The Screengrab : tim allen

Taxing Time: A Screengrab Salute To Beat The Clock Cinema (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 21:30:00 GMT

ALIENS (1986) & GALAXY QUEST (1999)

Life will be more stressful in the future, partly because of the ravenous extraterrestrials and tyrannical galactic tyrants we’ll encounter, but mostly because the ticking clocks in our race-against-time adventures will be replaced by soothing female voices announcing our impending doom every few seconds. That’s the case in Aliens anyway, a movie Roger Ebert called “so intense that it creates a problem for me as a reviewer: Do I praise its craftsmanship, or do I tell you it left me feeling wrung out and unhappy?” How’s this for suspense: not only does Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley find herself trapped in a space colony infested with slimy, ravenous xenomorphs (and the equally slimy Paul Reiser), but following a mishap with a nuclear reactor, the whole joint winds up on the verge of self-destruction! And then the evil Alien Queen grabs Newt (Carrie Henn), the sweet little orphan girl Ripley’s been trying to save for most of the movie!! And then, just when Ripley and Newt finally escape to the roof of the burning, exploding complex, they discover their ride is gone!!! And then it turns out the Alien Queen knows how to use elevators!!!! And she’s got David Fincher with her!!!!! And that damn soothing female voice won’t stop reminding everyone how close they are to death!!!!!! Aiiiieeeeee!!!!!!!!! Later, in the smartly high-concept Galaxy Quest, Weaver once again winds up in a desperate space race against time, trapped with co-star Tim Allen in a real-life starship designed by a much friendlier bunch of aliens to mimic the specs of their old TV starship...including the standard issue self-destruct gizmo that always counts down to zero in the most suspenseful possible way. (AO)

BLADE RUNNER (1982)

At first, time doesn’t appear to be much of a factor in the visionary sci-fi classic Blade Runner. Harrison Ford’s Deckard has to hunt down the escaped replicants, true, but they don’t seem to have a particular goal in mind, and for a while, his search for them is discursive, even leisurely. But it soon becomes clear that even if he’s not racing against time, the replicants are – their leader, Roy Batty, beautifully played by Rutger Hauer, knows that his kind is programmed with a finite lifespan, and that any moment could be his last. The brutish Leon taunts Deckard with this information in their confrontation, but in the end, Roy turns it into a tragedy. His death is the only thing that saves Deckard’s life, but by that time, it’s clear that something truly unique and precious is being lost, and the sensation is not one of relief, but of profound grief and regret. Fading from existence, Roy half-sneers, half-laments that he has seen things that Deckard cannot even begin to imagine; but because he is both more and less than human, it will all be lost at that moment the clock makes its final tick. (LP)

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981)

Lean, mean and exhilarating, John Carpenter’s Escape From New York confirmed that the Halloween auteur was capable of delivering more than just horror. In a nightmarish future 1997, New York City has been transformed into a massive, walled-off maximum-security prison, and when Air Force One crashes on the island and the president is taken hostage one day before an all-important nuclear summit, badass criminal Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) is recruited for a daring rescue mission. Plissken is given a 24-hour deadline that’s made more pressing by the fact that he’s been injected with micro-explosives that’ll blow if he fails his task in the allotted time-frame, a set-up that Carpenter mines for as much rousing action as possible. From a fight with an enormous bruiser, to a cab ride over a bridge covered in mines, iconic anti-hero Plissken’s efforts to save the commander-in-chief from the clutches of Isaac Hayes’ baddie – an undertaking that involves enlisting help from Ernest Borgnine, Harry Dean Stanton and Adrienne Barbeau – remains a thrilling, kick-ass sci-fi saga, and a testament to Carpenter’s still-underappreciated directorial greatness. (NS)

THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE (1974)

There are endless thrillers and caper flicks that depend on split-second timing for the bad guys’ nefarious plan to succeed, but the genius of Joseph Sargent’s tight little ‘70s thriller is that it places the action on a New York subway train, a milieu in which people already get terribly bent out of shape if there’s any deviation from the strict timetable. Populated by a cast of old-school character actors (including Walter Matthau Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam, Hector Elizondo, and Jerry Stiller) who virtually define the word “craggy”, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three features a quartet of criminals – presciently given colors as code names, twenty years before Reservoir Dogs – who must ensure perfect timing and clever planning to overcome the fact that they’re committing their caper on a form of transportation that can’t possibly deviate from its course. A big-budget remake is being released later this year, but its flashy cast and jillion-dollar price tag almost guarantee it won’t have any of the grubby charm or jangling energy of the original. (LP)

Only a few precious seconds remaining to Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Five & Six!!!!

