The Screengrab : screengrab review

Screengrab Review: The Hemingway Night

Hayden Childs — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 20:00:00 GMT

The Hemingway Night is a short film about the interplay of ego, friendship, and regret. The plot is fairly simple, but the interactions are anything but. Terry, a young man in his 20s, goes to visit his old friend Leon, an older guy still reeling from his recent divorce. The two decide to have a few drinks before going for dinner, and turn to remembrances of times past, as such events often do. Eventually Leon gets drunk enough to spill that he more or less blames Terry and one of Terry’s old friends for his divorce. But Terry’s version of the story reveals just how little Leon understands himself or his ex-wife.

That’s the high-level summary, but I want to talk a little more about the details, plus a few other things. So if there’s a chance that you’ll see this micro-budget indie short and you want to remain unspoiled about the details, please proceed with caution. Otherwise, let me start with the admission that I consider both the director, Gary Mairs, and the screenwriter, Tom Block, to be great friends, the kind where you break out the high-dollar single-malt and shoot the shit until the wee hours on those rare occasions you get to spend time together. So you can consider me utterly biased, especially if you’re the type who believes that a movie critic is a journalist and should be held to J-school standards. I don’t, because criticism is about aesthetics, and no one alive can be objective about their own aesthetic sense. I pledge to you now that not only am I never objective about movies, but I never will be, and what’s more, anyone who tells you different is fooling themselves. That’s my personal caveat. You still with me?

Anyway, although I’m definitely biased towards a movie made by friends, I’m happy to report that The Hemingway Night is the kind of movie made by friends that anyone would be happy to recommend. A great short movie is like a great short story, capturing a complicated and perhaps ineffable emotion, providing a moment of catharsis, all without belaboring the character or plot necessary to sustain a feature-length film. If only the movie distribution biz made it easier for short films to reach audiences. I applaud the all-too-few mass media out there for short films, like The Believer’s offshoot video magazine Wholphin or the block of short films that IFC airs periodically. But for the most part, the only opportunities for an audience are at film festivals.

So in The Hemingway Night, Terry (David Nordstrom), a character from Mairs’s last short film Say It, is clearly an intellectual with disdain for work that doesn’t meet his standards. As soon as he sits down at Leon’s place (Leon is played by Jan Johnson), he picks up a book, Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley, with a questioning look. “Don’t start,” Leon says. In the course of their conversation, it becomes clear that Terry’s outlook was formed partially at the home of Leon and his ex Susie. Terry was one of a group of younger friends who would come over to get drunk and high and talk about culture. And Leon holds them all responsible for his wife losing respect for him, but especially Terry. At the point of catharsis, we learn that Leon once mentioned that he liked A Moveable Feast, and the younger men mocked him mercilessly for that. Afterwards, he says, his wife wouldn’t touch him and eventually left, his children in tow. Terry, however, points out that Leon obviously thought of himself as a mentor to the younger guys, but he wasn’t fooling anybody, not even his wife. On the night that Leon thought himself unmanned by the younger guys over the Hemingway book, Terry tells him that his ex brought all the younger guys into the kitchen to ask them to go easy on Leon. “He tries so hard,” she told them.

This is fantastic stuff, the type of reversal that rips off a character’s ego like an old band-aid. Leon is clearly devastated and more sour than ever, and Terry can’t understand. Leon wanted to blame the younger guys, and he wanted to be able to forgive them because he saw himself as a guy with the wisdom and largesse to forgive youth for being young. But Terry’s story reveals that Leon’s wife didn’t even consider him the intellectual equal of the younger men. There’s no one to blame but himself. Terry doesn’t understand why this revelation is more sour to Leon, because Terry is at least capable of blaming himself for his own mistakes. But Leon has built his whole identity, the narrative that allows him to sleep at night, around this lie.

Terry leaves, promising to return although Leon makes it clear that he doesn’t want to see Terry again. As Terry sits in his car, he watches a father take his tired daughter out of a car and carry her inside. It’s a wonderfully enigmatic ending. Terry could be thinking about Leon’s torn family or the fragility of love or just marveling at the excellent parking spot they found, but I think he’s considering the role that fathers play. Despite how the two men see themselves, Leon is definitely a father figure to Terry, and Terry played no small role in tearing Leon down. It may be necessary to kill any Buddhas you happen to meet on the road, even Buddhas that aren’t so wise, but that doesn’t mean that it’s easy to live with yourself afterwards.

That’s a heavy dose of wisdom for 19 minutes. And that’s how the best short stories work.

Screengrab Review: Around

Hayden Childs — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Around is a semi-autobiographical story about a struggling film student forced to live on the mean streets of New York for a year or so. Written and directed by 25-year-old David Spaltro, Around has a visual flair that belies the fact that it was filmed on the cheap and financed by credit cards. It’s a good-looking movie, beautifully shot and well-edited. Spaltro has a bright future ahead of him.

But Spaltro’s storytelling skills need honing. Our fearless lead is Doyle Simms, a Jersey boy with a considerable amount of self-regard. I think we’re supposed to find him awesome, but Spaltro has written him as a guy who always has a clever response (or clever-ish, in most cases) for all situations and is great at everything he tries. That’s less awesome on screen than I suspect it read on the page. He has little but contempt for everyone he meets, and most of them are written as contemptible. The New York where he lives is full of grotesque artsy straw-people. The only other human beings who seem to populate the city are extremely helpful and well-kempt street people (perhaps I lied about the mean streets - these are more like mildly indifferent streets that would probably loan you a cup of sugar in a crisis), a pixie-ish dream girl (who is, thankfully, not so manic) who has an infinite patience for our hero, and few others outside of Simms’ buddy who I think is named Logic, but who might as well be called Joe Exposition. Actually, exposition is a problem with many of the minor characters. Everyone in Simms’ life can’t wait to tell him that’s he’s going to go far, or that he feels so much more than the rest of us, or that he’s a dreamer who’s bound to fail. People say that sort of thing to me every day, too, but I try not to brag about it.

The actor who plays Simms, Rob Evans, does a decent enough job. Some of the other actors are a little smirky or stiff. Come to think of it, Evans is a little smirky and stiff at times, too, but I think that’s what the story is calling for. It doesn’t help that he’s saddled with a black trenchcoat and loads of attitude. Considering the Kevin Smith persona, maybe that’s a thing for Jersey guys. I’m not up on the norms. I think at times that Spaltro is poking fun at himself. At one point, for instance, the non-manic pixie dream girl (played by the luminous Molly Ryman) falls asleep while Simms explains, ponderously, “ I wanted to... tell stories... about people. And... film is such a great medium... to show things... in a different way.” Yeah, dude, you said it.

So, in short, the story needed work, and that’s hard to get around. That kind of problem is not too unusual in a first-time film, especially a micro-indie like this. It’s, y’know, hard to build a story up so that an audience can join in with the moment of genuine emotion, and there's a few such moments in this movie that never seem to be earned. Perhaps while working with such deeply personal material, Spaltro could not collaborate with someone. But his script would have been better off if someone with a more balanced perspective on the story and its characters had worked on it. It's hard to get outside of your own head, but I hope Spaltro outgrows this reticence. There's a lot of promise in his talent.

Screengrab Review: "Notorious"

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 21:15:00 GMT

When FOX Searchlight Pictures announced last year that they'd be producing a film based on the life of slain rapper Christopher Wallace (a.k.a. Biggie Smalls and the Notorious B.I.G.), few people took notice -- until they followed up the announcement by saying the lead role would be filled by an unknown selected by an open casting call to which anyone could apply. Tens of thousands of rappers, actors, and wannabe superstars tried out for the role of one of the most charismatic figures in the New York hip-hop scene of the 1990s, until the part finally went to a young man named Jamal Woolard. The good news about Notorious, which opens in wide distribution today, is that Woolard is terrific, fully inhabiting the role of Biggie and conveying both the hard street stye of the self-made Big Poppa and the tender, desperate moments of a man who sometimes had no notion of how to take care of himself after having come so far so fast.

