The Screengrab : owen wilson

Precursors: The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Nick Schager — Mon, 11 May 2009 20:30:00 GMT

Rian Johnson’s The Brothers Bloom arrives in select theaters this weekend before opening wide later in the month, and it so egregiously apes Wes Anderson's trademark aesthetic that one would be better off simply revisiting the film in which the director’s style fully crystallized, The Royal Tenenbaums. Anderson’s J.D. Salinger-esque saga concerns the efforts of the titular clan’s estranged patriarch, Royal (Gene Hackman), to reconcile with his wife (Anjelica Huston) and three child-prodigy-turned-adult-misfit children (Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Luke Wilson) by telling them he’s terminally ill. He’s not, but his ruse gets him back in the door, thus instigating a reunion that's both funny and poignant, thanks in part to a cast (which also includes Danny Glover, co-writer Owen Wilson, and Bill Murray) whose performances are uniformly droll and sorrowful, but primarily due to Anderson’s expert stewardship. Through his beautifully symmetrical compositions, use of slow-motion and pop songs, and intricately detailed set design, Anderson creates a winningly idiosyncratic, hermetically sealed world in which to situate his audience. Just as impressive, however, is his ability to make his aggressively quirky characters not only agents of humor but also pathos, the film – unlike Anderson’s more uneven subsequent efforts – offering up a near-ideal balance of silliness and sentimentality.

The Best & Worst Get Rich Quick Schemes In Cinema History! (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 21:30:00 GMT

THREE KINGS (1999)

By all accounts, writer/director David O. Russell is the kind of tantrum-throwing brat even Christian Bale would recommend for anger management classes. George Clooney came to blows with him on the set of Three Kings, and Lily Tomlin surely contemplated crushing his nuts during his notorious freak-out on the set of I ♥ Huckabees...but even Clooney admits the dude’s got chops, and Russell’s tale of U.S. soldiers attempting to heist millions in Kuwaiti bullion from Saddam Hussein during the Persian Gulf War is still the best (fictional) cinematic depiction of America’s poisonous love-hate relationship with Hussein and Iraq. I learned more about our nation’s cynical, fucked-up Middle East policy from Russell’s entertaining “comedy” caper than I did from ten years of Bush family press conferences. The moral of the story: there’s definitely money to be made in Iraq, if your conscience isn’t bothered (like Clooney’s Major Archie Gates) by the thought of letting innocent civilians die as collateral damage, or (like Nora Dunn’s TV reporter Adriana Cruz) by the sight of birds dying in war-made oil slicks, or (like Mark Wahlberg’s Sgt. Troy Barlow) the realization that even the bad guys (here represented by Saïd Taghmaoui’s electrifying Iraqi interrogator) are suffering while the war profiteers get plenty rich, plenty quick. (AO)

BOTTLE ROCKET (1996)

Wes Anderson’s debut boasts few of the stylistic hallmarks of his subsequent work, though that doesn’t make it any less distinctive. Bottle Rocket focuses on the misadventures of wannabe-criminal Dignan (Owen Wilson) and his best friend Anthony (Luke Wilson), both of them aimlessly searching for contentment, companionship and love in the Texas suburbs. Instead of Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums’ meticulously arranged compositions, Anderson’s cinematography is much more loose, which leaves the proceedings visually bland but, unlike the stultifying The Darjeeling Limited, full of ramshackle life. The director’s attempts at pathos are somewhat undercut by his scripting, most notably with regards to Anthony’s sketchy, preposterous relationship with motel housekeeper Inez (Lumi Cavazo). Yet if the film lacks a bit of polish, it nonetheless is both consistently funny and narratively efficient, two vital qualities that are most fully on display during Dignan and Anthony’s outstanding robbery of a local bookstore. (NS)

KIDS IN THE HALL: BRAIN CANDY (1996)

Sometimes a get-rich-quick scheme isn’t exactly a scheme, as such. Sometimes it’s not even intentional. All Kevin McDonald’s Dr. Chris Cooper and his team of pharmaceuticals technicians wanted to do was create a pill that helped chronically depressed people cope with their daily lives…chemically. What they ended up doing was creating Gleemonex, a drug that isolates your happiest moment and replays it over and over in your head, condemning you to comatose bliss forever. Naturally, Cooper’s employers recognize the potential to make obscene amounts of money, and the race is on to see if Dr. Cooper will be corrupted by the cash himself, or do the right thing. The first (and, so far, only) Kids in the Hall movie is inconsistent and occasionally pretty bad, but give it credit for one of the darkest-toned comedies of the last few decades, in which doing the right thing and condemning millions of people to paralyzing depression and sadness are synonymous. (LP)

LOST IN AMERICA (1985)

In Albert Brooks' anti-yuppie satire, Brooks plays an ad executive who is so programmed with his fantasy of how his career should go that when he isn't given the promotion he's expecting -- because, his boss explains, he's "too clever" to be wasted on the empty-suit job -- and offered a different promotion that involves a move to New York City, he blows his top and takes a flame thrower to every bridge in sight. Convinced that they've reached a stage in their lives where they're ready to move beyond conventional standards of success, Brooks and his wife (Julie Hagerty) liquidate their assets, including their house, and set out to explore the country in a Winnebago the size of Rhode Island with a $145,000 nest egg tucked in their purse. Unfortunately, Hagerty is seized by a gambling mania in Las Vegas and pisses away the bulk of their money, and Brooks makes a stab at using his professional skills to persuade the casino boss (Garry Marshall) to return their money; he improvises a whole campaign about how the casino can benefit from the free publicity it'll get once the story gets out that it's a gambling den with "heart." Technically, this is not a get-rich scheme but a desperate, sweaty, make-it-as-if-this-hadn't-happened scheme. But if more people would react this way to the loss of everything they have instead of turning ashen and wandering into traffic, the past six or seven months would have been a lot more fun. (PN)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Five & Six

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Leonard Pierce, Phil Nugent

DVD Digest for March 31, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT

This week, the 2008 winner of the Oscar for Best Picture finds its way to DVD and Blu-Ray. But don’t worry- some good movies are coming out too.

