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THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (IMAX)
By Theodore Ott
Fifty-seven years ago, the first version of this tale burst onto the silver screen. It had little going for it. It was in black and white and while the lead actor was good, he was not perceived as "A" list. But, "A" list or not that cast was incredible. Michael Rennie, the great Patricia Neal (Oscar® winner), Hugh Marlowe, Sam Jaffe (Oscar® and Emmy® nominee), Billy Gray (Father Knows Best), and Frances Bavier (aunt Bee) constituted an ensemble before that term was used for movies.
In this remake, the cast headed by Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly, Kathy Bates, the phenomenal Jaden Smith, and John Cleese can arguably be labeled an "A" list of movie bluebloods. Yet in the end, the second film, even with the huge sockem' of an IMAX screen and state of the art sound system just isn't the same.
The problem could be seated in the story line. Back in 1951, World War II was only six years in the past and was a vivid memory for most. The concept that we earthlings were incapable of living in harmony on our own and were in need of interstellar tutelage, even given under the threat of annihilation might not have seemed so far fetched. Today, with most of the World War II generation sleeping with their ancestors and more slipping off every day, coupled with the fact that real pain and horror even as intense as that of the Second World War becomes softer and easier to contemplate through the prism of more than half a century, might make the lesson offered by Klaatu seem more dictatorial, less benevolent and just plain dated.
I can't tell whether Reeves' characterization is the result of an inability to show emotion or of a director's heavy handed interference. But, if you didn't know better, you'd swear that the makeup department had used an entire year's output of Botox on their star. Young Smith seems to be trying to carry the entire film on his own. And, judging by what he shows here, the day when he will be able to carry an entire film on his own are not that far off.
Smith has help from Jennifer Connelly as his step-mother/adopted mother who does make the effort, but every time she has to interact with Reeves' Klaatu it all comes crashing down like a house of cards.
What makes me believe that Reeves' wooden presentation might be the result of a heavy handed director is that the great Kathy Bates is also in the film, as the Secretary of Defense, and seems chained down, too. John Cleese in the one scene role originally essayed by the immortal Sam Jaffe was enjoyable. Perhaps his single scene might have been shot by a second unit team?
The IMAX presentation was a visual feast regardless of the paucity of believable storyline. But is that enough reason to part with your hard earned cash for a ticket?
'THE WRESTLER'
MICKEY ONE
By Sean Chavel
It is that wonderful paradox where a movie is about a character on the down and out and the actor playing him uses that breakdown to create a legendary performance. Mickey Rourke makes the comeback of a lifetime in The Wrestler. Rourke, as testosterone hulk Randy "The Ram" Robinson, finds severe truth in minor moments and breaks your heart.
If there's any reluctance to check this out in theaters, perhaps it's due to you thinking that you might not be interested in a movie about a bloodsport with fixed matches. This is a movie that is very aware of the fabrication design of its backdrop. But sharing its locker room knowledge is just the start. "The Wrestler" is a film that harkens back to the style of character driven 70's movies. Back when movies weren't afraid of featuring characters down on the luck. The story examines the tipping point. The Ram is desperately close to fall into oblivion or, has he found the crucial moment elevate himself back to stable ground?
Early on Randy learns he has been locked out of his trailer park home due to short funds. During the week he finds odd jobs, on the weekend he wrestles, and in-between, tones up at the gym, does tanning salons, and perms his hair. The scenes inside the ring show Randy taking in abuse, and afterwards, very little earnings from stadium promoters. He doesn't complain. Close-ups in the ring show Randy getting punctured by barb wire and a staple gun. A bout shows Randy sneaking a shortened razor blade in the ring, and you think, Is he going to use it to slash an opponent? No, Randy slices his own forehead to gush blood - to satisfy audience bloodlust.
This is probably the best movie that I have ever seen on the subject of sadomasochism. Randy and his peers are pain-freaks. They train to be gladiators, but in essence, these guys will beat themselves up for applause. In following Randy's story, we understand why he has committed himself to self-bludgeoning. We come to observe what a terribly lonely man Randy is. The ring is the only place he has to binge on pride and he is good at putting on a good show.