Better still, Woolard doesn't have to carry the movie entirely on his own: he's surrounded by a capable supporting cast, especially in the form of Angela Bassett as his mother Voletta, Naturi Naughton as Li'l' Kim (who does a much better job than Li'l' Kim would have), and Sean Ringgold as brutal record mogul Suge Knight. Refreshingly for a big release featuring legions of newcomers, Notorious isn't let down by its cast. Unfortunately, let down it is.

Soul Food writer/director George Tillman Jr. isn't lacking in basic competence behind the camera, but basic is as good as it gets; the direction in Notorious, a story that cries out for flash and style and aggression, is purely pedestrian -- a Notorious B.I.G. video directed by Nora Ephron. Likewise, the script -- which draws on a decent but unspectacular biography by Cheo Hodari Coker, turned into an utterly dull screenplay by Biker Boyz scribe Reggie Rock Blythewood -- is crammed full of cliche even by biopic standards, and the whole production never manages to rise above the standard TV-movie-of-the-week level. It's a shame to waste such a promising cast on a movie that seems as inspiringly written and directed as a mouthwash commercial.

Screengrab Review: Milk

Paul Clark — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:34:00 GMT

Following the 2005 release of Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, there was some excitement over the possibility that more high-profile gay-themed movies would follow, a development that didn’t really pan out. Now, three years later, Hollywood has once again decided to tackle gay-friendly subject matter, this time the life of slain San Francisco politician and activist Harvey Milk- directed by the openly gay filmmaker Gus Van Sant, no less. But while the film has attained a certain amount of contemporary relevance with its parallels to California’s recently-passed Proposition 8, Milk biggest breakthrough may be the idea that the lives of gay heroes can be boiled down to the Hollywood biopic formula just as easily as their straight counterparts.

Think I’m kidding? Let’s go to the tape: middle-aged Milk (Sean Penn), fed up with his life, moves to San Francisco with his new boyfriend Scott Smith (James Franco). Appalled at the treatment of homosexuals even in the most gay-friendly neighborhood of the most gay-friendly metropolis in America, he’s spurred on to community activism, which ends up leading to politics. After three unsuccessful runs for public office, he finally wins a seat on city’s Board of Supervisors. There, he spearheads a number of major social reforms, including an effort to shoot down the hateful Briggs Initiative in 1978, before being gunned down by a disgruntled formal colleague. Take out the homosexual material and a few of the other details and we could just as easily be talking about any number of civil rights leaders. Hell, there’s even a frightened wheelchair-bound gay boy who inadvertently inspires Milk during his time of doubt, and Smith essentially gets assigned the role of the requisite concerned significant other who wrings his hands and tells Harvey that he’s not devoting enough time to the person who loves him most.

Material this formulaic (courtesy of Big Love writer Dustin Lance Black) would not seem to suit the recent career trajectory of Van Sant, who has lately made a series of highly experimental meditations on death. However, Milk finds Van Sant largely on autopilot, telling his story in a straightforward style that’s virtually indistinguishable than that of most Oscar-bait dramas. Gone are the spare, largely experiential narratives of his other recent films, in favor of a conventional mode of storytelling, with plenty of stock footage and montages to establish the film’s historical context. And while there’s plenty of first-rate cinematography from Van Sant favorite Harris Savides, Van Sant keeps his trademark expressionistic soundscapes to a minimum. Practically the only scenes in the film that feel unmistakably Van Santian are those involving Milk’s fellow supervisor and eventual killer Dan White, played, in yet another in a string of vivid character performances, by Josh Brolin.

If there’s one thing that’s especially distinguished about Milk, it’s the acting. Not only is Brolin perfectly cast as White, but so are Franco, Diego Luna as Milk’s ill-fated rebound lover, Alison Pill as the butch, no-nonsense campaign manager, Denis O’Hare as the hateful Briggs, and so on. Best of all is Emile Hirsch as Cleve Jones, a former hustler who under Milk’s mentorship is reborn as an activist. And Van Sant wisely lets Anita Bryant play herself in stock footage, letting the smiling, singing anti-gay gorgon serve as a distant, but very real enemy to the beliefs espoused by Milk and his followers. That Bryant would quickly turn from a political force to a punchline in Airplane! in a scant two years is one of history’s more humorous small miracles.

But if the film works- and on balance, I’d say it mostly does- it’s because of Penn, who gives his best performance since… Sweet and Lowdown? Dead Man Walking? Carlito’s Way? Suffice it to say that he’s pretty great here, infusing the wit and intensity that has marked his best performances with a warmth that I’ve never seen from him before. Penn’s Milk is a natural leader because he cares and brings out the best in those around him, but Penn also doesn’t shy away from the thornier aspects of the character. Unfortunately, the film itself isn’t nearly as well-equipped to deal with the contradictions of a man who advocated coming out of the closet yet remained closeted himself for over forty years, who was both an impassioned advocate for social change and a canny politician and self-promoter. At one point, Milk mentions that three of his lovers have attempted suicide, and it comes as a shock because the film so completely paints him as a caring partner and companion. And this, more than anything else, is what keeps Milk from being the cinematic landmark that it so clearly aches to be- that it’s so eager to give the audience Harvey Milk the secular saint that it ultimately forgets about Harvey Milk the man.

Screengrab Review: "Quantum of Solace"

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:30:00 GMT

Now that we've established for you once and for all which are the greatest and which are the worst James Bond movies of all time, this is the moment to ask: where does the latest 007 epic fit on that continuum? Well, for one thing, we're predicting opinions will wildly vary. In fact, as you probably noticed, even our Screengrab staff was more or less split, unable to decide if Daniel Craig's first crack at the venerable franchise was a long-overdue and genuinely successful reboot, or a failed attempt at breaking the mold that went nowhere.

I got a chance to see Quantum of Solace this week, and I'll say for the record that I'd be much more inclined to put it in the 'best of' column than in the 'worst of'. Then again, I thought Craig's Casino Royale was terrific, so it's not surprising that Quantum of Solace, which is quite solidly more of the same, hit home for me. Those less charitable toward the first Craig reboot will likely find as much to dislike in the follow-up as I did to like. As in Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace begins with a dynamite action sequence that the rest of the movie can't top, though it's not from lack of trying; and like its predecessor, it takes a more dark, 'realistic' approach to the concept of Bond as a superspy/assassin, flying in the face of the flippant, adventurous tone of previous incarnations. The direction, by Oscar nominee Marc Forster, is tight and powerful, which gets it over the occasional rough patches in the script, and the cast is generally excellent; Judi Dench continues to excel as M, and Mathieu Amalric is gripping as lead villain Dominic Greene. The biggest disappointment, though, is that the movie doesn't cast its nets any farther than it has to; it's content to be as good as Casino Royale, but fails to stretch to the degree that it would have been better. Good as these movies have been, an unwillingness to press forward will result in them becoming as formulaic as the ones they were meant to replace.

There were two tendencies I noticed in Quantum of Solace that may become trends as the Daniel Craig era rolls on -- one negative and one positive. On the good side, there's a sense of continuity -- it picks up right where Casino Royale left off, and in addition to the return of Mr. White, who may become the best recurring villain the Bond series has ever had, there's generally a feeling that the filmmakers want to engage the audience, to give them a stake in paying attention and reward them for being loyal to the franchise by carrying over characters, plots, and mysteries. That's a good thing. The bad thing is that Quantum carries on the overall grim, humorless feel of Craig's first go-round. It's not that I don't generally enjoy the dark take on the character, or applaud the move away from the camp levels of seriousness that plagued the franchise in the late '70s and early '80s, but with so much emphasis on grimness -- this time carried over into the movie's Bond girl, who's as vengeful as 007 himself -- the series threatens to lose one of the most important elements that set it apart from the books. Hopefully the producers can find a happy medium.

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Screengrab Review: "Pride and Glory"

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:45:00 GMT

Gavin O'Connor's new film, Pride and Glory, has a plan: it's mapped out all the things it wants to remind you of. It clearly wants to echo the moral ambiguity of The Wire, the multigenerational sweep of The Godfather, the close-knit web of loyalty and betrayal of The Departed. But since it's O'Connor at the helm instead of the talented folks who brought you those stories, it conjures them in tone only, never in quality, and leaves you asking: haven't I seen this movie before -- like, a hundred times?.