For most media outlets, the big DVD news this week is the release of Danny Boyle’s Oscar-winner Slumdog Millionaire (Fox, also Blu-Ray). And considering the amount of expensive PR and hype that has gone into making the movie the year’s “biggest indie success story” (and the Oscar for Best Media Push goes to…), it’s understandable that they’d want to play up the DVD release as much as possible in order to milk its Academy Awards for the most money possible. Meanwhile, those of us who didn’t care much for movie- and I can’t be the only one, can I?- will just have to hold out hope that maybe the folks who catch up with it at home will be as underwhelmed as we were. Maybe it’s that we were just spoiled by the last two years, in which we thought the Academy was turning over a new leaf by honoring honest-to-goodness awesome movies, but while Slumdog isn’t as awful as Crash, it certainly isn’t movie enough to withstand the massive hype that’s surrounded it ever since Toronto audiences wet their pants over it last fall. The Slumdog love’s got to end sometime, right? RIGHT???

Sorry about that, folks. I just get a little… annoyed when I think about Slumdog. Anyway, this week’s other releases coming to DVD include: Owen Wilson, Jennifer Aniston and a troublemaking, lesson-teaching dog in Marley & Me (Fox, also Blu-Ray); Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson in Last Chance Harvey (Anchor Bay); and the Spanish mindbender Timecrimes (Magnolia). Also, this week sees the release of the After Dark Horrorfest III (Lionsgate), which includes The Broken, Slaughter, Perkins 14, The Butterfly Effect: Revelation, From Within, Dying Breed, Voices, and the unrated version of Autopsy, with each film also available separately.

Meanwhile, this week’s lineup of classics is headed up by two new releases from the good folks at Criterion, Roberto Rossellini’s Il Generale della Rovere, and Andrzej Wajda’s Danton. Also this week: the Bollywood Horror Collection vol. 2 (Mondo Macabro), which includes Veerana- Vengeance of the Vampire and Purani Haveli- Mansion of Evil.

This week’s TV on DVD include In Plain Sight Season 1 (Universal) and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea Season 4, Vol. 1 (Fox).

In Blu-Ray only news, this week brings three classic big-screen musicals: An American in Paris (Warner), Gigi (Warner), and South Pacific 50th Anniversary Edition (Fox). Also this week: the Vin Diesel double feature Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick (both Universal), plus Ghosts of Mars (Sony) and The One (Sony).

Finally, we come to the Synopsis of the Week, coming once again from the folks at FUNimation Entertainment. Sorry if it seems like I’m picking on Japanese animation with this feature, but you’ve got to admit that some of their premises are pretty unbelievable, and the folks who write the copy at FUNimation don’t exactly hide this fact. Anyway, this week’s selection comes from the DVD One Piece, Season 1: The Fourth Voyage:

“In one of Japan's most wildly successful manga, movie, and television series, Monkey D. Luffy is a cheery, optimistic young fellow with a grandiose dream of becoming the king of the pirates. Luffy has two other odd qualities: he can stretch his rubbery body, and he cannot swim. After using his Gum Gum Axe to bring down the house on Arlong's reign of terror, Luffy and his crew get some big news. A brawl with the marines has officially landed Monkey and Zoro on the wanted list! News travels fast, and it's not long before Red Haired Shanks is celebrating his old friend's new status as a genuine pirate. But not everyone shares his fondness for the Straw Hats. There is an armada of angry adversaries in hot pursuit as Luffy and his crew set sail for Logue Town - the final resting place of the legendary Gold Roger.”

Sorry, but I’m having trouble getting past the hero’s name- to say nothing of the ominous inclusion of the dubious “quality” involving his inability to swim. That it gets even stranger from there is really saying something, methinks.

Morning Deal Report: You’ve Got to Be Focking With Me

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 16:15:00 GMT

Someone might describe the third installment in the Fockers series as “long-awaited,” but that someone would not be me. Nevertheless, Reuters is reporting that Little Fockers is on the fast track at Universal, with Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro and Owen Wilson all set to reprise their roles. “Jay Roach, who directed the first two films, will produce Fockers but not helm the picture. He's concentrating on the comic romp Dinner for Schmucks for DreamWorks.” Of course he is. Contenders for the director’s chair include Paul Weitz (About a Boy) and David Wain (Role Models).

Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher are running from Five Killers. “Film reteams Heigl with helmer Robert Luketic, who most recently directed the thesp in upcoming romantic comedy The Ugly Truth. Story kicks off when a woman meets the man of her dreams while on vacation. Married bliss is turned upside down when they discover that their neighbors may be assassins hired to kill them,” Variety reports.

The Michael Lewis baseball book Moneyball is already slated for the big screen, and now his football book The Blind Side is scheduled for adaptation with Sandra Bullock aboard. It “tells the true story of football player Michael Oher, who is projected to be one of the first players selected in this year's NFL draft,” per The Hollywood Reporter. “Oher was a homeless black teen from a broken home who was taken in by a well-to-do white family that saw extraordinary promise in him. Oher, however, faced a new set of obstacles once in his new environment. Bullock will play Leigh Anne Touhy, the affluent matriarch of the conservative suburban household that takes in Oher.”

Related:
Soderbergh Plays Moneyball
Robert De Niro in "The Return of Rupert Pupkin"

Morning Deal Report: Ang Lee’s Slice of “Pi”

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:30:00 GMT

Ang Lee is in talks to direct an adaptation of Yann Martel's novel Life of Pi. That should be interesting, since the story “revolves around a youth who is the lone survivor of a sunken freighter and winds up sharing a lifeboat with a hyena, an injured zebra, an orangutan and a hungry Bengal tiger,” per Variety.

James L. Brooks returns to the director’s chair with a romantic comedy tentatively titled How Do You Know? Owen Wilson and Paul Rudd are two potential points in a love triangle that also includes Reese Witherspoon. “Rudd would play a white-collar executive vying for Witherspoon's affections, while Wilson would portray a professional baseball pitcher who is also a love interest.”

Robert Rodriguez is going back to the future with Nerverackers. “Set in 2085, the story centers on a character named Joe Tezca who is part of an elite unit dispatched to quell a crime wave in a theoretically perfect future society.”

Related:
Ang Lee Takes Woodstock
Rose McGowan in Chains!

Smells Like Indie Spirit: Our Favorite Sundance Movies Of All Time (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Like Saturday Night Live, people never get tired of complaining about the Sundance Film Festival, comparing it unfavorably to its glory days of yore...and yet, just as Lorne Michaels’ 34-season comedy juggernaut (despite decades of grumbling and reports of its imminent demise) has and continues to spawn everything from the Blues Brothers and Bill Murray to 30 Rock and Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin impression, Robert Redford’s love child has likewise changed the face of American filmmaking for (mostly) better and (sometimes) worse since its inception in 1978, 1981 or 1985 (depending who you ask...especially if you ask our own Phil Nugent).