As you can probably sense this sounds like a tough film with harsh subject matter - and graphic whacks. You might also want to know that film spends lots of time inside a sleazy strip club, this is Randy's habitual hang-out. He's drawn to a stripper named Cassidy (Marisa Tomei) who is emotionally jaded yet still has sensitive beams deep within her - she reveals sweetness to Randy but warily. Randy is also trying to connect with his estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) who feels infinitely betrayed by her father.
This is the second masterpiece we have been waiting for from director Darren Aronofsky. Aronofsky uses his camera to catch raw and spontaneous moments often tracking his camera on Rourke from behind. Aronofsky's artful way of observing self-inflicted pain and bare vulnerability is ever-apparent.
In a metaphysical triumph, Randy lets us know that he's given it his all - and so has Rourke. It's been nearly twenty years since Rourke made something meaningful. "The Wrestler" could and should go down as one of the great actor comebacks of all-time.
199 Lives
The Travis Pastrana Story
By Scott Mendelson
To this day, Tin Cup still maintains its place as the sports movie with the most surprising and exciting climax. If you recall, the 1996 Ron Shelton picture ends with Kevin Costner on the 18th hole in first place for the title at the PGA US Open. However, after missing a (literal) long shot and landing in the water, Costner's Roy McAvoy refuses to simply take the water penalty and move his ball to the other side of the pond that separates his current position from the green. Again and again, the ball goes into the water, but McAvoy would rather make that shot and lose the Open then simply give up and end it with a short putt.
Travis Pastrana, it would seem, has the same mentality. Time and time again, we see him almost sabotage himself on the dirt bike race track where he flourished. Torn between the strict linear race and the freedom and risk of freestyle jumping, Pastrana often blows races that he should have won, for the chance to try a random jump along the track. But then, when you've been motorcycle racing since you were four, competing since 14, and you've already base-jumped the Grand Canyon several times since your eighteenth birthday, the potential for boredom is certainly plausible. And it becomes quickly apparent that Mr. Pastrana is the sort of person who would rather lose (and lose badly) at something new and challenging than win at something that he's already exceptional at.
199 Lives is a straight, no-frills documentary concerning the life of Travis Pastrana, currently considered one of the premier talents in the dirt bike motor cross circuit. Frankly, my knowledge of motocross begins and ends with the 1986 Nintendo game, Excite Bike. So while I am not the intended audience for this feature, it is a worthwhile glimpse into a culture that I know oh so little about. The title likely comes from the incredible cornucopia of injuries that Travis has sustained in his life time. He's broken his wrist seven times. He's had eight knee surgeries on the right knee and seven surgeries on the left. He's separated his shoulder three times. He's had at least twenty-five concussions. I can only wonder how his body and mind will react should he actually survive to old age.
The feature is pretty much a talking-heads affair, with friends and family sharing their memories and thoughts on the X-games superstar. His father is presented as a relatively hard man, not without love, but with the mindset of an army drill instructor. He's an avowed atheist, while his wife is a true believer, and one of the highlights is a brief back and forth on their respective theological beliefs.
The film never really passes judgment on its person of interest. No one really tries to sell the idea that he is a hero, nor is he condemned for some of the consequences of his constant need for speed (he once nearly killed himself and two friends driving a car into a tree at 135 miles per hour). He is simply a person who excels at the sport which always came naturally to him.
The film comes up short only in the area of context. There is little mention of his fan base and almost no recollections from sports pundits or sports historians. Although I do not expect such a specialized documentary to explain the complete rules and history of motor cross, a little historical and factual background would have been nice. And, curiously, aside from breath taking scenes of Travis literally motor biking into the Grand Canyon and parachuting to safety, there is actually very little footage of him racing and jumping (although the DVD special features more than make up for that deficiency).
