The Screengrab : the ruins

2008 in Review: Scott Von Doviak's Top 10 Unwatchables of the Year

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:00:00 GMT

As your resident movie janitor, I could hardly wrap up the year without a rundown of 2008's greatest crimes against cinema. As always, I see them so you don't have to.

10. STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS

I have little to add to my earlier rant. The sad thing is, there are still a few George Lucas zombies willing to defend this star dreck.

9. STEP UP 2 THE STREETS

A movie that raises many questions, not least of which is: “There was a Step Up 1?” A teenage street dancer (Briana Evigan, the next Demi Moore, if we needed one) is forced to enroll in an upscale school for the performing arts, leaving her old crew to accuse her of NOT KEEPING IT REELZ. This can only be settled with a dance-off! A thoroughly unconvincing dance-off that looks like an outtake from Night of the Living Dead: The Musical.

8. MAX PAYNE

Here we have a ludicrous new film genre (coincidentally featuring Ludacris): the videogame noir. Based on a first-person shooter game that was influenced by Hong Kong action movies and the "bullet time" effects of The Matrix, Max Payne is at least three steps removed from any semblance of originality. It boasts a stylish surface, but there's nothing new beneath it.

7. THE RUINS

Reviewed here at the time of its release. At least, it was in theaters when I started writing the review; I think it had been pulled by the time I posted it. A gripping, intense read becomes a dead teenager movie with laughable CG effects.

6.TYLER PERRY'S THE FAMILY THAT PREYS

Within the first five minutes of The Family That Preys, four different characters utter some variation on the line, "I need a drink." By the end of this latest Tyler Perry opus, I could definitely relate. Family is a mean-spirited endurance test populated by some of the most unpleasant movie characters in recent history. Perry prides himself on leaving out the sex and violence and making movies the whole family can enjoy. It's hard to imagine families enjoying this one, though; they're more likely to be traumatized when they aren't bored out of their minds.

5. FIRST SUNDAY

So bad that I’ve already covered it here as part of the Unwatchable series. Nuff said.

4. FOUR CHRISTMASES

Here's a movie that spends an hour showing how unpleasant family can be and how grotesque small children are before doing a complete U-turn into sickening sentimentality and hypocritical moralizing. Director Seth Gordon, who made last year's terrific documentary The King of Kong, turns out to be just another sitcom hack. Witherspoon is so chirpy and strident, it's not clear that anyone told her this was supposed to be a comedy. To say that Vaughn is phoning it in these days would be an insult to telecommuters everywhere. Four Christmases with this bunch is four too many.

3. PRIDE AND GLORY

There's nothing wrong with a gritty cop drama, so long as it has something to offer besides grit. Pride and Glory provides murky images, shaky camerawork, a muddy soundtrack, blood by the buckets and profanity by the bushel. It's easy to see why director Gavin O'Connor buried his movie under all this sludge; scrape it away and there's nothing but the most generic "bad cop" movie possible underneath.

2. TRAITOR

Don Cheadle is the world's most boring Muslim - but at least he's not evil like all the other ones! There's very little suspense in this dull, talky thriller, but there is a laughable twist ending for the ages.

1. THE LOVE GURU

Everything you’ve heard is true. This isn’t a case of mass hypnosis or the critical brotherhood sticking together – it really is that bad. Mike Myers described this comedy about a self-help guru’s attempts to help a hockey player win a championship as “a delivery system for some wonderful ideas.” Actually, it’s a delivery system for dick jokes, each one dumber than the last.

Year-End Roundup: AFI, Boston Critics…and Stephen King?

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Here’s your Monday afternoon update on the year-end award and Top 10 list derby. The American Film Institute has released its annual top ten list – I’m not sure I knew the AFI had an annual top ten list, but apparently they’ve been doing this since at least 2000 – and most of the titles are familiar from other such lists. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Milk and Frost/Nixon are among the predictable entries, but superhero enthusiasts will be pleased to see both The Dark Knight and Iron Man represented. The full list is here, along with the AFI’s top ten television shows, which include The Wire, thank you very much.

The Boston Film Critics had an indecisive year in 2008. They awarded ties for both Best Picture (WALL-E and Slumdog Millionaire) and Best Actor (Sean Penn for Milk, Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler). No big surprises here, aside from maybe the Ensemble Cast award for Tropic Thunder.

The most idiosyncratic Top 10 list to date has to be that of Entertainment Weekly columnist and Screengrab 24-hour marathon inspiration Stephen King. “I'm not trustworthy when it comes to movies… This is almost surely the only 10-best list you'll read that contains not one but two Jason Statham movies.” Indeed, King singles out both The Bank Job and Death Race for praise (he hasn’t caught Transporter 3 yet), along with the craptastic The Ruins. “It could have been ludicrous. Instead, it's unrelenting.” Yes, unrelentingly ludicrous. Anyway, check out his full list here – it’s the scariest thing he’s written in years.