If O'Connor started out with a script that wasn't particularly going anywhere, and if he wasn't especially going to bring anything to the table as the director, he at least gave us some actors with juice to play his family of often-shady New York police officers. Edward Norton, who isn't the world's most consistent performer but is occasionally capable of greatness, plays Ray Tierney, a conflicted hard-ass who is divided between fidelity to his insular cop clan and a desire to do the right thing no matter what. This sort of agonized moralist is a specialty of Nortons, but here he just seems sort of bored. Jon Voight, on the other hand, seems to be having a ball as the family's drunken father figure, and even though the vast majority of his dialogue are windy cliches, he livens up the flick every moment he's on screen. No such luck with Colin Farrell, toothy at the best of times and absolutely ludicrous here: as bad-boy brother-in-law Jimmy Egan, he might as well be twirling a Snidley Whiplash mustache and tying his wife (named, no kidding, Megan Egan) to a railroad track.

Pride and Glory tries for the kind of intensity conjured by movies like Serpico, Donnie Brasco, and Goodfellas, which is probably why all its highfalutin talk about honor and loyalty and devotion sound so familiar. But it's not a comfortable familiarity; it's a boring one. The movie never really picks up, even in its most action-packed scenes, because it has an unwarranted confidence in the dramatic potential of its plot, and an unjustified trust in the ability of its lead actors to deliver it. Farrell's goofy performance aside, there's not that much about it to actively dislike; but there's certainly not much to like, either. It's the cinematic equivalent of a Big Mac: overstuffed, not very good for you, and you've already tried it so many times that you don't even really taste it anymore.

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Screengrab Review: "What Just Happened"

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:15:00 GMT

Recently, when we were preparing our list of the greatest leading men of all time, we had occasion to consider the latter days of Robert DeNiro. The closer you get to the present day, the uglier his career gets, and the more it appears he's just in it these days for the paychecks that will get him into the better restaurants. When I sat down for a viewing of his latest, What Just Happened, I wasn't expecting much, especially since his comic track record hasn't been stellar since Midnight Run. The fact that the film's author, Art Linson, is a friend of DeNiro's was also unpromising, since such nepotistic endeavors flatter the friendship over the art, and what's more, it's an inside-Hollywood movie, which has produced its share of great films, but more than its share of stinkers.

I won't say that it's a triumph for DeNiro, or even a return to form, but most of the movie's failings -- of which there aren't enough for me to call it bad -- are those of Barry Levinson's uninspired direction and a somewhat aimless and formless script. DeNiro doesn't turn in the kind of legendary performance he was once known for, but that's only because the script doesn't let him. In fact, his role as frazzled middle-aged movie producer Ben -- a stand-in for Linson -- is one of his finest in years: he never explodes only because he's too ineffectual and harried to aspire to an explosion. It's a tight, focused, and highly competent performance as a man nearing the end of his rope and no idea of what to do when he gets there, but because he's in such an absurd profession, and surrounded by such grandly dysfunctional people, that circumstance is understood -- by him and by us -- to be comic instead of tragic. It's a performance that won't remind anyone of Travis Bickle or Rupert Pupkin, but it should definitely remind them that DeNiro still has a few surprises left in him.

It's in this inherent unseriousness that the picture succeeds in its modest way. Everyone in the film carries on as if the fate of the world revolves around the decisions they make based on egomania, resentment and cowardice, and the laughs come from the fact that their utter irrelevance even in their own lives manages to create an aura of sustained menance and philosophical unease even as we see DeNiro haplessly trying to convince a self-satisfied auteur that audiences won't enjoy the brutal on-screen slaughter of a dog as much as he does. He's also assisted by a cast that, in the tradition of the better inside-baseball movies about movies, likewise are willing to take the piss, most especially John Turturro as his omniphobic agent and Bruce Willis, performing what appears to be an unbelievably heartless parody of Bruce Willis. What Just Happened isn't a great movie, but it's a good movie, and Robert DeNiro needs to get back to making more good movies. This one's a start.

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Screengrab Review: "Fireproof"

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:15:00 GMT

The second in my weekend mini-festival of movies made by and for people who hate people like me is Fireproof. So widely is former TV star/religious fanatic/banana enthusiast Kirk Cameron associated with the movie that the theater I went to here in South Texas was advertising it as "Kirk Cameron's Fireproof". As a thesis statement, this is something I'm eager to put to the test, but just the way it was phrased...is Kirk Cameron really that much of a draw? Seeing the movie so advertised -- and I later discovered this theater was far from the only place where the movie was thus billed -- was, for me, akin to seeing a marquee reading "Bounthanh Xaynhachack's Appaloosa". (It's also not entirely accurate: Cameron didn't write or direct the film, and may not actually know what writing and directing are, as his claim that he was unable to kiss the female lead in Fireproof because she is not his wife suggests that he doesn't actually know what acting is.) Still, like I said, this movie isn't made for me. If there are lost millions for whom Kirk Cameron is a legit box office draw -- and the crowded house in the theater suggested that there just might be -- then for tonight, I would be one of them.

In Fireproof, Cameron plays a firefighter who is gradually falling out of love with his wife, played by Fireproof's Erin Bethea. (Cameron's downright Dukakasian appearance when decked out in fireman gear that looks a size too big for him makes one question why it was chosen as his character's fictional profession, until you gradually realize that it's so they can cut to an occasional action-packed fire rescue as respite from the constant relationship yackety blap. That's right, Christian males: this is a chick flick.) The reasons are murky, though it's clearly implied that it's mostly her fault for getting on his nerves: Cameron is relentlessly misogynistic in the movie, and seems to want to repair his marriage out of a sort of bloody-minded sense of obligation than because he actually cares for his wife. In order to patch things up with the missus, Fireman Kirk decided to follow the teachings of a book called The Love Dare (originally just a made-up gimmick for the movie, now actually available as the producers sensed the presence of additional fleece on the flock); in the end, he learns to conquer his indifference and hostility and grudgingly love his life partner again.

The biggest problem with Fireproof isn't that Cameron's character, who is named Caleb Holt and acts like it, is an unlikable jerk. (We're constantly assured by the movie that he is a good person, generally by way of rescuing people from fires instead of just standing around watching them burn to death, but nothing in his behavior towards his wife, his family, his friends, or anyone who isn't actually engulfed in flames manages to convince you that he's not irredeemably schmucky.) The biggest problem is that the movie is deadly dull. One of the biggest problems with any message movie is that the message is generally thought by the filmmakers to be more important than the movie part, and that's the case here in spades. Why should any of us give a shit if Caleb and Catherine can save their marriage, when the script gives us no reason to care about them and the actors give us no reason to like them? Say what you will about An American Carol (for instance, you could say it sucks), but at least it wasn't boring.

Fireproof actually has a few things going for it: it's more professionally made that what you might expect from a film directly marketed at a Christian audience, insofar as it has actual production values and looks like something a studio might conceivably make. Its acting is bad, but it's bad by virtue of being empty, dispassionate and boring rather than by virtue of being the work of incredibly incompetent actors. And its message isn't as noxious as we're used to from Christian filmmaking; there's no screaming diatribes against abortion, evolution or voting Democrat. Its biggest problem is that if you watch it in a theater that's been freshly painted, it will have lots of competition for the dullest thing in the room. The reason that smirky reviews keep mentioning the odd bit of lunacy (like the unforgettable moment when Caleb punishes his computer for getting him hooked on internet pornography by smashing it with a baseball bat) is because those are the only scenes that manage to capture your interest for any measurable amount of time.

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Screengrab Review: "An American Carol"

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:45:00 GMT

This week, as the election nears, I decided to treat myself to two movies that I ordinarily wouldn't see under any circumstance. Not just because they looked terrible -- although they did -- but also because they were movies that, in a very literal sense, were not made for me. These movies are less artistic endeavors than they are salvos in the culture war, and if they were aimed at me, it was not as a consumer, but as a target.