For those who already posses a genuine curiosity in Travis and the world of motor cross, this 84 minute documentary is worth a gander. But for those unschooled in the realm of dirt bike racing and dirt bike stunts, it is an unnecessary diversion. It will not make a fan out of you if you aren't a fan already. Grade: B-
YEAR OF FILM IN REVIEW 2008
By Sean Chavel
Movie fanatics rejoice. It's time for the best and worst list of 2008 in cinema. If this list is of any use, it should be kept and used as a companion log throughout the Christmas movie-going season and for home rental suggestions. I never expect, of course, that everyone out there will agree with all of my choices, but I certainly hope everyone agrees with my number one pick of the year! Certainly there was no other film that came close in matching it. And although it's not typically "high profile" in Oscar's choice of subject matter, hopefully with enough serious consideration it will continue to rack up awards anyway. Because it really is that good. If you are one of the few that have stayed away because you don't like comic book movies and are convinced they are incapable of reaching High Art, think again.
1. The Dark Knight - Filmed and paced with throbbing forward motion, Christopher Nolan's direction is a triumph of operatic action, drama and music synthesis. Batman (Christian Bale), further troubled by what public image to display in light of doing the most good, has to greatly compromise his ideals to protect Gotham's citizens. As the head adversary, The Joker (Heath Ledger) is such a disturbing creation that he hotwires into your very nerves. The suspense is so palpable that your adrenaline is drumming incessantly, but that's probably due to the immediacy of conflicts: There are always three or four noir-flavored plots toppled on top of each other simultaneously. The film's visceral power is not to be ignored either. The Batmobile shedding its shell to convert into the Batcycle is the most exhilarating movie moment of 2008. If all blockbusters were this well made then critics wouldn't have to complain about the quality of blockbusters. The bar has just been raised.
2. Burn After Reading -Like most of the Coen Brothers' conundrums this is a story without a plot, it is all a commotion of accidents spilling into the next string of accidents. This is the kind of underappreciated movie that will get discussed on a VH1 movie countdown list of classic scenes probably ten years from now with its pundits explaining how it was misunderstood in its initial release. Time will prove it as most memorable, most repeatedly watchable, most intricately and ingeniously plotted. An actors coup with George Clooney as the compulsive womanizer, John Malkovich as a weirdly pompous CIA agent, and Brad Pitt as the clueless nimrod out to blackmail men that are way, way smarter than him.
3. Slumdog Millionaire - Jamal (Dev Patel) is orphaned at a young age, roams the streets peddling and hustling for survival, and entering adulthood lands a spot on the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" only to be accused of cheating. Director Danny Boyle has taken some potentially grim and mirthless material and has triumphantly directed it like a rip-roaring action movie spurred with lightening pacing as it traces one remarkable boy with an unbreakable determination and willpower to succeed.
4. The Wrestler - It's actor Mickey Rourke that makes the comeback of a lifetime as Randy "The Ram" Robinson, a wrestler on the brink of professional and personal oblivion, but the film deserves inexhaustible respect as well for it being a character study - the kind we got with regularity in '70's cinema when characters were allowed warts, faults and defects. Rourke's powerhouse performance is a work absent of any vanity.
5. Changeling - Clint Eastwood's most complex work in years yet criticized in some corners as merely a simplistic kidnapping tale. Did everyone miss and undervalue the depiction of 1920's sexual inequality and inherent chauvinism in professional males during that era? Asylums were a common practice back then, and although it has been tackled in old black & white movies, it's never been done as well as it does here with wronged woman Angelina Jolie being thrown in and stripped of her dignity just for being a good mother.
6. Paranoid Park - The most perplexing and intriguing avant-garde experiment of the year. Skateboard kid (played by non-actor Gabe Nevins) accidentally kills a security guard, holds this secret to himself and to his journal, and spends the rest of the film trying to free himself from the guilt. Gus Van Sant's disaffected approach, emphasized through a jumbled non-linear narrative that seems to pop out of Alex's dissociated mind, can be a mesmerizing cinematic experience if you get Van Sant's meditation on vacuous youth.
7. W. - Oliver Stone's lingering film dared to dissect, by means of psychological probing, the professionally fallacies and personality inadequacies of George W. (Josh Brolin). As president, George Jr. wants to outshine his father's legacy. A father whose course of action as former president was too slow, too conservative, not thorough enough. The film sees baseball as W.'s first love obsession, and politics as not so much as a love obsession but as a heritage entitlement.