I was tempted to illustrate this introduction with a sexy naked picture of recent Sundance carpetbagger Paris Hilton tied up in microphone cord to (A) draw the prurient eyeballs of Nerve.com sex enthusiasts, but also (B) to make a snarky statement about the way Redford’s annual celebration of the “indie spirit” is really little more than a high-altitude version of the same old Hollywood rat race, where the usual suspects pimp low-budget versions of the same old crap while patting themselves on the back for their "edgy" artistic integrity at pricy soirees that would fund a dozen projects by the real indie filmmakers shivering in the cold on the wrong side of the velvet ropes separating them from the A-list glitterati.

But, no...instead I chose a still from “Any Given Sundance,” because (A) the Simpsons are cooler than Paris Hilton and (B) as a reminder that, for all its faults, Redford’s indie film revolution (like the Easy Riders and Raging Bulls of the 1970s American film renaissance) has penetrated mainstream culture and generally expanded the boundaries of what audiences see, both in the art house and (to a certain extent) on multiplex and television screens.

And so, partly to wrap up our extensive coverage of this year’s festival and partly to remind ourselves of the hours and hours of fine entertainment Mr. Redford has indirectly unleashed upon the world, this week we here at the Screengrab are hitting the slopes with our FAVORITE SUNDANCE MOVIES OF ALL TIME!

STRANGER THAN PARADISE (1985)

The first Special Jury Prize winner at Sundance way back in 1985 was also the movie that really put Jim Jarmusch on the cultural map. Watching it today, it’s easy to see why judges found it so charming, but it’s also easy to see how little Jarmusch’s overall aesthetic has changed: he’s got bigger budgets now and can afford actors who demand bigger paychecks than the goofy Richard Edson and the lovely Eszter Balint (making her film debut here), but his technical approach – long static shots and drifting movement from the middle distance – has hardly changed at all. His obsessions with untethered losers, people with their own inexplicable moral code, and the vagaries of American culture as viewed through the eyes of foreigners, likewise haven’t changed very much. When they first appeared, though, in this alternately hilarious and depressing film about a disconnected New York scenester and his Hungarian cousin wandering to Cleveland and then to Florida for no particular reason, it looked like something that had dropped in from another world. Stranger Than Paradise is one of the films that helped define the modern era of indie film, and helped establish Sundance as the tastemaker’s festival for that particular aesthetic. More than 25 years later, the movie and the festival have a strong connection.

POISON (1991)

By the time Todd Haynes won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for his first widely released full-length, Poison, he was already famous (or, rather, infamous) for making Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story – a film about the late pop singer made entirely with Barbie dolls. A pair of lawsuits drove that film underground, but Poison proved that Haynes was more than just a gimmicky joke: its technical skill and audacity placed him at the forefront of a growing movement that became known as the New Queer Cinema, and its unsettling tone marked him as a filmmaker with a distinct and not always pleasant point of view. Poison consisted of three distinct narratives, each done in a different style: “Homo”, an adaptation of a Jean Genet short story, is the most visually sumptuous, telling a disturbing tale of gay prison romance. “Horror”, an unsubtle AIDS metaphor, evokes 1950s sci-fi shockers as a scientist turns into a deformed madman after isolating a chemical extract that is pure sexuality. The most disturbing, eerie, and inexplicable of the three is “Hero”, a pseudo-documentary of a child who murders his abusive father and flies away, never to be seen again; the straightforward way this bizarre story is told is what makes it so memorable. Haynes’ next movie would be the absolutely brilliant Safe, but Poison remains a powerful signal of a newly arrived talent.

BOTTLE ROCKET (1996)

A lot has gone wrong since Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket tipped at Sundance in 1996. Anderson has become a highly controversial director, and for everyone who finds him innovative and engaging, there are those who finds his movies facile and self-indulgent. His star and co-writer, Owen Wilson, has occasionally shown signs of his old talents, but more often has become a smirk in search of a paycheck, much more content to collect a fee than to push himself artistically, and his personal life has been a shambles marked by substance abuse and a suicide attempt. But there’s no denying their first, and best, moment of greatness: Bottle Rocket is a surprising, clever, well-made, and extremely likable film that came more or less out of nowhere to become one of the best-loved movies of the 1990s and a touchstone of that decade’s indie movement. Though it didn’t take home any of the big prizes at Sundance, it generated a huge amount of buzz there, and its later success was largely due to the positive reviews and publicity it garnered in Park City. Anderson’s direction is ambling but never aimless, Wilson’s writing and acting are funny and charming but not lazy, and the whole movie gets the best out of its small budget and creates a rarefied atmosphere that’s worth revisiting. It’s sad to think of Bottle Rocket as a high point its writer and director would never reach again.

WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE (1995)

The winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize in 1996, Welcome to the Dollhouse is another film whose director somewhat wore out his welcome with later films. Todd Solondz has established himself as a filmmaker so determined to push boundaries that he’s become alienating rather than empathetic, and who seems to confuse relentless bleakness with clear-eyed realism; the incredible depths of understanding that make Welcome to the Dollhouse such an appealing and moving film are soured or nearly absent from his later work. (He even manages to piss away the good will generated by his most famous creation by killing off Dawn Wiener for no particular reason in Palindromes.) However, no amount of excess can rob his first feature of its power; Welcome to the Dollhouse is still one of the most touching and sympathetic, albeit incredibly uncomfortable, views of adolescence ever captured on film. Dawn’s negotiations through the bitter lessons of bullying, pre-teen sexuality, parental neglect, and sibling rivalry are as real as it gets, and all the more surprising for how well a male writer/director was able to communicate the specific problems of an adolescent girl. Welcome to the Dollhouse would also likely have been less successful had the role of Dawn not been assayed with such perfection by the young Heather Matarazzo, who, like Solondz himself, never quite recaptured the greatness of her debut.

BALLAST (2008)

One of the big winners at this year’s Sundance film festival, Lance Hammer’s Ballast took home well-deserved prizes for directing and cinematography (astonishing work by Lol Crowley). Hammer has been around for a while, but this is his first full-length feature film, and it came at a key moment for Sundance: many critics at this year’s festival complained about burnout, the fragile state of the economy has seen a number of established festivals shutter their doors, and much wringing of hands has taken place over the future of independent film. That’s why it was important for a movie like Ballast to come along, to signal the continuing strength of indie cinema and the continuing importance of places like Park City for them to find an audience. The quiet, powerful story of a Mississippi family plunged into despair and inertia by the suicide of one of its members, Ballast features some incredible naturalistic acting, a mesmerizing pace and visual sensibility, and an emotional punch that’s become increasingly rare in the growing inward smirk of a lot of American independent film. It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s one that completely justifies the importance of the festival circuit and neatly answers at least a few questions about the state of indie movies in 2009.