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Nick Schager

Yesterday's Hits: The Santa Clause (1994, John Pasquin)

Paul Clark — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Well, it’s the holidays again, and that means that Christmas movies are back in season. But while Christmas movies have long been an annual tradition, in the last few decades the market for new holiday-themed classics has grown by leaps and bounds. Gone are the days when scruffy little movies like A Christmas Story would do decent business in theatres only to become classics on video and cable. Today, Christmas movies are big business, and rare is the big budget holiday movie that doesn’t clean up at the box office. For my next three Yesterday’s Hits columns, I’ll be taking a new look at three of the biggest holiday hits of all time, to get you all in the spirit of the season. This week, I’ll begin with the 1994 blockbuster The Santa Clause.

The Santa Clause came after nearly a decade of Christmas movies that shied away from dealing with Santa Claus. While this might seem odd nowadays, there was a good reason for this at the time- 1985’s Santa Claus: The Movie was a massive flop, scaring the studios into making less fantasy-based holiday movies in the years to come. But by the mid-1990s, Disney decided it was time to bring back the jolly old elf, and The Santa Clause served up St. Nick with a twist on the old tale. After several established movie stars (Bill Murray and Chevy Chase, to name two) turned down the role, Disney turned to the star of the hugely popular sitcom Home Improvement, a former standup comedian named Tim Allen. The combination of Christmas and Allen’s big-screen leading man debut proved as irresistible to audiences as milk and cookies, and The Santa Clause became the biggest hit of fall 1994, spawning two sequels and propelling Allen to movie stardom.

The premise of the film certainly helped. Rather than beginning with its main character born as Santa, The Santa Clause took the novel approach of having its protagonist Scott Calvin (played by Allen) more or less inherit the job. In the film, if something happens to the current Santa, the next person to don the suit takes his place, with all of the side effects that implies. The Santa Clause’s best sequence takes place right after Scott finds himself thrust into the role of Kris Kringle, when we discover through his eyes the perils of the job- snarling dogs, home security systems, gifts that are too big to fit under the tree. And while Scott predictably finds himself turning physically into Santa, gaining 45 pounds in a week and growing a long white beard in a matter of minutes, the sight gags are fairly enjoyable nonetheless.

Unfortunately, the rest of the movie isn’t as much fun as the Santa material. Scott’s life in the temperate latitudes includes a well-paying job as a toy company executive and an ex-wife Laura (Wendy Crewson), with whom he shares custody of their young son Charlie (Eric Lloyd). Naturally, Charlie is jazzed about his dad being Santa, but of course none of the other adults believe his stories of when they visited the North Pole and went around delivering gifts. Laura’s new husband Neil (Judge Reinhold) just happens to be a psychiatrist, and he quickly concludes that Charlie is having trouble distinguishing between reality and fantasy, and that Scott with his physical changes is feeding his son’s delusions in order to look better in Charlie’s eyes. The resulting plot developments are too contrived to be effective, and they’re exacerbated by Reinhold’s awful performance, in which he comes off less as a competent doctor than someone who’s suffered a recent blow to the head.