Related:
Roger Ebert Supersizes Top 10 of 2008
Film Threat Unveils Frigid 50 of 2008

The Halfway House: Von Doviak’s Unwatchables of 2008 (So Far)

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:00:00 GMT

My, my, my, isn’t this a lovely thing! The sun is shining, the birdies are singing, and my fellow Screengrabbers are raving about their favorite movies from the first half of 2008. So far, Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark and Leonard Pierce have all weighed in with their rainbows and pretty, pretty ponies, so I guess it’s up to me to poop in the punchbowl.

Don’t get wrong – it’s not that this year’s first half has been completely worthless as far as cinema is concerned. I enjoyed Wall-E as much as the next guy – I’m not made of stone, you know! (Not entirely, anyway.) Iron Man was about as good as it gets with the superhero genre, which still makes it a movie that ends with one guy in a big metal suit beating the crap out of another guy in an even bigger metal suit, but an awful lot of fun up until that point. Like Mr. Pierce, I’ll go to bat for the terrifying first hour of The Strangers, as well as most of Baghead, the offbeat indie Wellness (screened at SXSW) and the documentaries Crawford and The Unforeseen. But let’s be honest – so far 2008 has been overflowing with crap, and as the resident movie janitor, it’s my job to dig through it. Without further ado, here are the five least watchable movies I’ve seen this year.

1. The Love Guru. Everything you’ve heard is true. This isn’t a case of mass hypnosis or the critical brotherhood sticking together – it really is that bad. Mike Myers described this comedy about a self-help guru’s attempts to help a hockey player win a championship as “a delivery system for some wonderful ideas.” Actually, it’s a delivery system for dick jokes, each one dumber than the last.

2. First Sunday. So bad that I’ve already covered it here as part of the Unwatchable series. Nuff said.

3. Step Up 2 The Streets. A movie that raises many questions, not least of which is: “There was a Step Up 1?” A teenage street dancer (Briana Evigan, the next Demi Moore, if we needed one) is forced to enroll in an upscale school for the performing arts, leaving her old crew to accuse her of NOT KEEPING IT REELZ. This can only be settled with a dance-off! A thoroughly unconvincing dance-off that looks like an outtake from Night of the Living Dead: The Musical.

4. The Ruins. Reviewed here at the time of its release. At least, it was in theaters when I started writing the review; I think it had been pulled by the time I posted it. A gripping, intense read becomes a dead teenager movie with laughable CG effects.

5. Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show. You loved The Original Kings of Comedy! You tolerated The Blue Collar Comedy Tour! Now run and hide, because Vince Vaughn’s Indistiguishable Frat Dudes of Comedy are coming to town! Vaughn’s brainstorm was to bring unknown comics from L.A. to heartland cities where folks apparently never get the opportunity to laugh in person at jokes about bumper stickers and apple martinis. And we wonder why middle America hates Hollywood.

Related:
SXSW Review: Wellness
Screengrab Review: The Unforeseen

DVD Digest for July 8, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week, one DVD distinguishes itself from the crush of cash-grabs and tie-ins. Also, Criterion continues their commitment to awesomeness. Otherwise, a pretty slow week.

DVD of the Week: Normally, I would use this space to plug the latest DVD from The Criterion Collection. However, since I’m not particularly familiar with this week’s release, Mon Oncle Antoine, I would instead like to take this opportunity to mention Warner Home Video’s collection of Batman animated shorts, entitled Batman: Gotham Knight (Warner, also Blu-Ray). Much like The Animatrix did five years ago, Warner has taken what might on the surface appear to be a simple movie tie-in leading up to the release of Batman: The Dark Knight. But the studio is fully committed to its franchise and the tone set by the recent entries. A number of talented animators were brought on board to direct the shorts, which were written by screenwriters including Batman Begins screenwriter David S. Goyer and Academy-Award nominee Josh Olson (A History of Violence). Besides, as far as tie-ins go (this week also brings new versions of Batman Begins on both standard and Blu-Ray), this beats holy hell out of yet another new pressing of Batman & Robin, wouldn’t you say?

And speaking of cash grabs… like mummies? This week, Universal is releasing new Special Edition versions of The Mummy (1932), The Mummy (1999), and The Mummy Returns, all in advance of next month’s release of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Also, there’s a new version of Van Helsing hitting the market, although heaven knows why.

New titles on DVD include: The Ruins (Paramount, also Blu-Ray); Stop-Loss (Paramount); Chop Shop (Koch); and The Tracey Fragments (Image).

Finally, in the TV-on-DVD front, this week brings I Dream of Jeannie Season 5 (Sony); Monk Season 6 (Universal); Psych Season 2 (Universal); Stargate Atlantis Season 4 (MGM). So now you know.

