind of frustrated with Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs even before I really started trying to work out how plots worked; I always think of Snow not doing much of anything active and the end really being pulled out of nowhere. I only saw Mirror Mirror out of last year's Snow White double feature - Tarsem Singh directing the funny one, I figured, had to be seen to be believed - and they had to work hard to get Snow active while still mostly sticking with the Disney story.

The end of Blancanieves is annoying beyond that, though. Carmen has to be given amnesia so that she doesn't do much to actually deal with Encarna, and then the traditional last act winds up hyper-compressed - Carmen starts to get snippets of memory back, Encarna hits her with the poisoned apple, dwarfs chase her to her death, then the coma and glass coffin. And then... nothing. No Prince Charming, no idea how long Carmen stays in the freak show with Rafita (I think), the handsome dwarf who loves her; no definitive resolution at all. Even a dark ending would be better than that, I think, especially since Rafita's affection was a minor enough subplot brought up late enough in the game that it's tough for the audience to feel anything but "that's kind of creepy" as he tends to her in the circus; there's just not enough to it for it to feel romantic or tragic. And while the dwarfs do chase Encarna down so that she's trampled by a bull, it is so completely off-screen that even if one doesn't argue that she could have escaped (highly unlikely), the audience still doesn't get the emotional release of seeing her done in, even if that does mean that both Encarna and Carmen & the dwarfs score a pyrrhic victory.

For that matter, the jump to the freakshow is awkward; as much as the reference to Freaks is probably well-intended, it's a new situation given very little time to establish itself, and not clear at all - several in the audience, including Peary, didn't quite catch that the person running the show was Carmen's agent, who tricked the illiterate Carmen into signing a lifetime contract. It's too fast, the illiteracy seems kind of odd itself (it seems hard to believe that neither her grandmother or father would have taught her to read in the twentieth century), and the shyster agent is a side story that the movie really doesn't need, especially since it's already got a villain in Encarna.

Basically, even the things that are resolved at the end don't feel resolved, so when the screen fades to black and the credits start rolling, it's unsatisfying, like Berger just ran out of time, and it really deflates what he'd been doing until then.

!SRELIOPS

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 25 January 2012 - 31 January 2013

Before getting to the stuff opening this weekend, its worth highlighting a couple of other ways to consider giving local theaters some money, as both the Brattle and the Coolidge are running fundraising drives to add DCP projection to their booths. Both are still committed to 35mm, but with studios dropping film even for their catalog, it's becoming sadly necessary, even for repertory engagements. The Brattle's fundraiser is a Kickstarter that also covers the installation of a new HVAC system; the Coolidge's is a Digital Cinema Challenge that is tied to state funds. Both are non-profits, and could really use the help by the end of February.

• But what's playing at the places that already have digital? Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters has been delayed a few months both for a 3D conversion and because Paramount figured Jeremy Renner would be a bigger draw after The Avengers and The Bourne Legacy. It's also got Gemma Arterton, Famke Janssen, and Peter Stormare in a fun-looking story from the guy who did Dead Snow. It's at Somerville (3D only), Fresh Pond (2D & 3D), Boston Common (2D, 3D, and Imax-branded 3D), and Fenway (2D, 3D, and RPX 3D).
  
  As crazy as Hansel & Gretel may seem, it may not be the iffiest proposition this weekend - consider Parker, in which Jason Statham steps into the role of Richard Stark's master thief Parker (previously played under various names by Lee Marvin in Point Blank and Mel Gibson in Payback, among others). This doesn't adapt The Hunter, but another book in which Parker wants the money his partners in crime didn't give him. Jennifer Lopez is his unlikely ally, Michael Chiklis his antagonist. It's at Fenway and Boston Common. So is Movie 43 (also playing Fresh Pond), which crams 14 shorts and a whole mess of stars into 97 minutes.
• The Brattle is having a Monty Python week, with the primary attraction being A Liar's Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python's Graham Chapman, based on Chapman's book of the same name, built out of audio clips from Chapman, other Pythons, friends, and colleagues set to animation. It plays all week, with double feature screenings of And Now for Something Completely Different (Saturday), The Life of Brian (Sunday), The Holy Grail (Tuesday), The Meaning of Life (Wednesday), and Yellowbeard (Thursday). Liar's Autobiography is projected digitally; the co-features are listed as 35mm.
  