But hey, so what? I go see a lot of movies that aren't really meant for me. I've reviewed Tyler Perry movies, which aren't meant for me. I've reviewed Disney animated movies, which aren't meant for me. I'm a big fan of Stan Brakhage, and his movies weren't really made for anyone. I'm a professional, damn it, and as a professional, I can take whatever to the other side in the culture wars dish out. The first tasty bowl of arsenic: David Zucker's An American Carol.

The film, as you may know from Phil Nugent's earlier piece on it, is a high-dudgeoned but low-minded spoof in which a stand-in for Michael Moore (portrayed by a stand-in for Chris Farley) is interrupted in his quest to ban the Fourth of July by a visitation by three ghosts, who attempt to dissuade him from his wicked anti-American ways. Why wasn't his movie released at Christmastime? Why would anyone want to ban a calendar day? Why would you send John F. Kennedy to attack a prominent liberal? I figured if I started asking myself questions like that, I would just go insane. Instead, I focused on whether or not the movie was actually funny. I hope I will be believe when I say that, all ideological considerations aside, it wasn't. It's not that you can't be funny from a specific political point of view; in fact, satire (which, really, An American Carol is too dumb to qualify as, but still) depends on a moral standing ground from which to attack. It's that these jokes lack any kind of universality, humanity or relatability: the only way you can think it's funny is if you agree with where it's coming from. Or, to put it another way: the new, right-wing David Zucker believes it's funny to have Michael Moore slapped around by Bill O'Reilly. If you happen to agree, you might be modestly amused; if you don't, the joke will fall even flatter than it actually does. The old, non-political David Zucker knew better: he just thought it was funny when people get slapped.

Above and beyond the question of its partisan demands, though, is the fact that An American Carol just isn't very funny, even if you're a conservative. Its jokes are lazy, obvious, and predictable even by the subzero standards of modern farce, and while moviegoing audiences have proven time and time again that they'll go to a movie that critics don't like because they genuinely enjoy it themselves, there's very few people who will go to a movie out of spite, which is really the only reason to see An American Carol. This is evidenced by the fact that with half the country or more still self-identifying as conservative, the movie completely tanked at the box office; as Phil reported, though, Zucker and a few of his far-right pals are claiming that its disastrous performance is due to some kind of liberal conspiracy. If I can be allowed one moment of ideology, that's the great strength of the paranoid right: if you succeed, it's because America loves your values; if you fail, it's because liberals sabotaged you. All I can say is, they did a hell of a screw job on this one.

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Screengrab Review: "Religulous"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:55:00 GMT

One of the problems with being an atheist is putting up with the kind of people who carry the flag for you. Get annoyed at the likes of a Richard Dawkins, and there's a doofy polemicist like Sam Harris waiting in the wings. And hey, Camille Paglia and Marilyn Manson, don't do us any favors, okay? Back in the day, we had clever bastards like Gore Vidal to go on television and lay down careful traps for the likes of Jerry Falwell to step into; Gore would sit there, smiling his deadly little smile, while the defenders of various sky-gods would work themselves into a frenzy. It's good philosophy as well as good show business to make your target to all the work, while you just sit back and collect the laughs.

That's a lesson that could stand to be learned by Bill Maher, who, with Religulous, his new comic documentary about how religious people are a bunch of silly-heads, has done the unthinkable: he has made blasphemy boring. Maher, who, until he discovered the millions that could be made by playing to one side or the other in the never-ending culture wars, used to be little more than a hack comic with an unrequited love of bad puns and smirky asides. Those characteristics remain with him to this day (witness the title of the film, and his interminable playing to the camera as if he were an agnostic David Brent), but they'd be forgivable if he had an ounce of -- well, faith in the fact that his position is strong enough to let religious nuts hoist them by their own petards. Vidal (and Robert Ingersoll, and Clarence Darrow, and even David Cross) knew that religious people would say a lot of crazy bullshit if you just let them talk long enough; he knew better than to force the point. Maher has no such trust, and when the payoff doesn't seem to be coming fast enough for him, he kills the gag by adding subtitles explaining his real thoughts on the matter at hand, or by cutting to dopey stock footage which he then rolls into a tube and beats you over the head with it.

Maher may not know any better than this, but his director, Larry Charles, certainly does, and that's what makes the whole thing so unforgivable. Given such a wealth of material, all the two of them have to do is set 'em up and knock 'em down. But with the exception of a few scenes that can't help but work (hey, nobody can screw up a punchline as obvious as a gathering of gay Muslim fundamentalists), the whole thing is belabored, obvious, and telegraphed, and when Maher doesn't trust the nuttiness to come across without help from his screen crawls, he might as well be playing BOINGG! sound effects at us. As he might well have asked some of his Christian evangelist targets, if even you don't buy your premise, why should we?

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Screengrab Review: "The Family That Preys"

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:15:00 GMT

The operant notion amongst the publicists of my acquaintance lately -- and God bless them, every one -- seems to be: let's send Leonard screeners of movies to which he is not even remotely in the target demographic. Of course, I can't say exactly who the target demographic is for Sukiyaki Western Django. Martians, probably. I have a slightly better idea who the target demographic is for Tyler Perry's latest outing, The Family That Preys, and I'm damn sure it doesn't include me. And yet here we are! On the theory that someone has to review these things -- a theory that I'm not entirely convinced I agree with -- the job has fallen to me, and I will do the best I can possibly do under circumstances that would be a lot more trying if God hadn't invented the martini.

The plot of this one, such as it is, involves Alfre Woodard and Kathy Bates (for whom I briefly felt sorry for having to appear in this toxic waste dump, until I realized it would probably buy them both a new summer house), playing old friends who are faced with various family dramas, traumas, and scandals. In order to clear the air, get away from their allegedly comical families, and rebuild their friendships, they take a cross-country road trip of the sort that we haven't seen since Gone Fishin'. Of course, this makes it sound like the movie isn't just about Tyler Perry dressing up in a crazy outfit and acting wacky, which it is. There's no Madea in this one, but that doesn't stop Perry from hamming it up like gangbusters, upstaging people I've never heard of named KaDee Strickland and Rockmond Dunbar.

I certainly won't be the first person to say that these movies are essentially critic-proof; Tyler Perry isn't so much a filmmaker as he is a sort of institutional-grade entertainment producer, and time spent applying any kind of critical framework to his movies is as well-used as time spent complaining about the appetizer menu at Whataburger. If you're not the sort of person who sees Tyler Perry movies, you certainly shouldn't see this one, seeing as it's awful and all. But if you are, you probably didn't read this far anyway.

Screengrab Review: Surfer, Dude

Screengrab Review: "Sukiyaki Western Django"

Leonard Pierce — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:30:00 GMT

It's been a busy week for screenings; imagine my surprise when a DVD of the new (well, newish; it opens in limited release here in the States this Friday, but it was actually made in 2007) movie by Takashi "The Filmmaker of Love" Miike showed up in my mailbox. Miike, the mind behind such twisted cinematic fare as Audition, Ichi the Killer and Visitor Q, has a reputation for extreme weirdness, and his new one is no exception. It may bewilder, confuse and infuriate, but it certainly isn't going to bore.

Set in some nebulous time zone between the Battle of Dannoura in the 12th century and the wild and wooly days of the Wild West (or, in this case, the Wild East), Sukiyaki Western Django essentially does to A Fistful of Dollars what Dollars did to Yojimbo: lifts its plot wholesale and plops it into a western setting. But, since it's Miike behind the lens, you know you won't see the story of warring clans bloodily competing for gold done up in any kind of pedestrian fashion. Taking his cues from Sergio Leone, he sets the movie's action in "Nebada", a section of the old west that's about as authentic as the remote deserts of Tuscany. He also instructs his actors -- almost all of whom are Japanese, though see below -- to speak in an extremely bizarre form of phoenetic English, which proves to be extremely distracting, if sporadically amusing. And in one of the movie's most ridiculous divergences, Quentin Tarantino plays a freakish admixture of the Man With No Name and the cowboy narrator in The Big Lebowski. Tarantino, who cannot act in his native language, also cannot act in Japanese, but Miike simply has him imitate the other actors, who are speaking cod English with thick Japanese accents, and the result is...well, you really just have to see it for yourself.