Ever since Charles Dickens penned A Christmas Carol more than 160 years ago, there has been a fairly standard trajectory for Christmas stories and, later, Christmas movies- a character, or group of characters, overcome their self-centered ways by discovering the meaning of Christmas. Even Bad Santa’s Willie, the most dissolute of recent Christmas movie protagonists, ended up finding some member of the Christmas spirit through his unlikely mentorship of a (very strange) kid. The Santa Clause was directed by John Pasquin, who had previously worked with Allen when he directed numerous episodes of Home Improvement, and the movie feels and looks like a big-screen sitcom, with some easy laughs and nothing offensive to scare away audiences. Like most Christmas movies, it’s an okay way to take a break from holiday shopping or entertain visiting relatives. But as a movie, it’s really nothing special.

21 Stars We Hate (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:30:00 GMT

TOM HANKS

I know, I know...this list is called “Stars We Hate,” and it’s hard to work up any real vitriol against Mr. Hanks: after all, he seems like a peach of a guy, he’s turned into a pretty good producer and he established an eternal place for himself in the cinematic canon as the voice of Woody in Toy Story 1 & 2. But let me ask you something: do you consider Tim “Buzz Lightyear” Allen a truly iconic movie star? The Cary Grant of his generation? No? Why not? Like Hanks, Allen also rose to fame as a likeable lug in a dumb sitcom, then made the leap to movies with a series of mostly terrible high concept comedies, give or take one undeniable classic apiece (Galaxy Quest for Allen, Big or Splash for Hanks, depending who you ask). And, like Hanks, you totally wouldn’t believe Allen as a dangerous tough guy mobster in Road To Perdition...although, wait, actually, I take that back: considering Tim Allen was busted with a pound of cocaine back in 1978, ratted out 21 drug dealers to avoid a life sentence and spent more than two years in prison, I’m guessing he’s got more than a little bit of a dark side, which makes him an interesting performer even though, for some reason, he’s mostly chosen to squander his talent on crap over the years. Hanks, on the other hand, is more ambitious and, in the “serious” half of his career, has generally chosen better material (three movies with Meg Ryan notwithstanding)...but the problem is there’s no there there: he’s just not that great an actor, no matter how many Best Actor awards he wins. Sure, he pulled the “lose a lot of weight” gimmick for Castaway, which puts him on par (at best) with Ethan Hawke and Christian Bale, who pulled the same trick for Alive and The Machinist, respectively (though neither of them won an Oscar for their efforts). Playing gay was just another award-winning acting gimmick for Hanks in Philadelphia: I never believed his performance for a second, just as I failed to believe his grizzled tough guy act in Perdition or Saving Private Ryan. At his best, in light comedy or light drama like Apollo 13, Hanks is akin to the guy who got all the starring roles in your high school drama club...appealingly bland in productions the audience is predisposed to like. But a modern-day Jimmy Stewart (as people who should know better insist on calling him)? Hardly. For one thing, Jimmy Stewart would never have subjected us to Bachelor Party or Forrest Gump.

DIANE KEATON

In certain quarters here at Nerve’s opulent Screengrab HQ, Diane Keaton is held not only to be not a bad actress, but in fact a rather good one. You will recall, because I know you read everything we post here every day, that she even appeared in the Honorable Mention section of our list of the Top 25 Leading Ladies of All Time. A gentlemanly raising prevents me from mentioning the name of the Screengrab contributor who placed Ms. Keaton into nomination; but I beg of you -- since I assume you all agree with me that Diane Keaton could not act her way out of a paper bag, or act her way into a paper bag, or even act in the general vicinity of a paper bag -- do not e-mail jibes and rotten fruit at this individual. He is a fine man, an insightful film writer, and an intelligent human being, but once, when we were shooting the back nine at Burning Tree, he caught a stray Ben Hogan right in the temple, and ever since then, he has been unable to recognize Diane Keaton’s fretfully obvious limitations as an actress. Starting out strong by playing Woody Allen’s most appealing muse in Annie Hall, she soon discovered that a career as a professional actress would require her to display emotions other than whimsy and peevishness, a task to which she was sadly unequal. Witness, for example, her performance in The Little Drummer Boy, a woefully overrated film in which she proves that as an actress, she is unable to convincingly portray an actress. Even in her biggest break, playing the insufferably Kay in the first two Godfather movies, her greatest accomplishment is to leave you feeling baffled as to what Michael Corleone – or, for that matter, Francis Ford Coppola – ever saw in her to begin with. Happily, since she has descended into middle age, she has been relegated to the kind of roles Hollywood tends to offer middle-aged women, which greatly reduces the odds that I will ever have to see her in anything ever again.