  In the middle of that is a Monday DocYard screening, Only the Young, which follows three teenagers in a California town that has been hollowed out by foreclosures and isn't close to anything. One of the directors, Jason Tippet, will be there for Q&A after the movie.
• Kendall Square offers up Quartet, Dustin Hoffman's first film as director. It features Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly, and Pauline Collins as former opera singers at a home for retired musicians who find old emotions coming out as they plan a benefit performance tied to Verdi's birthday. (Not to be confused with A Late Quartet). They also have a pair of single screenings: Bill W. runs again on Tuesday the 29th, and Sound City, a documentary-with-performances about a California recording studio where many of the greats cut rock albums.
• Things pretty much stay the same at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, aside from Barbara taking back the 9:30pm show from the departing Searching for Sugar Man. The midnight show on Friday and Saturday is John Waters's Female Trouble; there's a Science On Screen presentation of Rushmore (Dr. Steven Scholzman will discus the adolescent brain) on Monday, but it's sold out except for maybe a few seats released that night. The same goes for the Sundance USA screening of The Lifeguard on Thursday the 31st, with director Liz W. Garcia on-hand for a Q&A after her Kristen Bell-starring movie about a girl who retreats back to her hometown when life in the city goes south.
• The Harvard Film Archive continues its Susumu Hani retrospective all weekend, with Hari in person for screenings of Nanami: The Inferno of First Love on Saturday, The Morning Schedule on Sunday, and Children Hand in Hand on Monday (all at 7pm). The series also includes She and He and The Song of Bwana Toshi on Friday and a set of short documentaries on Sunday afternoon.
• ArtsEmerson has a weekend of films about transsexuality in all its various forms: Boys Don't Cry Friday evening, Paris is Burning Friday night and Sunday afternoon, Tomboy Saturday afternoon, XXY Saturday evening, and Transamerica Saturday night. Most play on 35mm, although Boys Don't Cry is projected from a DVD.
• The MFA finishes its January calendar with the rest of The Boston Festival of Films From Iran, including The Iran Job (Friday & Saturday), One. Two. One (Friday), Nessa (Saturday), The Last Step (Saturday & Sunday), Reluctant Bachelor (Sunday), No Men Allowed (Sunday), and Modest Reception (Wedesday & Thursday).
• iMovieCafe is offering an English-subtitled Hindi movie at Fresh Pond this week; Race 2 features Saif Ali Khan moving from South Africa to Turkey to avenge the death of... Well, I guess the folks who didn't survive Race. Abbas & Mustan Alibhai Burmawalla return as directors, and what looks like a pretty A-list cast of Anil Kapoor, John Abraham, Deepika Padukone, and Jacqueline Fernandez join them.
• If you want to gear up for the upcoming Boston Sci-Fi Marathon and Film Festival, MIT is hosting their own 34th Annual Science Fiction Marathon on Saturday for $8 in Room 26-100, including Wall-E, Looper, a 50-minute surprise, The Andromeda Strain, and Galaxy Quest. The price goes down to $5 after Looper, pizza orders will be taken after Wall-E for midnight delivery, and all films are listed as 35mm (aside from the surprise, which is 16mm). Not a bad deal, especially if you can blend in with the college kids.

My plans? I've already got a ticket for The Lifeguard. Add Hansel & Gretel, Parker, Movie 43, and Quartet; maybe I can fit Barbara and Amour in as well.

This Week In Tickets: 14 January 2013 - 20 January 2013

No, I didn't miss a posting; I just had one of those rare weeks where I didn't see movies due to low churn at the boutique houses and uninspiring choices at the multiplex. Plus one of those colds that borders on being the flu. Can't really say you're sick, since the food stays down, but you're not going to please anyone by leaving the house. So one page in the scrapbook stays blank until you get to this:



Stubless: Blancanieves at the Coolidge on 20 January at 10am.

Still not a big week, though one which (aside from Blancanieves, which has a mark on a multi-show pass instead of a ticket) divides into two parts. First was a bit of catch-up, seeing Promised Land on 35mm before it left the Coolidge (and the area, I think) and then Beasts of the Southern Wild on its re-release so that I could have one more movie to vote on before the Chlotrudis Awards nomination meeting. After that, mainstream releases that I would have seen anyway even if they didn't need reviewing on EFC: The Last Stand was a pretty darn good return for Arnold Schwarzenegger and English-language debut for Kim Jee-woon; Mama had its good moments but also its moments where things happen mroe because they happen in horror movies rather than they make sense.