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce

Strangers In A Strange Land: Screengrab’s Favorite Fish-Out-Of-Water Stories (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 22:00:00 GMT

THE DARJEELING LIMITED (2007)

I still haven't seen "The Hotel Chevalier," a (by all accounts great) short companion film that preceded The Darjeeling Limited at some (but not all venues) during its theatrical run, and I'm still a little ticked off at Wes Anderson for that...but considering how much I hated The Life Aquatic (after loving The Royal Tennenbaums and Rushmore), I was just happy to see one of my favorite directors back in fine, peculiar form with this dreamy, visually gorgeous tale of three newly fatherless brothers grieving their way across India in search of the inscrutable mother who abandoned them. Lighter and funnier than its synopsis would indicate, the film is nevertheless steeped in quiet melancholy (personified by the mournful, meta presence of Owen Wilson, pre-suicide attempt) and a timely sense of hopeful fatalism. Like any number of strangers in strange lands before them, the brothers find relief from alienation in the alien landscapes of their journey as those simultaneously indifferent and transcendent surroundings help draw their collective gaze from their own navels. (Great soundtrack, too.)

THE MAGGIE (1954)

A slightly bitterer precursor to Local Hero, The Maggie has American businessman Calvin B. Marshall (Paul Douglas) hiring a grossly incompetent boat to carry his furniture to a prospective summer house in Kiltarra. Led by one Mactaggert (Alec Mackenzie), it's not so much a fair fight between wealthy American and wily Scots as an absolute walkover. The crew are fun, but they're actively incompetent and opportunistic; what they do to a Marshall willing to pay them more than reasonably is hilarious but also kind of unconscionable. And he likes it! Phoning home at one point, he announces "I'm developing a very strange sense of humor." There are no clips on YouTube, so the one above features the wonderfully character-actor-ish Douglas on What's My Line?, adopting a Cockney accent for no justifiable reason.

WOMAN IN THE DUNES (1964)

"If they're afraid of the sand, have them tackle it scientifically" announces exasperated entomologist Niji Jumpei (Eiji Okada) after he's forced — for seemingly the rest of his life — to live in a pit of sand with the titular woman. Jumpei isn't so much a stranger in a strange land as a stranger in no man's land, surrounded by blatantly allegorical, hostilely indifferent locals and no explanations. Much of Woman is disorienting to watch as well: in a square frame, sand piles up, slips and slides in kinetic, snaky ways at least as interesting to watch as the people. (It might quite possibly be an even better movie about sand than Lawrence of Arabia, though that film otherwise wins.) For a film about being trapped — Niji's pinned down like the insects he studies — there's an amazing abortive escape across the sand, an action release across strange territory before being trapped again.

THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (1970)

Tony Musante was one of those actors who flourished in the late '60s/'70s, when actors willing to travel and work in cheapie international co-productions in ludicrous scenarios would be compensated for their troubles. Here, the truly Italian-American Musante is the oddly named American Sam Dalmas (!) — although, depending on which dub you see, everything happens in either equally fluid Italian or English. Sam sees a murder in an art gallery and spends a lot of time trying not to get shot and traveling around the country he's supposed to be leaving in a few days. Though Dalmas has been in Italy for a while (working on a book about birds), he seems to have no familiarity with the city's layout, which makes it hard for him to elude killers effectively. Dalmas gets the job done but, in truth, Musante is never once convincing as an American abroad: he just looks too at home, matching all the real Italian players physically. (Just two years before, he'd been playing Mexican mercenary bandit "Paco Roman" in The Mercenary. Go figure.)

THE OUTSIDE MAN (1972)

One of the films highlighted by Thom Anderson in 2003's undervalued Los Angeles Plays Itself as an example of a French director bringing a better eye to LA location shooting than Angelenos themselves (Jacques Demy's equally obscure 1969 Model Shop is also cited), The Outside Man is a textbook gritty '70s guilty pleasure that deserves to be better known. The plot's pretty rote — Jean-Louis Trintignant comes to town to knock someone off, double-crosses and hits on his life ensue — but it's just an excuse to gawk at a metropolis growing into urban crappiness way too fast. Director Jacques Deray (an action specialist who really should be better known in the US) gawks at all the right mundane things (new supermarkets, Venice Beach) his protagonist ignores, which now look totally alien. Best of all are Trintignant's assassin freres, who arrive in town to help him out. "Why are we wearing all black?" one whinges. "How will we meet women this way?"

Click Here For Part One, Two, Four, Five & Six

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Vadim Rizov

DVD Digest for December 30, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! This week, the big studios drop a ton of new DVDs and Blu-Rays into the market to compete for your newly-acquired Christmas cash.

In recent releases, DVD shopping begins early this week, with three new Paramount titles: Shia Labeouf and Michelle Monaghan in Eagle Eye (also Blu-Ray); Ricky Gervais in Ghost Town (also Blu-Ray); and Keira Knightley in The Duchess (also Blu-Ray). Today brings us Nick Broomfield’s Battle For Haditha (Image Entertainment), as well as a “head to head” match up (sorry) between Alan Ball’s Towelhead (Warner) and the Duplass Brothers’ Baghead (Sony).

In TV on DVD, today’s new releases include The Tudors Season 2 (Paramount) and Nip/Tuck Season 5 Part 1 (Warner).

Finally, this week’s bumper crop of new Blu-Ray-only releases includes: Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder (Paramount); the Shining-in-space thriller Event Horizon (Paramount); Demi Moore and the Swayz in Ghost (Paramount); Queen Latifah in Last Holiday (Paramount); Jim Carrey in Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (Paramount); Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers (Warner); and finally, the Browncoats’ favorite, Joss Whedon’s Serenity (Universal).