ANDIE MACDOWELL

Joe Queenan, one of film criticism’s greatest haters, once said of the enervating Penelope Ann Miller that “if she is still alive, Penelope Ann Miller is the worst actress alive. And if she is dead, good.” While I can’t say that I actively wish for Andie MacDowell’s death, I will say that if she were suddenly stricken with some horrible disease that prevented her from ever appearing in front of a camera again, I would send a hundred dollars to any charity vowing to prevent the disease from being cured. While I certainly can’t argue that Penelope Ann Miller is a horrendously bad actress, I will say that, unlike Andie MacDowell, she did not seem to have a knack for convincing talented directors to put her in good movies. While MacDowell's career started out poorly – in her debut role in Greystoke, she was out-acted by both a chimpanzee and Christopher Lambert, and she went on to be only the third most annoying thing about St. Elmo’s Fire – she somehow got herself cast as the lead in the otherwise excellent sex, lies and videotape, where she first showed her ability to flounder around helplessly while being outacted by every sentient creature in the vicinity. She went on to appear in Groundhog Day, where she was unable to convince me that Bill Murray would bother crossing the street for her, let alone turning back time. But her crowning crappiness was in Robert Altman’s wonderful Short Cuts, a movie whose greatness is evident in the fact that it survived being completely ground to a halt by her reading of a line -- in what was meant to be the movie’s most intensely emotional scene -- with all the passion of a piece of cardboard. I haven’t seen her in anything since she conned Wim Wenders into putting her in The End of Violence, but IMDB tells me that she’s spent the last 12 years making movies, just as if she weren’t the very worst actress in the world.

ROBERT REDFORD

If you look at some of Redford's early supporting performances in movies such as Inside Daisy Clover and The Chase, or even his earlier guest shots on such TV shows as The Twilight Zone and Route 66, you see a self-aware guy with a sly wit and the ability to sketch out a character in a few quick strokes. What happened? He turned into a politician, focusing public attention on his support for good causes ranging from the environment to independent filmmaking and taking longer and longer breaks from the screen. It's good to have interests, but the thing is, the breaks from the screen eventually seemed to be continuing even when he was on screen. From the moment that he (belatedly) became a big star on the back of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Redford's acting became more and more minimalistic, until you began to suspect that he put out so little for fear of expressing something that might alienate or cool off a single member of his target demographic. At the same time, what looked like simple vanity was eating into and damaging his movies in big ways (such as his inability to connect with Mia Farrow in The Great Gatsby) and small (such as his refusal to allow his character to receive a jailhouse haircut when he's undercover in a barbaric Southern prison in Brubaker.) Redford made his name at the moment when Hollywood was suddenly deluged with new "ethnic" stars such as Pacino, De Niro, and Dustin Hoffman, as well as stars who fell far outside the pretty-boy category, such as Gene Hackman, and for decades Redford got first pick of the glamorous, man of few words golden boy romantic lead roles in old-fashioned films such as Out of Africa and the benighted Havana because he was thought to be the closest thing left to a star in that mold. Which is fine, but it's surprising that so smart a guy would have wanted those roles, especially given that he didn't devote much time to doing anything else. (Maybe all that shampoo ate into his brain.) Whether as an actor (The Last Castle, Up Close and Personal, Spy Game), a director (The Legend of Bagger Vance), or both (The Horse Whisperer, Lions for Lambs), his films of the last several years couldn't be more beside the point. He faces the end of his career in the very odd position of being a hero to young independent filmmakers at the film festival his Sundance Institute sponsors rather than for any movies he's actually worked on.