In between, I went to the Chlotrudis nominations meeting, which was weird in that every previous year I've gone, it took place in at least six inches of snow which is still coming down on a cold, gray day. Having the walk be easy and then seeing things finish up in a relatively timely fashion (even if we never did get around to whether or not sequels/continuations are considered original or adapted screenplays) was kind of nice

Here's the list of nominees we set; I'm doing okay in being qualified for voting on most categories despite not having seen The Sessions or The Perks of Being a Wallflower. My nomination for Buried Treasure was A Simple Life, and, guys, I really thought it was available to watch on Hulu, though I apparently had it mixed up with A Beautiful Life (curse you, generic names!).

Promised Land

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 January 2013 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #2 (first-run, 35mm)

Promised Land presents itself as being about environmental and business matters: The dangers about extracting natural gas from the land via a process known as "fracking" and how casually corrupt corporate interests can run roughshod over small towns that need something to prop up their rickety economies and ways of life. And that's there, although the movie seems to carefully avoid taking any stance strong enough as to require defending. What it's really about is Matt Damon being charming.

It's not quite a vanity project for co-writer/producer/star Damon (who, apparently, was also slated to direct at one point, but a busy schedule passed that job to Gus Van Sant, who could probably use something commercial like this to fund some slow, artsy experiments) as much as it is him knowing his strengths and playing to them. And Damon is good at playing this kind of smart guy who's basically good not far under the surface; it's easy to like his Steve Butler and hope for his eventual awakening more than his defeat.

The rest of the cast is like that, too - Frances McDormand, John Krasinski, Rosemarie DeWitt, Titus Welliver, and Hal Holbrook all play folks the audience can understand and sympathize with even when they don't agree. And Gus Van Sant works with that nicely, with cinematographer Linus Sandgren catching the beauty of rural America without over-romanticizing it. Still, all that niceness makes the movie rather toothless, and what cleverness it displays in explaining why Krasinski's activist seems absurdly oversimplified doesn't make up for it. And the end is just too soft - not only does it reduce the protagonist's crisis of conscience to "will this girl like me?", but it pushes the very real questions it raises about how much of a future rural America has right out of the audience's mind, even though they should be genuinely troubling.

Beasts of the Southern Wild

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 18 January 2013 in Landmark Kendall Square #4 (awards re-issue, 2K digital)

During the Chlotrudis meeting (and in various other things I've read), there was some discussion about nominating Quvenzhané Wallis for Best Actress awards - does a fourth-grader really have the skill to act, to consciously make decisions about how to express a character's inner feelings, or is it more a matter of casting someone who matches the role, directing them closely, and then getting the good stuff in the editing room? Having watched Beasts of the Southern Wild, I suspect the latter is the case, but as I said in the meeting, the category is actually for "Best Performance by an Actor/Actress in a Leading Role", and we're awarding the end result, not the means by which the performer got there.

Wallis does, for the most part, get there, there's a very enjoyable toughness to Hushpuppy that complements her childish simplicity of thought well. Even when we're seeing Hushpuppy be self-reliant or independent, it feels like a kid with the capabilities of a kid, not someone who is mature, let alone wise, beyond her years. It makes a nice complement to Dwight Henry as her physically and emotionally unstable father Wink. Wink lashes where Hushpuppy retreats, and Henry does a pretty great job of making him as big and complete a mess as the post-flooding delta without ever seeming to play for the balconies.

Director Benh Zeitlin and the other filmmakers do pretty spiffy things with that environment, too. It's shot beautifully, as you may have heard, and the practical but effective effects used in conjuring Hushpuppy's imagined aurochs are nice too, but it's the way the part of Louisiana that the characters call "The Bathtub" is presented as a place with people in it that most impressed me. In last week's post, I mentioned not warming to Blues for Willadean in part because it seemed to look down on its characters in a way beyond them being flawed human beings, but Beasts avoids that. Certainly, the filmmakers don't always show their characters in the best light, but they do a very good job of showing the characters' world, warts and all, without ever seeming to condescend.

Blancanieves

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 January 2013 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #2 (Talk Cinema, digital)

This one will get a little more detail in a couple of days when I write up a full review, but my main reaction was that writer/director/producer Pablo Berger had a nifty idea for a movie to do in silent style, but really didn't have enough material for a feature. That seems an odd thing to say when there have been a whole bunch of other Snow White films made (including two others released last year), but most seem to struggle to give Snow any sort of standing as the protagonist, and that's what happens here - Berger actually seems to go out of his way to prevent Carmencita from actually doing anything.