The movie itself is pretty much a boilerplate western featuring characters created by second-tier spaghetti western director Sergio Corbucci; with the exception of some exciting (if convoluted) flashbacks, the plot almost directly follows A Fistful of Dollars. And while the acting seems to be strong from moment to moment (clan boss Yusuke Iseya and ex-gunslinger/retired grandma Kaori Momoi are lots of fun to watch), it's hard to tell through the goofy conceit of the vocalized English. What saves it from collapsing into a total mess is Miike's generally unimpeachable visual style: the production design and costumes are brilliantly done, combining a genuine Old West flavor with colorful spaghetti western conceits and traditional Japanese heraldry, with the end effect that you genuinely feel as if you're watching an alternate universe where feudal Japan developed along the lines of the Wild West. And the pacing of the film is exquisite, with the bloody and electrifying battle scenes coming at exactly the right time to keep the viewer riveted to the screen. Without the gimmicks, Sukiyaki Western Django might have been a better film, but it wouldn't have been a Takashi Miike film.

Screengrab Review: "The Exiles"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:45:00 GMT

Filmed in 1957, just a few years after his outstanding USC student documentary Bunker Hill was released and taking place in the same run-down neighborhood in Los Angeles (even some of the establishing shots, at a busy supermarket and on a steep trolley car going up and down the hill known as "Angel's Flight"), Kent MacKenzie's The Exiles follows a day in the life of a small group of unemployed American Indians living more or less hand to mouth. The men spend their days sleeping and their nights drinking themselves into oblivion, while the women tend to their families or choose someone to spend the night with before the inevitable fighting breaks out. It wasn't released until 1961, and MacKenzie would only make one more movie before his death in 1980; but what he leaves behind in The Exiles is a fascinating film that blends a documentary subject with a narrative approach, traditional framing techniques with French New Wave camerawork, and neo-realist situations and dialogue with contemplative internal monologues.

Shown on a double bill at the Armand Hammer Museum's Billy Wilder Theater in Los Angeles recently, The Exiles follows the surly, overweight Homer Nish; his trusting, pregnant common-law wife Yvonne Williams; and the drunken, womanizing smoothie Tommy Reynolds through a typical day. Unsparing in its treatment of their character, but never failing to show the social and economic conditions that affect them, the film shows both the nobility and baseness of its subjects, and along the way creates one of the most fully realized portraits of the American Indian in film history. A brief interlude on the Arizona reservation that is home to Nish's parents provides a much-needed break in the action, contrasting what the 'exiles' left behind with their daily reality and segueing smoothly back into the contemporary action.

The Exiles isn't without its flaws. The awkward dubbing doesn't much help the delicate balance between documentary and narrative MacKenzie is attempting to construct, and much of the film is terminally slow-paced. In fact, the first two-thirds of the movie are almost dreary; it's not until the men head for a nearby undeveloped area they call "Hill X" and attempt to drunkenly recreate the cultural rituals of their people that it becomes a hypnotic piece of work. But MacKenzie's camera eye was unimpeachable, and almost every frame of The Exiles is beautifully shot; and the ending scene is as heartbreaking as anything from the catalog of Francois Truffaut.

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Screengrab Rant: Indiana Jones in 2008

Peter Smith — Fri, 23 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

I think we can all agree that Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the greatest adventure films ever made. Its two sequels, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade both have some serious flaws. Temple of Doom is shrill, silly, arguably racist and saddled with an atrocious love interest; Last Crusade is a hammy rehash of Raiders where the jokes are all broader and the characters are all stupider. But they have their moments. As I sit here trying to review Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I just can't muster the enthusiasm. Crystal Skull, sadly, makes Temple of Doom and Last Crusade look like, well, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

In fairness, it's hard to imagine a fourth Indy movie being particularly good at this point, for reasons that become all-too-clear in the first fifteen minutes of Crystal Skull. With Harrison Ford twenty years older than he was in Last Crusade, the film couldn't be credibly set in the '30s. Thus, Crystal Skull takes place in 1957. Divorced from his pre-war milieu — an era when lost cities and ancient artifacts could plausibly still be hiding off the map — Indy looks sad and out-of-place. He's a great, iconic character, but a lot of the power of that iconography comes from its pre-World-War-II context. There's something jarring about watching a fedora-clad Ford in an Eisenhower-era suburb.

And speaking of that suburb, into which Indy stumbles at the beginning of Crystal Skull — well, it's a test site, and our man is about to get nuked. Sure, the Indiana Jones movies have always been frantically action-packed, but Steven Spielberg used to know how to build to a climax. That the hero survives a nuclear test in the first fifteen minutes says something about the filmmakers' lack of restraint. That lack of restraint (and I know, "restraint" and "Spielberg" don't always go together, but look again at the pitch-perfect balance of Raiders ) is also apparent in Skull's comedy, which is as precious as Last Crusade's and clumsily executed to boot. Watch for a sequence wherein Shia LaBeouf, as Indy's son (by no means the worst part of the film, contrary to fan expectations) rescues his father from a pit of quicksand. . . by using a snake as a rope. Indiana Jones hates snakes, remember? (I'm guessing this was George Lucas's idea.) Ford mugs through this scene like no one fetched him his Metamucil; in fact, for the whole movie, despite being remarkably fit for a sixty-five-year-old, he's given little to do. At the big finale, he pretty much gets out of the way. As for the father-son relationship, given that it's one of Spielberg's favorite tropes, it's remarkable how little resonance he gets out of it.

But again, resonance may have been a lost cause, given the constraints of setting. I can think of only one way Crystal Skull might've worked. Don't ignore the problems — embrace them. Instead of making Indy's age and the time period a relative non-issue after the obligatory gags about crankiness, make the movie about his age. Make it about the loss of the pre-war world. Where the other Indiana Jones movies end with supernatural cataclysms, scrap the ludicrous ending of Crystal Skull (the titular skull is an alien's, and I'll say no more) and end with the film's one memorable image — the old adventurer, silhouetted against a mushroom cloud. A man out of time, faced with a technology orders of magnitude more destructive than any cursed artifact he could ever dig up. That might be a bit of a downer, but it'd mean something. And I'm sorry to say it, but unlike its motley bunch of predecessors, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull doesn't mean much of anything.

Screengrab Review: The Edge of Heaven

Peter Smith — Thu, 22 May 2008 18:00:00 GMT

By Mike D'Angelo

Like his previous dramatic feature, the Berlin prizewinner Head-On, Fatih Akin's The Edge of Heaven explores the increasingly porous borders between East and West, shuttling characters back and forth between Hamburg and Istanbul and observing their rootless confusion. Akin divides the film into three chapters, two of which sport titles that announce the impending death of a major character — a structural device that lends even ostensibly mundane scenes a certain uneasy tension. Part One focuses on a cantankerous Turkish émigré (Tuncel Kurtiz) and the hooker (also Turkish) he hires to be his live-in girlfriend (Nursel Köse), to the consternation of his bookish son (Baki Davrak); Part Two follows the hooker's daughter (Nurgül Yesilçay), a student radical in Istanbul who hightails it to Germany following a demonstration gone wrong and falls into a relationship with a young woman (Patrycia Ziolkowska) she hits up for spare change, to the consternation of the woman's stern mother (Fassbinder vet Hanna Schygulla, the only recognizable cast member for most Americans). Part Three shifts the focus again in ways better left unrevealed.