BRAD PITT

Pitt became America's sweetheart through his role as the one night stand of Geena Davis' dreams in Thelma and Louise, but the thing about one night stands is you're never supposed to have to see them again. It didn't take too many leading roles to reveal that Pitt couldn't act a lick, but it was easy to sympathize with all the people who didn't mind so long as they got to rest their eyes on him for a couple of hours. However, two factors made Pitt's superstardom more grating than the success of most fabulously good-looking untalented people: first, a lot of people, some of them movie critics, liked looking at him so much that they actually started talking as if he were in fact one hell of an actor, and not just a skillful master of his craft, but rather some kind of high-flying hip icon, earning him the respect of people who wouldn't cross the street to piss on, say, Keanu Reeves; and, second, for a while he seemed to think that he had something to prove, so after being content to flash his teeth and his six-pack in Thelma and Louise, A River Runs Through It, and Legends of the Fall, he actually started taking on challenging roles in creatively ambitious projects, and in the course of time showed that he had it in him to be a real menace. To see Pitt trying to break new acting ground in 12 Monkeys, Se7en and Interview with the Vampire (where he mostly succeeded in making his co-star, Tom Cruise, look better than he ever had before, albeit by comparison) is to experience the same kind of flush of emotions one might feel watching a drunken monkey juggle plastic explosives. When he has no idea what to do, as in most of Vampire, he pouts as if the director just hit him with a yardstick and bruised his winkie. When, God help us, he's fully confident and going for broke, as in 12 Monkeys, his uncontrolled spasm of a performance makes you fear for his co-workers. During the late '90s, in such films as Seven Days in Tibet and Meet Joe Black, he did seem to find his true niche, getting paid kajillions of dollars to star in unbelievably long, misconceived movies that nobody would see. And he gave what will likely stand as his best-remembered performance in Fight Club, in which he was well-cast as a violent lunatic's vainest projection of his imaginary self-image. Time, money, and acclaim seem to have mellowed him, and the on-screen company of George Clooney and Angelina Jolie has been good for him; in the Danny Ocean pictures and Mr. and Mrs. Smith, he's been content to hang around on screen like a handsome lump, allowing the filmmakers to tap into his proven box office appeal while leaving the heavy lifting to his more gifted co-stars. But on those occasions where he's attempted to re-affirm his acting stature by impersonating Achilles or Jess James -- well, he still pouts real good.

Click Here For Part One, Part Three & Part Four

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Phil Nugent

Screengrab Salutes: The Top 20 Animated Feature Films (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:00:00 GMT

So, according to our very own Scott Von Doviak, Star Wars: The Clone Wars may not exactly be on the short list for this year’s Best Animated Feature Film Oscar, although, to paraphrase Warner Bros. head of distribution Dan Fellman, awards, critical praise and boffo box office were never really the point, since the movie, essentially, "was targeted to a specific audience for specific reasons [i.e., to promote the upcoming Cartoon Network series of the same name]. We accomplished that mission, and it will continue in another medium."

That crazy dreamer! Just goes to show that, when it comes to animation, even studio execs can get swept up in the magic that happens when pencils, paint, pixels, Plasticine modeling clay or paper cut-outs meet persistence of vision and insane amounts of patience.

According to our old friend, Wikipedia, “The earliest form of animation is a 5,200 year old earthen bowl found in Iran in Shahr-i Sokhta which has five images painted along the sides. When the bowl is spun, it shows a goat leaping up to a tree to take a pear.” (And, ironically, scientists have since determined the bowl actually received better reviews and a higher per-screen average than The Clone Wars...but I digress.)

Anyway, the aforementioned bowl may or may not be included in NEXT week’s list of The Screengrab’s all-time favorite animated shorts, but in-between then and now (get it? get it? I’m here all week! Try the veal!) please join us for a very special Screengrab salute to the greatest animated features of all time!