Dear Santa: Cinematic Comebacks We’d Most Like To See (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 16:30:00 GMT

SHERYL LEE

Lee was originally cast as the face (and corpse) of bewitching, self-destructive prom queen Laura Palmer on the equally bewitching and self-destructive TV classic Twin Peaks, yet David Lynch was so captivated by the actress that he created a recurring role for her on the show (as Laura’s doomed cousin Maddie), then later placed her at the center of the feature-length Peaks prequel, Fire Walk With Me, a critically-scorned movie that made Lee (and her iconic character) seem, to many, like a guest who’d overstayed her welcome. And yet, even if you’re one of the haters who viewed the film as an unnecessary, self-indulgent folly (rather than an undervalued masterpiece), take another look at Lee’s performance: yes, she gobbles like a turkey at one point (a moment frequently and too easily mocked), but she also commits herself to the role of an abuse victim on the brink of madness with the kind of frightening, vulnerable intensity that would have earned praise and awards buzz if not for the small screen (and Log Lady) associations. Since her fifteen minutes of fame (and undeserved ridicule), Lee has largely flown beneath the radar in projects more interested in her capacity for physical (rather than emotional) nakedness onscreen, but even so there have been some diamonds in the rough: the innocent in This World, Then The Fireworks, the innocent turned deadly in John Carpenter’s Vampires and, most notably (if least interestingly), in her almost comeback roll as the German girlfriend in Backbeat. Lately, Lee’s found a home back on television (most recently on Dirty Sexy Money...remind me to set my Tivo!), but I’d be fascinated to see what she’d bring to a meaty film role now that she’s been seasoned with all these extra years of rejection, experience and wisdom.

MICHAEL ALMEREYDA

After years of a steadily increasing profile on the arthouse circuit, Michael Almereyda made his best film yet, 2002's Happy Here And Now. After some festival showings, it promptly disappeared, only to be cynically resurrected by IFC after Katrina rendered its New Orleans setting suddenly marketable. The truth is that Almereyda's abstract feature doodles are even less marketable than those of his patron David Lynch, but — if you're on the right wavelength — they can also be totally ethereal and enveloping. Since Happy, he's made two documentaries (one of which I've seen — This So-Called Disaster, which lives down to its title), and which decidedly aren't his element. 2006's Tonight At Noon remains in some kind of post-production hell, and this year's New Orleans, Mon Amour didn't even get the token post-Katrina bounce after dropping at SXSW. What gives?

OWEN WILSON

This has nothing to do with Owen Wilson's personal life, which is frankly none of my business. But should he — after finishing what appears to be a contractually-mandated stint in A Night At The Museum 2 — still have any kind of relish for acting or film in general, it would be nice to see not the return of the Wilson who made lazy craptastic vehicles like Drillbit Taylor or You, Me & Dupree, but the thoughtful co-writer of Bottle Rocket and Rushmore and/or the brilliantly limited slacker comedian who single-handedly rewrote and saved films like Shanghai Noon and (yes, I'm serious) The Big Bounce. Hell, he can even make another The Minus Man if that's what it takes.

TOM GREEN

This one's purely personal. I think Freddy Got Fingered is a very funny movie (which is generally not even true for fans of The Tom Green Show). I even think Freddy Got Fingered is a surprisingly emotional and deeply felt examination of poisonous father-son bonds, a deeply felt apologia from Green to his dad for being so awful to him on the show, fueled by a totally sincere desire for reconciliation. You, on the other hand, may be with the majority of the planet, which finds it to be an abomination. Whatever the case, it's time to rescue Green from whatever web-interview-show purgatory he's fallen into. If nothing else, he can keep reminding dudes of the importance of testicular self-exams.

DAVE CHAPPELLE

This one's utterly universal; is there anyone who wasn't amused by Chappelle? Chappelle hasn't disappeared completely; he's known to show up in comedy clubs with little more than 24 hours' advance notice, and he interviewed James Lipton in November for Inside The Actor's Studio's 200th episode. That's all we get? No one can blame Chappelle for the entirely understandable qualms that led him to shut down his show, and it's totally fair if he wants to retreat to the "Fuck Hollywood" ranch. But Dave Chappelle's Block Party wasn't just a joyous neighborhood tribute (and Michel Gondry's best film); it showed a way out for Chappelle, a post-comic persona that allowed him to drop irony and prove a surprisingly affable host to 21st-century race relations. Whether as a comic or simply as a good guy to spend time with on-screen, we could use him back.

Click Here For Part One, Two & Four

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Vadim Rizov

Movie Review: "A Girl Cut in Two"

Phil Nugent — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

When the best scene in a movie involves a beautiful young woman looking up worshipfully at her much older lover while crawling towards him on her hands and knees with a peacock's tail attached to her ass, you're either watching a very strange movie or a work of genius. A Girl Cut in Two, the latest from French director Claude Chabrol, isn't a work of genius, but it is the second movie in a week to ride in with the news that hot young babes are putty in the hands of sixtyish grizzled-looking dudes with literary pedigrees. Like Elegy, A Girl Cut in Two has its own literary pedigree: it's an updated take on the Stanford White-Evelyn Nesbit-Harry K. Thaw triangle that blazed across the tabloids in the 1920s and got a second life when E. L. Doctorow used it as the cornerstone of his 1975 novel Ragtime. Here, the stand-in for White is a distinguished, graying novelist, Charles Saint-Denis (Francois Berleand), who is devotedly married but just can't seem to leave those young girls alone. (His agent, who packs a bathing suit when she comes to visit him and his wife in their big house in the country, where she practically camps out on his veranda, is played by the still-stunning Mathilda May, who some of us vulgar Americans will always remember best for her non-speaking, buck naked performance in the 1985 vampires-from-space movie Lifeforce.)

Charles's latest conquest is Gabrielle (Ludivine Sagnier), a fresh-faced blonde who delivers the weather reports on the TV news, where she's probably the best thing that's ever happened to the phrase "approaching gulf streams." When Charles spots her at his book signing, his eyes seem to pop out on springs, but in a tasteful and refined way, what with him being French and all. He soon secrets her away to his love nest in the city and then, overcome with emotion after she pulls that business with the peacock's tail ("You don't feel humiliated?" "Not even ridiculous."), he takes her to his special club, where classy people with subterranean sex drives get together to do things too shocking for Chabrol to do anything but hint at. He's said that the scenes at the club, where the actors kick back and trade knowing looks and the camera cuts away just when it looks as if we're going to get to see what they're all so smug about, "reflect my desire to explore the theme of perversion without ever showing it." I know that I'm not the one who's been making movies for fifty years, but I can't shake this feeling that giving your characters all kinds of interesting perversions and then not showing them amounts to failing to utilize one of the obvious advantages of making a movie about them in the first place.