Those expecting the punkish, masochistic energy of Head-On, with its car-crashing and wrist-cutting and club-hopping, may be a bit surprised by this new film's more measured and contemplative tone. All the same, Akin's keen intelligence, his sensitivity to cultural dislocation and his skill with actors are all still very much in evidence. Scene by scene, The Edge of Heaven (which sounds like a Majid Majidi film; the German title translates as From the Other Side) is an assured and disarmingly inquisitive picture, creating a mosaic of unsettled lives in which the pieces never fit quite where you expect them to. What keeps it from being more than just "solid" is Akin's unfortunate reliance on what I'll call Stupid Writer Tricks — implausible coincidences, chance almost-meetings between characters who don't realize their hidden connection, etc. If someone spends the entire movie plastering HAVE YOU SEEN HER? posters all over town, you can be sure he'll take the last one down just before Someone Who's Seen Her walks in the door, at which point the camera will even pan over to the empty space where the poster used to be. In another kind of movie, that might not be a big deal; in one that's otherwise so scrupulously naturalistic, it feels, well, a little cheap. Fortunately, the ending, with its touching air of forgiveness, will have you in a generous frame of mind.

The Screengrab Review: Son of Rambow

John Constantine — Fri, 02 May 2008 19:26:00 GMT

It's difficult for me to be objective about Hammer and Tongs' second major motion picture, Son of Rambow. At one time, I was its protagonists, a kid whose imagination was set on fire by the bombast of media in the 1980s. Like Garth Jennings, Nick Goldsmith and their pre-pubescent proxies, the political subtext of Reagan-era action was completely lost on me at that age, eclipsed by the catharsis of violent fantasy and superheroics. It's impossible for me to watch Son of Rambow away from my intimacy with its subjects, so certain parts of it that I know aren't necessarily good filmmaking still strike me as wonderful.

Will Poulter, a ceaselessly creative child whose widowed mother is a member of the Plymouth Brethren, does not watch television and has never seen a movie because of religious restrictions. The Plymouth Brethren have also kept Will from making any friends, even though he attends a school full of "outsiders." Lee Carter, another fatherless boy who's something of a Calvin without a Hobbes, sees a patsy when he first meets Will, a willing stunt double for his homemade film. It's through Lee that Will sees First Blood, and Sly Stallone's one-man-war changes the boy for good, inspiring him to make Lee's movie into something grand. What follows is a story about finding your first true friend, colored, literally and tonally, by the warmth that is fast becoming a trademark for Hammer & Tongs. Son of Rambow is strongest when it stays with Lee and Will and is paced well thanks to its hilarious subplot surrounding French exchange student Didier Revol. Where it falters is in its portrayal of Will's family life. Will's mother, though played well by Jessica Hynes, remains underdeveloped given the time that's spent with her character. Her budding relationship with a would-be suitor ends up a distraction from Will's growth instead of a counterpoint.

It'd be easy to focus on these stray missteps throughout Rambow were I not so close to its story and characters; I could find fault in its sentimentality and easy solutions to complex emotional situations. It would also be easy to just be taken up by its nostalgic swells and portrayal of innocence. But the film is made with too much care and good humor to fall to either extreme. Messrs Hammer and Tongs have made a movie that may speak directly to me, but its foundation will speak to anyone. We were all children, and we all dreamed big.

Screengrab Review: Standard Operating Procedure

Peter Smith — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:45:00 GMT

By Mike D'Angelo

In one sense, Standard Operating Procedure is anything but. Errol Morris has few rivals among documentary filmmakers, but he isn't renowned for tackling hot-button issues torn from yesterday's headlines; most of the folks who've sat down before his patented Interrotron camera have been either fascinating eccentrics (Gates of Heaven; Fast, Cheap & out of Control) or aging provocateurs willing to discuss controversies from decades past (Mr. Death, The Fog of War). For all its lurid notoriety, Abu Ghraib seems almost too ordinary a subject for someone as outlandishly gifted as Morris, and while he's done his usual formally sophisticated and journalistically thorough job, S.O.P. is the first movie he's ever made that gives off a faint but unmistakable whiff of déjà vu.

You know the players; you know the photos. Morris has secured interviews with five of the seven MPs who were indicted, including media scapegoat Lynndie England, and coaxed from them a disarmingly candid assessment of their behavior. Anybody who's read Philip Zimbardo's excellent The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil will be familiar with the film's unstated thesis, which blames the persecution and degradation at Abu Ghraib not on the moral lapse of a few "bad apples" but on a poisonous atmosphere created and condoned by those much higher up the military food chain. Still, words on a page can't provide the odd amalgam of shame and defiance that permeates these interviews, nor the dispassionate intimacy of the Interrotron itself.

What gets short shrift, surprisingly, are the photographs themselves. Some have been critical of Morris' decision to commission flashy animated sequences from graphics whiz Kyle Cooper, finding the juxtaposition of the sordid and the high-tech to be somehow unseemly. Those people should chill. But what I really wanted from S.O.P. — especially given the terrific essays Morris has been writing on the nature of photography for the New York Times — was an in-depth exploration of the bizarre disjunction between what the disgraced MPs (persuasively) claim they were feeling and their demeanor in the pictures. Sabrina Harman, for example, wrote letters to her lover at the time that powerfully recount her disgust at what was going on — so why do we see her grinning like a lunatic and giving a big party-hearty thumbs-up beside an Iraqi corpse? Morris asks the question, but he doesn't really delve, being too busy indicting the U.S. military as a whole. Thing is, we don't need Errol Morris to do that. We rely on him to look past the patently obvious.

Screengrab Review: Funny Games

Peter Smith — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 22:15:00 GMT

Review by Bilge Ebiri

Full disclosure: despite my fondness for the original, I had to leave Michael Haneke's remake of his own film Funny Games before its crazed, depressing finale. Ordinarily, this would probably be a deal-breaker for a review, but in this unique instance, where the filmmaker seems to be deliberately daring his audience to abandon his film, there was something strangely gratifying about bailing on it.

There was also an added dimension to my departure; in effect, I had already seen this film. No, I hadn't technically seen this particular one, with this unique IMDb ID number. But there's no doubt about it: this is the same movie. A wealthy couple (Tim Roth and Naomi Watts) and their young son go up to their fancy cottage. A couple of fey, eerily polite preppies (Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet) show up to ask for eggs. Then they capture and torture the family. And thus is bourgeois society and the American culture of violence critiqued. (Sort of. More on that later.) Other than the fact that the actors are different (though in effect giving the same performances as their Teutonic counterparts) and the dialogue is now in English, Haneke has rendered his original shot for shot, this time with the full power of an American distributor behind him. (He probably got paid a lot more for this one, too.)

But in doing so, Haneke has done a disservice to his original vision: no longer is Funny Games the demented little experiment in suspense that made it a cult film for those of us who enjoy being abused by our European auteurs. Now, at least if you've seen the original, it feels like some weird old joke that no longer works. Devoid of the surprise element, Haneke's narrative transgressions just feel like tired, empty provocations. Gone is the feeling of having been ensnared in some stifling, terrifying cinematic trap. Now we know there's light on the other side of the door, and we know that we can leave.

Unless, that is, you've bought into the least interesting part of Haneke's thesis (and, arguably, the least appealing aspect of his work in general). The presskit for Funny Games offers up a number of chestnuts about how the film should always have been an American film in the first place, because it was in effect critiquing the violence and bloodlust of American films. By that logic, Haneke has now heroically entered the belly of the beast, like some grizzled Luke Skywalker, ready to fire his neutron bomb into the heart of pop culture's bloodsoaked Death Star. And that you owe it to yourself to see the movie again just to see what kind of effect it has on those evil, evil American audiences. (Oh, and by the way, please give us your money. Pleeease.)

Sorry, but I'm not buying it. Haneke's scolding pedantry has always rung false — it's hard to buy into the notion that the director of The Piano Teacher and Benny's Video is in truth some concerned, avuncular softy who makes violent films just to criticize his audiences' fondness for same. If this remake of Funny Games proves insight into anything, it's the degree to which Haneke's work had steadily advanced since the original, gaining resonance and complexity. Better to forget about this tired regression and move on. — Bilge Ebiri

Screengrab Review: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

Peter Smith — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Review by Bilge Ebiri

How ironic that a film so determinedly old-fashioned should be undone, at least in part, by lack of style. Directed by Bharat Nalluri and adapted by David Magee and Simon Beaufoy from Winifred Watson's novel, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is eager to recreate the glories of a different time, and a different era of moviemaking. Complete with rapid, witty dialogue and mannered performances, Miss Pettigrew concerns a hapless London governess (Frances McDormand) who winds up, during the Blitz, becoming social secretary to a glitzy, ditzy actress (Amy Adams) and helping her juggle a rather complex love life. It could have succeeded, were it not for its singularly drab visuals and its leaden rhythms. It's a TV movie posing as a '40s bedroom farce. Despite a whole set of terrific performances and a sparkling script, it fails to recreate the excitement of the movies' golden age.