PINOCCHIO (1940)

It’s possible my family would disown me if I didn’t include this classic of old-school Disney animation since, according to legend, this is the movie that my grandfather Joe took my grandmother Louise to on the night he proposed. (Awwww!) Personal family history aside, it’s hard to argue with Pinocchio as a prime example of traditional American cel animation. Oh, sure, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty had scarier witches, The Jungle Book had Louis Prima and Bambi traumatized an entire generation, but Jiminy Cricket is one of the all-time iconic animated characters, Monstro the Whale is pretty fucking bad-ass, the Pinocchio nose bit launched a zillion stand-up routines and political cartoons and, between my grandparents’ love story and childhood memories of melancholy end-of-the-weekend episodes of The Wonderful World of Disney, “When You Wish Upon A Star” is embedded deep enough in my DNA that all the shitty cover versions and cynical Disney ad campaigns from then 'til now still haven’t managed to dislodge its pure, essential sweetness from my black little heart.

FRITZ THE CAT (1972)

The film that opened up brand-new horizons for scores of boomer spawn that accidentally stuck this in the VCR, mislead by the cartoon cover. Fritz, a Village denizen in a turtleneck sweater, discusses James Baldwin, scores with NYU chicks, starts a race riot and smokes a whole hell of a lot of grass. This was the first animated feature to be rated X. Yet the cartoon depictions of bathtub group sex amid pink clouds seem rather tame in this post-Britney age. The film is based on Robert Crumb's eponymous comic. However, Crumb did not like the film much. He felt it was, "really a reflection of Ralph Bakshi's confusion, you know. There's something real repressed about it. In a way, it's more twisted than my stuff. It's really twisted in some kind of weird, unfunny way."

AKIRA (1988)

Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s epic film adaptation of his own bestselling manga series isn’t just one of the best animated features of all time; it’s also one of the most important. Simply on its aesthetic merits, Akira is a winner: the cyberpunk-suffused story of a near-future Tokyo plagued by gangs and facing the threat of an uncontrollable teenage psychic is visually stunning, packed with detail, and suffused with unstoppable energy. The script is deep and complex, but never so deep that it gets in the way of the dynamic action sequences; every frame seems to burst with color, motion and power. It’s also well-acted, well-written, and surprisingly sophisticated in its use of music and sound. But beyond its merits as a film, it truly opened up the gates for “Japanimation”; what was previously the occupation of a relatively small number of hobbyists became the obsession of a whole generation of fans. Future anime productions would find millions of new admirers, and older movies and TV series would gain a brand-new audience, often leading to their first-ever home video releases in the west. The runaway popularity of Akira likewise lead to a new interest in manga comics, as fans of the movie tracked down the comic it was based on, establishing a new and insatiable western audience for Japanese serial comics. A live-action remake is currently in the works and scheduled for release sometime in 2009, but even if it can capture the thrilling visual imagery of Ôtomo’s animation, it can’t hope to duplicate the massive cultural impact of the original.

TOY STORY (1995)

Nowadays, the word “Pixar” associated with a movie is practically a guarantee that we’re going to get a smart, funny, technically astounding animated film that will be enjoyable for both kids and adults. But back in 1995, before Toy Story was released, there was a certain feeling of dread that accompanied the announcement of its production. We’d all seen computer animation, and to be honest, we weren’t all that impressed. It was thought of as a heartless, soulless medium, the playground of technicians, not artists. And at the very least, it wasn’t something that Disney Studios – the people responsible for the greatest animated features of all time – should be associated with. Once we actually got a look at it, though, all fears were laid to rest: Toy Story was a revelation. Its visuals were light-years beyond anything we’d seen at the time; it’s certainly been surpassed on a yearly basis since then, but even viewing it now, it’s hardly an embarrassment. But aside from the technical revelation of what computer animation was capable of, the story was downright terrific. It was driven by its characters, not its gimmicks; and, avoiding the trap that would befall many of its followers, its humor was driven by situations and not empty pop-cultural references. Though the precedent it set of using already-famous celebrities instead of established voice actors to voice the characters was a bad one, here the choice is unimpeachable, as Tom Hanks, Wallace Shawn, and even Tim Allen give performance perfectly attuned to their characters. Combine all of this with a timeless story and a terrific score by Randy Newman, and you begin to realize how Pixar got its sterling reputation in the first place.