I never believed a minute of A Girl Cut in Two, but it does have more of a sustained grip than Chabrol's recent movies, thanks in no small part to Sagnier's surprisingly vulnerable cupcake. Things take a turn for the goofy when the third side of this triangle heaves into sight: the spoiled rich rotter Paul Gaudens (Benoit Magimel), who professes love for Gabrielle while seething with hatred for Charles. (He blames him for having somehow inflicted shame on his family, but the exact details are either never made clear or were spelled out in subtitles that flashed on the screen while I was checking to make sure that my wristwatch still lights up when I press that little button on the side.) With his psychedelic Thurston Howell III wardrobe and his gelled blonde hair with a fistful of forelock strategically draped over one eye, Magimel looks like a French Owen Wilson fronting an '80s "new romantic" cover band, but the actual dialogue he has to speak has nothing on Spandau Ballet. A Girl Cut in Two begins coughing up blood as soon as it begins devoting whole scenes to his aristocratic crumb-bum family, presided over by a vicious snob of a mother (Caroline Silhol, who played Dietrich in last year's Edith Piaf biopic La Vie en Rose) who suggests an albino Morticia Addams. The last half hour or so, which wraps up with an ending that tops Chinatown in going out of it way to give literal meaning to a metaphorical title, dumps the confusion and chaos of adulterous passion in favor of one more demonstration that the cultured mask of the bourgeoisie masks a nest of serpents and is utterly disposable, though I did like the moment when a mercenary lawyer has a polite conversation with Mother Gaudens, exits the mansion, and as he heads for his car, goes, "Brrrrrrr!" The movie can best be appreciated as a one-hour-fifty-minute trailer for whatever Ludivine Sagnier does next. Whatever that is--Bond girl, female lead to Adam Sandler, Celebrity Detox Center: Paris Edition--I'm there.

Trailer Review: Marley & Me

Paul Clark — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Today we conclude Memoir Week here at Trailer Review with the trailer for the adaptation of John Grogan’s Marley & Me. Not having read the book, I’m ill-prepared to pass pre-emptive judgment on the movie version, which stars Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston. But this teaser doesn’t give me a whole lot of hope. Now, I realize that making a teaser is a tricky business, having to give audiences a taste of the movie without much footage to work with. But this one just feels lazy- thirty seconds of a cute little dog, a glimpse of Wilson and Aniston chasing him, then the title. On top of that, there’s the head-slappingly obvious use of Vangelis’ Chariots of Fire theme, which despite its overuse for the past quarter century has become Hollywood’s music of choice to accompany a running scene, no matter what life form it might be. The only other thing I know is that the movie was directed by David Frankel, who with this and The Devil Wears Prada is quickly becoming Hollywood’s go-to guy for bringing memoirs to the big screen. I wasn’t a big fan of the earlier film, so I’ll probably pass on this one.

DVD Digest for July 29, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:00:00 GMT

As we get ready to tear into the dog days of summer, this week brings a number of great new DVDs to help you beat the heat.

DVDs of the Week: In a banner week for culty fare, I would like to spotlight two especially noteworthy new DVD releases. First is the long-awaited release of Alex Proyas’ director’s cut of Dark City (Warner, also Blu-Ray). A flop on its original release, Dark City has in the intervening years become something of a cult film, its critical reputation salvaged in part by the ongoing support of Roger Ebert, who memorably chose it as his #1 film of 1998. With this director’s cut, Proyas has added more than ten minutes of footage to an already compelling original, in addition to making other noticeable changes (not least, dropping the introductory voiceover that was present in the theatrical cut). In addition to the original disc’s commentaries by the filmmakers and Ebert, the new edition includes two new featurettes, a review of the film by Neil Gaiman, and a number of other features. Most double-dips and “director’s cuts” are largely marketing department bluster, but Dark City should prove to be worth the upgrade.

My other pick this week is Peter Watkins’ Privilege (New Yorker), a movie which as some of you might recall I loved so much I kind of want to marry it. At the time I originally saw the film, I had no inkling that it would be released on DVD, as for years it had been unavailable in any home-viewing format, and was only available to theatrical venues in a single print. So if you’ve been waiting eagerly to see Privilege- and Lord knows you should have been- your day has finally arrived. New Yorker’s DVD is light on special features, but you know what? It doesn’t matter. That it’s available is cause enough for celebration, and should lead to the film becoming the cult classic it so richly deserves to be.

Other classics coming this week to DVD include the Tyrone Power Matinee Idol Collection (Fox, includes 10 feature films) and WarGames: 25th Anniversary Edition (MGM).

As for recent releases, you know it’s a good week when the release of a Martin Scorsese film on DVD isn’t the biggest story. Nevertheless, it’s still nice to have Scorsese’s Stones doc Shine a Light (Paramount, also Blu-Ray) available, even if it can’t match the spectacle of seeing the film in IMAX. Other recent releases coming to DVD include: the stoner sequel Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (New Line, also Blu-Ray); Owen Wilson in Drillbit Taylor (Universal, also Blu-Ray); the famously Oscar-snubbed Israeli crowdpleaser The Band’s Visit (Sony); Doug Pray’s documentary Surfwise (Magnolia); the year’s non-Mamet MMA drama Never Back Down (Summit); the postapocalyptic actioner Doomsday (Universal, also Blu-Ray). Also, three direct-to-DVD sequels: Lost Boys: The Tribe (Warner, also Blu-Ray), WarGames: The Dead Code (MGM), and Stargate: Continuum (MGM, also Blu-Ray).

This week’s TV on DVD releases include: Centennial: The Complete Series (Universal); Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Season 7 (Universal); and Witchblade: The Complete Series (Warner). This week also brings the release of Masters of Horror Season 2 (Anchor Bay), and while many of the installments are of dubious quality, at least the box set can boast this week’s coolest packaging.

Finally, Blu-Ray only releases this week include the Paramount’s Jack Ryan tetralogy of The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, and The Sum of All Fears. Also of note: Beowulf: The Director’s Cut (Paramount); Top Gun (Paramount); The Lost Boys (Warner); and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (New Line).