Jena Malone's Musical Career: Her Shoe Was Made for Warbling

Phil Nugent — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Apparently, every young actress in the business wishes she'd become a musician when she was making those all-important career decisions when she was thirteen. Some content themselves with a few weeks in the recording studio with top indie talent and the Tom Waits songbook, but Jena Malone has other ideas. The 23-year-old Malone, who made her acting debut at twelve in 1996's Bastard Out of Carolina and has since appeared in Donnie Darko, Into the Wild, and, most recently, The Ruins, has looking to make her mark in the mad-inventor-genius category, making her the Harry Partch of young indie starlets. Malone, who performs with a band called the Shoe, has built what she calls "a one woman instrument". (As opposed to what, exactly? Is she also working on a banjo that takes six women to strum it?) The instrument is also called the Shoe, indicating that Malone is either really devoted to that word or that she prefers to channel her inspiration into areas other then naming things. Pitchfork Media reports that the band the Shoe, which consists of Malone and pianist Lem Jay Ignacio, "recently embarked on a busking tour of sorts around Los Angeles, one which finds them 'only play[ing] on street corners and underpasses and on rooftops and living rooms,' according to Malone." They've also recorded a six-song EP that they've been selling at gigs.

Malone, who may or may not still be working with her group Jena Malone and Her Bloodstains, clearly takes her music seriously, and if she takes it seriously in kind of an unusual way, well, it's unusual in a different, more cerebral way than, say, Juliette "Let's kill a snake and drink its blood so we'll be creatively inspired" Lewis. Reviewing a recent Shoe show in Los Angeles, Melissa Bobbitt described Shoe (the band), as a "beguiling" platform for Malone's "insular, folksy, and wonderfully weird oeuvre" and also described the Shoe (the instrument) as a "curious contraption she built from random samplers, keyboards, and an old-fashioned steamer trunk. From it emerge squelches, squeaks, and other perplexing noises that suggest Malone isn’t content to play it safe in a town where Dogstar and the ilk are practically punch lines." Whatever Malone's up to, she's smart enough to know that her film career is more likely to hurt her chances of being taken seriously at it, at least if she betrays any sense of entitlement, which may be why she's favoring such limited-room venues as, in Bobbitt's words, "a field alongside the depleted Los Angeles River, a rooftop, some dude’s living room … Just two 20-somethings, their musical wares and the hum of a generator — no pretense, just art." It's of a piece with the unaffected naturalness she's brought to her movie roles. Walk on.

Screengrab Review: "The Ruins"

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:15:00 GMT

Scott Smith's novel The Ruins was the feel-bad beach book of 2006 - it was merciless and unrelentingly grim and I couldn't put it down. Nothing about it struck me as unfilmable...until I actually saw the film that was made from it. The fact that The Ruins was not screened for critics last week should have been the tipoff, but every once in a while the studio execs don't realize what they have on their hands. This time they did, and they're washing it off as quickly as possible.

As a novelist, Smith (A Simple Plan) is a notoriously slow worker, but as a screenwriter I'm guessing he knocked this one out over a long weekend. By Monday he had misplaced his own book and started making shit up, but in the early going, The Ruins is relatively faithful to the original in plot if not in tone.

Two young American couples are vacationing together in Mexico, lounging poolside and chugging margaritas. A German tourist befriends them and tells them about an off-the-beaten-path Mayan ruins site his brother is investigating. They decide to make a day trip to the site as a token stab at taking in the local culture, the first of many terrible decisions to come.

No sooner do they locate the site deep in the jungle than they are surrounded by villagers armed with guns and crossbows. They won't be allowed to leave, we later learn, because high-strung Amy (Jena Malone) stepped on the thick growth of vines that cover the ruins - and like the ivy at Wrigley Field, these vines are cursed. They are apparently sentient, they can crawl inside your skin and eat your flesh from the inside out, and they can mimic sounds like cell phone ringtones or even human speech.

It is more or less at this point that the movie goes off the rails. It's one thing to read about talking, man-eating vines and manage to take them seriously; it's quite another to watch it play out on the screen in all its CGI crapulence. Events from the book that were suffused with inescapable dread - a descent into a dark mineshaft, the grisly removal of one character's legs - play out here as if Smith has a checklist of plot points he's rushing to complete.

First-time feature director and former fashion photographer Carter Smith brings little to the party, except maybe the ultra-bland cast, most of whom seem plucked from his latest Vogue shoot. (The exception is Malone, who actually has a personality but can't do much with it here besides sob and shriek.) The ending is a compromised botch, but it's too late by then anyway. The book was genuine nightmare fuel, but The Ruins is just another dead teenager movie.

Trailer Review: The Ruins (Red Band Trailer)

Paul Clark — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 17:00:00 GMT

I haven't read the Scott B. Smith novel this is based on, but I've always been freaked out by creepy-crawlies that burrow under your skin, so this is right in my wheelhouse. Admittely, my hopes for this movie were muted after I first saw the original teaser, but based on the extended red-band trailer this looks to deliver the goods when it comes to the unnerving and disgusting. Unlike Smith's previous adaptation, 1998's A Simple Plan, I doubt anyone will make any claims for Oscar-worthiness for this one, but I'll be satisfied if it's scary, and if nothing else the trailer is encouraging.