The very American McDormand is an odd choice as the titular failed nanny, but the casting works: she's always possessed a keen ability to convey proletarian desperation with a quiet sense of grace and charm. Similarly, Adams yet again delivers a performance that simultaneously draws you in and winks at you not to take her too seriously. All that said, the true standout here is the always estimable Shirley Henderson, who finds humanity in a rather thankless part, as a scheming socialite who winds up battling Pettigrew for the affections of underwear tycoon Ciaran Hinds (also excellent).

These great performances really should have resulted in a film that raised the pulse a bit more. But Nalluri's main dictum appears to be to not get in the way; usually an admirable philosophy, but nearly disastrous in this case, where style and dash are key to the type of film he's trying to create. Miss Pettigrew carries its viewer along, for the most part, but in order to truly work, it needed to weave an illusion around us, beguile us with the plastic facts of this very plastic world. That it most decidedly doesn't, and the result feels workmanlike — something decidedly less than special. — Bilge Ebiri

Screengrab Review: The Bank Job

John Constantine — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 21:17:00 GMT

The Bank Job says it's based on a true story, proudly proclaiming on its striking retro posters, "The true story of a heist gone wrong. . . in all the right ways." Unlike some movies that make similar claims, like the upcoming 21, The Bank Job doesn’t take too many gross liberties with its foundational truths, such as they are. This much is fact: in 1971, Lloyds Bank on London’s Baker Street was robbed. During the burglary, the criminals’ walkie-talkie communications were overheard by a ham-radio enthusiast. It was the biggest story in town for about a week, until a government-issued D-notice, or gag order, was put in effect and that was the end of it. (The U.K. government denies a D-notice was ever issued.) The bad guys got away with it, and no one ever found out why. Bank Job writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, along with director Roger Donaldson, take these events and spin them into a decent story about amateur crooks, thuggish pornographers, pervy politicians and evil Black Panthers.

Clement and La Franais’ version of events revolve around Terry, played by Jason Statham in patented tough-guy mode, and his gang being unwittingly hired by MI5 to retrieve pornographic photos of a British royal stored in black activist/extortionist pimp Michael X’s safe-deposit box. Statham’s become a regular face in the trashy action genre, but The Bank Job finds him returning to his Guy Ritchie roots as a small-time player in London’s seamy underworld. Statham and his crew make up the best parts of the film, their canned heist-movie dialogue ("The one score that will change everything") delivered with enough charm to keep the tedium of cliché at bay. The rest of the players don’t pull their weight. Peter De Jersey’s Michael X isn’t very threatening, David Suchet’s Lew Vogel comes off as less imposing and more ready for an episode of PBS’ Mystery, and the film’s numerous cops and G-men are just set dressing. Taken as a whole, The Bank Job is decent fluff. The only real knock against it is Roger Donaldson’s failure to pursue the '70s-exploitation trappings so prevalent in the movie’s marketing and first half. It’s more Joe Carnahan than it is Peter Collinson. When the movie focuses on the titular job, it’s great stuff, satisfyingly seedy and exciting. Everything else goes a little wrong and, no, not in all the right ways.

Screengrab Review: Paranoid Park

Peter Smith — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Review by Mike D'Angelo.

Taking a brief and very welcome break from memorial filmmaking — Columbine, Kurt Cobain, a forthcoming Harvey Milk biopic — Gus Van Sant achieves thrilling new heights of lyrical expressionism with Paranoid Park, his fractured adaptation of a young-adult novel by Blake Nelson. Frankly, I was so certain that I never wanted to see this particular director set foot on a high-school campus again that I contemplated a restraining order. But this brilliantly schizoid character study — structured as the letter-cum-journal entry of Alex, a skate punk with a guilty conscience (sensational newcomer Gabe Nevins, found via MySpace) — digs into the teenage mindset with a clarity and eloquence that Elephant, with its distracting (and, to my mind, obscene) echoes of real-world tragedy, couldn't possibly achieve. Ostensibly, the plot concerns Alex's involvement in the accidental death of a security guard. But since this act of involuntary manslaughter (briefly seen in gruesome detail) is wholly fictional, Van Sant and Nelson's appropriation of it as an overarching metaphor for the furtive, free-floating sense of shame that accompanies puberty feels bold and incisive rather than deeply disrespectful.

Meanwhile, Van Sant's formal dexterity just grows more and more astounding. He sometimes rivals Alain Resnais here with his conflation of editing and memory, skipping back and forth in time in a dissociative frenzy that has no use for conventional signposts or explanations. And even when Van Sant flirts with cliché, he does so in a way that's forbidding and strange: You've seen the scene where the distraught protagonist sublimates his/her grief in the shower a hundred times — but never like this, with the contrast cranked up to near-abstraction and the camera intently focused on the rivulets of water that flow from Alex's long hair as he stands silently, head bowed. I could have done with a bit less emphasis on Elliott Smith on the soundtrack, perhaps, but the film's other musical choices, ranging from Billy Swan's "I Can Help" to snatches of Nino Rota's score for Juliet of the Spirits, are magnificently contrapuntal. This is still very much a mood piece, but Van Sant, after two consecutive films centered on sacrificial lambs, has made an overdue and welcome return to recognizable human beings.

Screengrab Review: City of Men

Peter Smith — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Review by Bryan Whitefield.

When City of God was released in 2002, it became an international sensation for its mix of stylized violence and gritty portrayal of life in the Brazilian favelas. It launched the career of director Fernando Mereilles, who used the same location and several of the non-professional actors from the film to create an episodic series for Brazilian TV called City of Men.

The show was much more light-hearted than the original film, following the day-to-day exploits of lovable teenagers Acerola and Laranjinha whose various schemes ranged from selling popsicles to losing their virginity. Capturing a more hopeful spirit while never turning a blind eye to violence and harsh conditions, the show also gave audiences a chance to watch the two boys literally grow up on camera. In many ways it covered similar territory to season four of HBO's The Wire — kids living under difficult circumstances with no guidance, failed by social institutions and finding an alternative in community-minded drug dealers who at least offer a path to money and mobility.

The film City of Men was written and directed by Paolo Morelli, who helmed several of the show's episodes, and maintains the show's looseness and vibrancy, highlighting the contradiction between Brazil's incredible beauty and nearly unimaginable poverty, crime and violence. Picking up where the show left off, we find the two friends forced to face an early adulthood. Acerola is now a father himself, while Laranjinha is consumed with uncovering the identity of the father he never knew. Because of the dire conditions that surround them, the story has a built-in drama and the characters are forced into difficult, even critical decisions. The movie plays more like a series finale than a stand-alone feature, but if it leads viewers back to the consistently excellent television series, it's valuable even just as an advertisement. — Bryan Whitefield

Screengrab Review: Chop Shop

Peter Smith — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Review by Bilge Ebiri.

With 2006's Man Push Cart and his latest, Chop Shop, Iranian-American director Ramin Bahrani has made a good case for himself as the neorealist poet laureate of New York's immigrant underside. Shot with breathtaking immediacy and featuring casts of non-professionals in real-life locations, Bahrani's films give narrative shape and compelling character shadings to documentary worlds. The result is something that feels like a new language being born, even though it owes a conscious debt to both non-fiction filmmakers like Shirley Clarke and realist narrative masters like John Cassavetes and Vittorio De Sica. Which is all just a fancy way of saying you really, really should not miss Chop Shop.