Take Five: Bring On the Bad Guys

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:00:00 GMT

As you may have heard unless you've just gotten back from an alternate dimension with no public relations industry, The Dark Knight opens this weekend, and even our resident skeptic Scott Von Doviak is hailing Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker as one of the pinnacles of big-screen malevolance. Batman is the perfect illustration of the principle that a hero is only as good as his villains; the Clown Prince of Crime is the outstanding member of an unforgettable rogue's gallery that throws the lonely heroism of Bruce Wayne into sharp relief by illustrating the other facets of his personality and demonstrating how terrible he might have been had he not taken the path of righteousness. Indeed, there are any number of genres, from true crime to film noir to serial thrillers to even Shakespearean tragedy, that prove that a story is only as strong as its most detestable character. Crime, as the man once said, is only a left-handed form of human endeavor, and for every enigmatic nihilist like the Joker who simply wants to watch the world burn, there's a figure whose vileness and evil are the result of a good man gone just a little bit bad. If your showing of The Dark Knight is sold out, here's five movies featuring some of our favorite big-screen villains to tide you over until you get to hear Ledger's deadly cackle for yourself.

THE STEPFATHER (1987)

These days, Terry O'Quinn is best known for his portrayal of John Locke, the mysteriously healed castaway from Lost who can be both hero and villain as he attempts to forge a mystical connection with the island. But 20 years ago, when the veteran stage actor first came to the attention of the moviegoing public, it was in this smart little thriller about a man so obsessed with having the perfect family that he was willing to kill to get it. His face an affable blank, O'Quinn goes about his father-knows-best routine with barely a harsh word for anything, until something goes wrong. That's when the devil inside him comes up, and he moves quickly from tearing up his tool room to butchering his whole family. O'Quinn's tightly controlled performance here is what makes the movie, and his quiet intensity is what makes it so devastatingly effective when he temporarily forgets the careful fiction he's made of his life and asks, with genuine confusion, "Who am I here?" -- before remembering, and delivering the news to his new wife in an especially brutal way.

THE MINUS MAN (1999)

Though a flawed movie, The Minus Man -- directed by Hampton Fancher, best known for penning the screenplay to Blade Runner -- is also a compelling one, thanks to the strong performance by Owen Wilson as the main character, Vann Siegert. Turning the usual serial killer narrative on its head, The Minus Man presents Siegert as a kind, handome, likable young man who wants to put down roots, to fit in, to be somebody -- but most of all, to help people. The problem is, he thinks that most people are so miserable that the best way to help them is to kill them (gently, of course, with a fast, painless poison). So decent is this mass murderer that his own conscience has to step in occasionally and remind him that what he's doing is wrong, in the person of two imaginary FBI agents who torment him. And so convincing is Wilson in making Vann a likable figure that more than once, the viewer finds himself wishing they would just go away and leave the poor boy alone.

THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION (1984)

Great villains don't always have to be grim, sinister, humorless killing machines. Sometimes, as in this delightful neo-pulp sci-fi musical comedy, they can be goofy, pompous, overblown killing machines with the worst fake Italian accents since Chico Marx. Dr. Emilio Lizardo, the nefarious Red Lectroid living in the body of a long-dead rocket scientist, is played in the film by John Lithgow, who hams it up like there's no tomorrow. He sticks electrodes on his toungue, he tortures helpless women with honey, he gives plagiarized inspirational speeches to his handful of followers, and he deliberately mispronounces the names of his underlings -- and he has a hell of a time doing it. Dressed up in cobbled-together bits and pieces of a dozen pulp archetypes, Lithgow gets support from a colossal cast of veteran character actors, including Dan Hedeya, Christopher Lloyd and Vincent Schiavelli, but he outshines them all, investing each one of his often hilarious lines with hooty gravitas.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007)

Some critics found the character of Anton Chigurh in the Coen Brothers' masterful adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy novel to be so over-the-top as to read like a cartoonish supervillain. Others, though, found the understated psychopath, played by a preternaturaly detached Javier Bardem in one of the big screen's most memorable haircuts, to carry surprising depth for someone described by another character in the film as "the ultimate bad-ass". The most compelling thing about Chigurh is that, while everyone else perceives him as totally insane, his madness has the impenetrable integrity of the lunatic. To himself, his actions make perfect sense, and the more time we spend around his insanity, the more we begin to understand it: in the chilling scene near the movie's end where he pays a visit to the tragedy-stricken Carla Jean, we know that he's playing his own deranged interpretation of fair with her, and the terror we feel as the tension mounts comes from the fact that we know and she doesn't.

ROCKY III (1982)

Made at the exact moment in time that the Rocky franchise was becoming a laughable self-parody, but Mr. T had yet to do the same, Rocky III, while more or less a disaster in its second half and filled with hokey, ridiculous moments, does manage to give us some of the most thrilling scenes in the series. Why? Because it also gives us the greatest villain in the series: the brutal, granite-hard, contemptous Clubber Lang, a street-fighting brawler who has nothing but loathing for the soft celebrity smooth-talker that Stallone's Rocky Balboa has become. Patterned partly after the young George Foreman, Clubber Lang is a monster in the ring who lives to destroy his opponents and has developed a line of trash-talk so electrifying that it sends the gregarious Rocky into a rage while providing the most quotable dialogue in the whole Rocky series. And though he never showed himself capable of doing more than he does here, Mr. T is stunning: his hostile, spitting hatred of everyone but himself is so exciting to watch that for the film's first hour, it's hard to take your eyes off him.

DVD Digest for July 1, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week, one of the great writers of the twentieth century gets some Criterion love, plus plenty of Blu-Ray releases to last for the rest of the summer.

DVD of the Week: Continuing Criterion’s summer of awesomeness this week is the release of two films that function as a primer for anyone curious about the life and work of Japanese author Yukio Mishima. To begin with, there’s the new special edition of Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, Paul Schrader’s greatest directorial achievement to date. Rather than attempting to take on Mishima’s life in a conventional manner, Schrader begins on the final day of the writer’s life, as he and his private army take control of a military compound so that Mishima can commit ritualized suicide. This framing device is intercut with stark re-creations of Mishima’s early life, as well as lush Technicolor dramatizations of several of his stories. Mishima is a gorgeous film, but it’s also more insightful about its protagonist’s one-of-a-kind life than any straightforward telling could hope to be. For more insight into Mishima, Criterion is releasing separately the author’s rarely-seen directorial effort, Patriotism, which not only starred Mishima in the lead role but also anticipated his own suicide. Anyone looking to learn more about Yukio Mishima could do a lot worse than to start with these two must-see DVDs.