There's other fun to be had - Maribel Verdú is a sexy, funny, villainous Wicked Stepmother, and I sort of love that at least one of the dwarfs is more than just part of an assemblage of sidekicks. Kiko de la Rica's cinematography is pretty nice, even if (like a number of recent silents) it does feel more modern than pastiche. Alfonso de Vilallonga's score is terrific, a nice blend of traditional bullfighting fanfares, flamenco, and orchestral silent scoring that does an excellent job of holding the film together.

At least until the end, when... Man, I don't know what Berger was trying to get at. I'm not saying you have to go for the neat, happy Disney ending, but you need some kind of resolution. This thing just stops, and I honestly can't see how the rest of the movie could be said to be leading to that.

Full review at EFC.

The Last Stand

The Last Stand seems like something of a fatalistic title for a movie whose star is attempting a comeback and whose director is trying to break into a new market, doesn't it? Not that I'd blame it for the movie's fairly disappointing opening weekend; there seemed to be a lot of factors there.

I think a big part of it goes to Arnold Schwarzenegger being old, the trailer playing that up, and age and experience isn't exactly what sells action to audiences. Oh, the Expendables movies do all right, because they've got a critical mass of star power and play on both real and inherited nostalgia. Just seeing an old guy try and succeed at a young man's game - and an old guy who isn't considered much of an actor - isn't quite what audiences are looking for.

And that "not considered much of an actor" bit is surprisingly important, because, when you think about it, we don't really have any people like Arnold Schwarzenegger today whose main function is to look the part of a guy who can handle himself in a big fight. He's been supplanted by Matt Damons, Jeremy Renners, and Liam Neesons, good actors who can play a lot of roles but don't bring the instant association with butt-kicking with them. That's not necessarily something you need for a movie like The Last Stand - it's not that bad acting would be considered a positive (Johnny Knoxville and Forest Whitaker both kind of hurt things, actually) so much as "good enough" is good enough, and feeling something intangible is just as important as any finer detail an actor with more varied talents can give.

It's a shame that people seemed to dismiss Arnold this weekend, because he gets the job done and there was a heck of an action movie built around him. Plus, this tanking probably means it will be some time before an American studio decides to give Kim Jee-woon the money to play with the big Hollywood toys again, and while I am perfectly okay with him continuing to make great movies in South Korea, I'm not going to be the guy that says there's any sort of inherent virtue limited means: Having North American resources didn't hurt Kim, and I'd have liked to see what he did with an even bigger budget.

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Minor regret about the eFilmCritic review: I never did find a good spot to say, when talking about how the movie is occasionally played broad, that Kim/the movie isn't afraid of a little corn. Folks who have seen it will know why I wanted to.

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The Last Stand

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 19 January 2013 in AMC Boston Common #13 (first-run, digital)

The Last Stand is an action movie for the folks who love action movies enough to look for the good ones. It doesn't try to clobber the audience with sheer size or try to trick them into thinking they've seen something cool with quick cutting. It may not even look like anything special to audiences jaded by the continual one-upmanship of blockbusters, but its ambition is to do most things a little better than one might expect, and it succeeds often enough for this to add up.

It starts at two ends of the road: In Las Vegas, FBI Special Agent John Bannister (Forest Whitaker) is hoping for a quiet prisoner transfer of Mexican cartel boss Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega); down in Sommerton Junction, New Mexico, Sherriff Ray Owens (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and his three deputies (Luis Guzman, Jaimi Alexander & Zach Gilford) are expecting a quiet weekend while most of the town heads on the road with the high school basketball team. Cortez escapes, of course, fleeing for Sommerton Junction and the border in a souped-up sports car, but a hitch in the plan implemented by his hired gun Burrell (Peter Stormare) may have Sherriff Owens waiting for him.

Cortez's escape plan is, of course, needlessly elaborate - it requires a ridiculous number of mercenaries at both ends and at least one point in between using some fairly specialized equipment - and the circumstances necessary on the other end for Owens and company to put up a fight (a mostly-empty town and a helpful gun nut) are just as unlikely. They at least have the virtue of being amusing, involving cranes and electromagnets and cars going two hundred miles per hour and machine guns where you'd least expect them. Andrew Knauer's script seldom uses absurdity as a short cut or a way to back out of a difficult situation; it always leads to something that is fun to see.

Full review on eFilmCritic.