Click Here for Part Two, Part Three, Part Four; Part Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Sarah Sundberg, Leonard Pierce

Tribeca Film Festival Review: "Redbelt"

Phil Nugent — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:00:00 GMT

In his recent, attention-getting Village Voice article proclaiming himself to no longer be a "brain-dead liberal", David Mamet chided those who fail to appreciate how great it is here in the land of the free and who sit around trying to think up reasons to be dissatisfied with democratic capitalism, just so they can have something to be sore about. In Redbelt, Smiley Mamet's latest stab at writing and directing a movie, the hero, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, is a hard-working, incorruptable black man who's trying his damndest to make an honest living running a martial-arts academy that does its bit for society by training police officers in methods of self defense. But when we meet him, he's already in danger of going out of business, and then evil Hollywood types steal his technique of pitting combatants against each other after selecting one to be "handicapped" for the bout. Robbed of the only thing he has that may have monetary value so that these sharks can cheapen it by using it in circus-like arena ring competitions, he's ultimately reduced to agreeing to compete in one of the bouts in hopes of at least winning some prize money, and then he discovers that the contests are fixed. ("Whenever two guys are fighting for money," mewls the crooked promoter played by Ricky Jay, "the fight is never fair.") Does Mamet ever see any of the plays and movies he signs his name to, or is he so committed to the capitalist system that he has a bunch of cranks hired off park benches staffing a sweatshop where they grind this stuff out by the yard?

Chiwetal Ejifor brings his role a strong presence and the ability to convey complex thought and emotional storms going on beneath a placid surface. He deserves a lot of credit for not appearing ridiculous when his character pounds away at the jujitsu formula that appears to be his all-purpose mantra for life: "There is no situation you can't escape from. There is no situation you can't turn to your advantage." The movie only leaves him completely out to dry once, when Mamet, letting his hand (and his woman problem) show all too nakedly, has him bestow these wise words on a woman (Emily Mortimer) who's been raped, while demonstrating that with more skill and determination, she could have fought off her attacker. Although Mortimer is required to make a full-blown crazy-broad entrance, twitchy and paranoid and all but frothing at the mouth, it turns out that she's the movie's Good Woman; after Ejifor starts telling her what to do, she shuts her yap and gratefully concentrates on supporting him, while Ejifor's wife (Alice Braga), a "Brazilian princess" who worries about her business and dares to have doubts about whether her husband's noble principles will be enough to keep the lights turned on, throws in her lot with the rotten show business people who are conspiring against him. They include Tim Allen, insanely cast as a tough-guy movie star with a bad haircut, and Joe Mantegna, all too perfectly cast as the movie star's slimeball manager, who gives you the feeling that he could produce a line of male body oils from his pores and market it under the brand name "Dishonestee'." Having used these guys to establish that the world is totally rigged and everything's phony, Mamet then turns around and flatters the audience by insisting that the ticket-buying rubes the world over will still notice and appreciate true quality when they see it; when Ejifor and a bad guy get into a tussel in the corridor leading to the stage of the big fight, every head in the place ignores the glitz they've paid to get in to see and swivels to pay attention to the true jujitsu master in action. Mamet himself is the show-business equivalent of one of those politicians who've spent twenty-five years in Congress screaming about how you need to keep re-electing him in order to send a message to those out-of-touch Washington insiders.

Trailer Review: Redbelt

Paul Clark — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 17:00:00 GMT

When I first heard about this, I wasn't sure how it would work — I mean, David Mamet taking on the world of mixed martial arts? And now, seeing the trailer, I still don't know what to think. On the one hand, there's that patented Mamet dialogue, here delivered both by Mamet regulars Ricky Jay and Joe Mantegna and by newcomers like Chiwetel Ejiofor and Emily Mortimer. But how will it mesh with the mixed martial arts scenes? And it remains to be seen how well Mamet will direct the fights themselves — early word is that they're the movie's most glaring flaw. Also, there's the whole Tim Allen thing. Still, it's Mamet, so I'll give it a chance, especially considering how much better Spartan was than it had any right to be.