This week’s recent releases coming to DVD: Owen Wilson in Drillbit Taylor (Paramount, also Blu-Ray); The 24-meets-Rashomon thriller Vantage Point (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray); Wong Kar-wai’s English-language debut My Blueberry Nights (Genius); the City of God quasi-sequel City of Men (Disney); and the direct-to-DVD spinoff Get Smart’s Bruce and Lloyd Out of Control (Warner, also Blu-Ray). This week’s TV-on-DVD releases include Mad Men Season 1 (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray) and The Closer: The Complete Third Season (Warner).

Finally, in Blu-Ray-only news, this week brings Batman: The Movie Special Edition (Fox), Gangs of New York (Disney), In the Line of Fire (Sony), and Point Break: Special Edition (Fox).

When Good Directors Go Bad: The Darjeeling Limited (2007, Wes Anderson)

Paul Clark — Fri, 09 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Wes Anderson is something of a polarizing figure among cinephiles. For every one who believes he’s a gifted filmmaker with an irresistible comic sensibility, there’s another who finds his work too self-satisfied. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground, and Anderson seems to be fine with this, as his style has become quirkier and more eccentric with each film he makes. For years I’ve been in the pro-Anderson camp, and I’ve often found myself defending movies like The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou against those who found them insufferable. But when I first saw The Darjeeling Limited, I had to admit that the naysayers had a point.

Still, at the time I was reluctant to write off Darjeeling as a failed effort on Anderson’s part. Yes, I didn’t respond very well to it, I wondered if my reaction was based on my disappointment at the film being somewhat less than totally awesome. I decided to give the film a little distance and revisit it after it was released on DVD, so that I might be able to approach it with some perspective. And so I watched it again this past weekend, and this second viewing mostly confirmed my initial misgivings. The Darjeeling Limited isn’t a total botch, but it’s definitely the least of Anderson’s films, and the one in which the limitations of his style really come through most clearly.

One of the most common objections that’s raised to Anderson’s work has to do with his visual style, in which he situates his characters in storybook-style tableaux. In Anderson’s films, there’s always some curious knick knack or peripheral detail at the corner of the frame. But while in previous films, all of these sly little jokes added up to create convincing and original environments for the characters- remember the underwear painting in Eli Cash’s house?- here they just become oppressive. Anderson and production designer Mark Friedberg let their imaginations run wild in creating a colorful version of India, but the small bits of design business don’t really add up to anything, so instead of creating a delightful world for the film, the style instead becomes oppressive, like it’s been art-directed to death.

Of course, some of this problem might have been alleviated had the world created by Anderson been populated by vivid characters, but sadly, it’s not. Darjeeling focuses on the travels of the Whitman brothers- played by Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman- as they venture across India in an attempt to reconnect with each other and have a shared spiritual experience. However, none of the characters is drawn with very much depth, with each being defined primarily by his quirks. Faring worst is Schwartzman as little brother Jack. Jack is meant to be a sensitive writer who is still reeling from the disillusion of a longstanding relationship (part of which we see in the film’s companion piece Hotel Chevalier), but I never felt a thing for the guy. Part of the problem is Schwartzman’s performance- perfect as he was for Rushmore, he’s not a very expressive actor, certainly not soulful enough to pull off a character who should by rights be an emotional linchpin for the film.

All of Anderson’s recent films are in some way or other about family, whether the bond is one of blood or, more commonly, a surrogate family arrangement. The Darjeeling Limited is no exception, but what it lacks is a character who stands outside the family unit, grounding the more whimsical and dysfunctional aspects of the family unit. Frankly, Darjeeling needs a character like this, because without it the story becomes a parade of quirkiness. Even Adrien Brody’s Peter, who appears most likely to become the pragmatist of the group, ends up getting caught on the wavelength of the other characters.

But perhaps most annoying is how on-the-nose certain elements of the film are. Anderson has always had a tendency to use symbolism in his work- like the shark that represents death in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou- but never have the symbols clanged so loudly as they do in The Darjeeling Limited. For example, as if Owen Wilson’s bandaged head doesn’t make it clear enough that he’s been psychologically scarred, Anderson includes a scene in which Wilson removes his bandages in front of his brothers, looks at his scars, and says, “I guess I’ve still got some healing to do.” The train itself is pretty clearly meant to symbolize life, which Anderson makes explicit in an admittedly pretty neat scene in which various supporting characters are shown living their own lives in individual train cars. But the most egregious use of symbolism gone haywire is the use of the Whitmans’ dead father’s custom-made monogrammed baggage, which they carry along with them. The film’s climactic scene finds the boys chasing down a departing train and finally having to leave behind their baggage in order to catch it. Needless to say, the thundering obviousness of the scene is sort of insulting.

All of this is not to say that The Darjeeling Limited is without any merit whatsoever. Anderson is too talented a director to make a worthless, uninteresting film, and Darjeeling contains its share of delights. For one thing, its opening scene is brilliant, so much so that the rest of the film is all the more disappointing in comparison. In addition, the film has another of Anderson’s characteristically wonderful soundtracks, this one packed full of music from films directed by James Ivory and Satyajit Ray. However, these delights are modest compared to the film’s many faults. Hell, I haven’t even gotten around to mentioning the parallel scenes in which Wilson is taken to task for ordering dinner for his brothers, and the one where the boys’ long-lost mother (Anjelica Huston) does exactly the same thing. Hardly subtle, and sadly, all too typical of Anderson’s approach here.

Most filmmakers have a comfort zone as far as style and material are concerned, and many of the films I’ve written about so far in this series have failed because their directors have stepped too far out of this comfort zone. But The Darjeeling Limited is exactly the opposite- everything about the film resides so squarely in Anderson’s wheelhouse that it practically feels like an inside joke. I still believe Anderson is a gifted filmmaker, but if he wants to grow as an artist he needs to find new wrinkles for his style, because if The Darjeeling Limited is any indication, diminishing returns have begun to set in, which if you’re an artist is the last thing you want to happen.

Trailer Review: Drillbit Taylor

Paul Clark — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Another month, another movie from the Apatow comedy factory. I can't help but think that between this and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the well is starting to run dry for these guys. This time around, Owen Wilson top-lines a cross between My Bodyguard and Kindergarten Cop, playing an ex-Secret Service agent hired by three high schoolers to protect them from school bullies. We can pretty much guess where the story will go based on the trailer, but after his troubles this past fall, I must admit that it's nice to see Wilson working again. I hope the future brings better movies than Drillbit Taylor, but considering what might have happened, I'm just glad he's doing better now.