Bahrani trains his camera on parentless street kid Alejandro, aka Ale (Alejandro Polanco, in what must surely be the performance of the year, so far), who lives with his teenage sister Isamar above the auto-body shop where he often works. Both fiercely loyal and persistent, he's a street-hustling capitalist in training (see if you can spot the eerie similarities between this and There Will Be Blood), except that he's trying mainly to just keep his head above water. What dreams he has — and he does have them — are expressed with a poetic spareness that is both haunting and evocative. There isn't really that much plot to speak of — and yet the film is riveting, in part because Bahrani stays so focused on Ale's unflinching desire to stay ahead of the game.

Even so, the director still manages to effectively convey the broader world of the chop shops of Queens, so that a portrait of a community emerges from the film's accumulation of detail, character, and incident. And despite all the gritty despair and documentary intensity of Chop Shop, there's something lovely and almost mystical about Bahrani's vision: Like the best fairy tales, it is at heart a harrowing story about an innocent child in a scary world. Just don't look for any happy endings this time around. — Bilge Ebiri

Screengrab Review: Charlie Bartlett

Peter Smith — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 19:00:00 GMT

December brought us Juno, a teen movie (over)written by a thirty-year-old ex-stripper; February brings us Charlie Bartlett, a teen movie apparently written by a twelve-year-old whipped into a frenzy of high-school anticipation by every other teen movie ever made. It's an odd creature, this Charlie Bartlett — thick with references to Rushmore, Harold and Maude and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, it feels persistently unreal, untempered by real-life experience of high school. The "drug" sequences seem to come from someone less familiar with altered states than with the pot montage in The Breakfast Club, and a key virginity loss is mysteriously set inside a scene from Sixteen Candles. You might find this annoying, or you might find yourself getting wistful for the worst years of your life.

Charlie (Anton Yelchin) has been booted out of every private school in the state — not for bad grades, of course, but for persistent attention-seeking prankery. He's desperate for popularity, and at his new public school, he finds it by psychoanalyzing his classmates and prescribing them medication via the bevy of shrinks thrown at him by his doting, overbearing mother (Hope Davis, who chastizes him for not eating his dinner with the line, "I've cooked you a perfectly Oedipal meal" — or at least that's how I heard it). Simultaneously, he befriends a bully (one Tyler Hilton, who looks far too much like a young Morrissey to be threatening) and romances the principal's daughter (Kat Dennings, of The 40-Year-Old Virgin). But the principal himself (Robert Downey, Jr., entertaining as ever) turns out to be a problem, though not too much of a problem to resolve in a ludicrous climax. Basically, this is not the next Rushmore, Donnie Darko or even Ferris Bueller, despite Charlie's preference for a Bueller-esque shades-and-beret combo. It's not without fun, though. You can scoff at it if you like, but if you're twelve, you'll probably find it highly plausible. — Peter Smith

Screengrab Review: The Duchess of Langeais

Peter Smith — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 17:30:00 GMT

It's rather unfortunate that Jacques Rivette's latest film is being released here with a title that conveys generic period stodginess à la Masterpiece Theatre, since the original French title — Ne touchez pas la hache, or "Don't Touch the Axe" — better conveys the razor-sharp edges of this superlative, expertly calibrated battle of wills. Faithfully adapted from Honoré de Balzac's novella, it opens in and around a Spanish convent, where gimpy, sullen war veteran Armand de Montriveau (Guillaume Depardieu, son of Gérard) seeks an audience with a Barefoot Carmelite nun who calls herself Sister Theresa (Jeanne Balibar). Their brief, impassioned interview, conducted under the suspicious eye of the Mother Superior, abruptly concludes when an agonized Sister Theresa cries out, "Mother, I have lied to you! This man is my lover!" At which point the film jumps back five years in order to recount the torturous quasi-courtship of the nun — now revealed as the titular Duchess — and the general, an affair characterized by elaborate, courtly head games that amount to a 19th-century equivalent of The Rules.

Nobody understood the maddening allure of the almost attainable better than Balzac, and Rivette matches the author's emotional precision with one subtly stunning composition after another, buttressed by a handful of short yet heartbreaking lateral pans that move us from master to close-up without the violence of a cut. (It's the cut afterward that draws blood.) He also makes much more effective and perverse use of textual intertitles than did Patrice Chéreau in Gabrielle, a film that now looks even more overwrought and mannered by comparison. Balibar's wily, impassioned performance was a given — her best work to date was as the star of Rivette's 2001 effort La Savoir — but I hadn't expected such muted volcanic ardor from Depardieu fils, who practically broods a hole in the floor of every room he enters. And while I'm weary of the structural device in which we open with the penultimate scene and then flash back to see the events that led to this crisis/impasse, here the device is absolutely crucial, tainting every bit of gamesmanship that follows/precedes it. Indeed, I desperately hoped that the film would end without returning to the convent, and was somewhat disappointed when there turned out to be an epilogue of sorts. But even that perfunctory flourish slices clean. — Mike D'Angelo

Review: Diary of the Dead

Peter Smith — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:07:00 GMT

Diary of the Dead is the latest in George Romero's now forty-year-old "[Noun] of the Dead" franchise. It's back-to-basics in tone and production, after 2005's massive Land of the Dead. It would be easy to accuse Romero of trend-hopping, based on the film's "found footage" presentation and release in proximity to Cloverfield and Brian De Palma's Redacted. But the film parts from the recent surge of Blair Witch-ian diegesis by opening with narration: a character explaining that she's edited and produced the film you're about to watch with the intent not just to record but to frighten. Instead of coming off as pretentiously meta, this contextualizing helps you suspend your disbelief. Romero makes the most of that suspension, and the result is a strange movie that succeeds far more often than it fails.

Foregoing the established continuity of the previous Dead films, Diary begins on day one of the zombie apocalypse. A group of film students are shooting a horror movie in the woods when they hear on the radio that the dead are rising from the grave. It's a simple set-up, colored by Romero's trademark winking humor, but it works thanks to the reactions of the cast. There's no panic, just a dumbstruck acceptance. Protagonist Jason continues to film as the group begins their journey to his girlfriend's home. Where Cloverfield and Blair Witch used a camera-wielding character to emphasize how technology acts as a buffer between humanity and disaster, Jason's compulsion to keep documenting the end of the world is actually the core conflict in Diary of the Dead. The camera, the character it's tied to, and its angry, incredulous subjects emphasize conflicting human impulses during disaster: do I document or do I help. As one puts it, "I want to help them, but I can't, cause I'm fucking plugged in," and to Romero, that about says it all. — John Constantine

Review: Jumper

Peter Smith — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:15:00 GMT

Editor's note: Starting this week, Nerve Film Lounge reviews and interviews will be folded into Screengrab.

Here's the score: Jumpers are people that can teleport. Bet you'd like to know how — well, too bad. Paladins are people who have been trying to kill Jumpers "since medieval times." Why? Couldn't tell you. Samuel L. Jackson says that, "Only God should have the power to be in all places." He usually says it as he unwraps a giant knife from some dusty cloth before stabbing a Jumper. I don't know if that's the Paladin motto or something. Jumper, as a movie, doesn't really tell you too much. It doesn't do much of anything, for that matter. Director Doug Liman opens the movie opens by having Hayden "Little Annie" Christensen talking about all the cool stuff he's done teleporting about the world that morning. We don't actually see Christensen doing these things, which might've helped engage us right off the bat. But Jumper tells instead of shows — and then, about a third of the way through, stops doing either.

It's a shame. The world is an exciting place, and watching people who can go anywhere in a flash should be the basis for a beautiful spectacle. Jumper doesn't show you the world though. Christensen and the movie's one other jumper, the wooden Griffin, tend to return to the same locales over and over. The Sphinx is a neat setting twice, but six times? The characters don't fare much better than the settings. Christensen's high-school love Millie (Rachel Bilson) doesn't even speak much — she just tends to look bewildered and nods a lot — and Jackson isn't particularly threatening or empathetic, since we never find out why he hates those damn Jumpers so much. I'd say that Liman missed a great opportunity with Jumper, but it feels like he did the best he could with a script about nothing. So congratulations are due to writers David Goyer, Jim Uhls and Simon Kinberg, who've managed to write — amazingly — the worst scenes Hayden Christensen and Samuel Jackson have ever shared. — John Constantine