8. Tropic Thunder - Robert Downey Jr. delivers one of the best comedic performances ever, crossing lines over into the subversive as an Australian actor thespian metamorphosing into character as a black military sergeant. Ben Stiller and Jack Black also play actors who go to the jungle to shoot a Vietnam movie. Full tilt with the vulgarity but ridiculously funny nonetheless, it took extra viewings for me to see this as an extreme satire on celebrity egomaniacs.
9. Frost /Nixon - Riveting historical drama with British TV personality David Frost (Martin Sheen) going after Richard Nixon (Frank Langella) in an exclusive interview in effort to make the disgraced former president apologize for his trespasses. The film builds an unexpected rooting interest for Frost to absolve himself in what could be a career destroying debacle. Top-class script is by Peter Morgan ("The Queen").
10. Iron Man - You have to love an action movie with incredible whooshing flying sequences. But at ground level the movie hooks us into the ethics transformation of Tony Stark. In the lead, Robert Downey Jr. gives the movie a real breathing human soul, and the actor maintains the same quirkiness in this blockbuster as he does in his smaller independent films. Hoorah for Downey!
Also Highly Recommended: Rachel Getting Married featured the remarkable Anne Hathaway as a rehab junkie returning home to her sister's wedding; the biopic Milk with the great Sean Penn as a politician crusading for gay rights in California; the sublimely animated Wall-E is particularly special in its dialogue-free scenes; Encounters at the End of the World is Werner Herzog's supercool Antarctica documentary; Man on Wire about a daring trapeze artist is also a documentary of astonishing sights.
The Worst Films of the Year:
1. Repo! The Genetic Opera - Death-metal musical with non-stop bad lyrics that relentlessly polluted my mind with ugly images.
2. 88 Minutes - Al Pacino tumbles to his career low with this tick-tock turkey.
3. The Happening - There are a lot of deaths by osmosis in this movie, but stupidity by osmosis too.
4. Fool's Gold - So dumb and contrived and far-fetched and witless that it causes oxygen deprivation to the brain.
5. Made of Honor - The worst sex humor of any comedy in recent ages.
Best Performances: Mickey Rourke ("The Wrestler"); Robert Downey Jr. ("Tropic Thunder"); Heath Ledger ("The Dark Knight"); Anne Hathaway ("Rachel Getting Married"); Naomi Watts ("Funny Games"); Keira Knightley ("The Duchess").
Best Action Scene: Anything in "The Dark Knight"
Best Action Scene Runner-Up: The cathedral hooks-and-pulley grappling scene in "Quantam of Solace"
Worst Action Scene: The speedboat chase where James Bond miraculously avoids machine gun bullets with no shield from behind in "Quantam of Solace"
Best Trashy B-Movie Scene: "Rambo" where are hero outruns an explosion then dodging the falling jungle foliage that is thunderously falling from overhead
Best Cheesy Frights of the Year: The attack of the Amazon red ants in "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"
Funniest Movie Line of the Year: "You were my Brothuh!" in "Tropic Thunder"
Best Musical Interlude of the Year: Tom Cruise's hip-hop moves in "Tropic Thunder"
Best Body Language of the Year: George Clooney in top form in "Burn After Reading"
Worst Casting of the Year: Any American or British actor playing a German in "Valkyrie"
Worst Performance of the Year: Patrick Dempsey's smelly-looking armpits in his first bedroom scene in "Made of Honor"
Grossest Scene: The white dog-poo in the execrable comedy "Step Brothers"
Most Disappointing Film of the Year: Ridley Scott's "Body of Lies"
Most Love It or Hate It Film of the Year: "Funny Games"
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Lisa E. Davenport
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a vividly stylish, sweeping, scrupulous slice of cinema, presents a magnificent universe of originality and invention--epic, yet remarkably endearing in its humility. David Fincher’s (Fight Club, Seven) work is a tour de force. It follows Button’s ingenuous life as he grows younger not older through the years.
For screenwriter Eric Roth, who won an Oscar for Forest Gump in 1994, Button is also a triumph. With Robin Swicord, he adapted a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald published in the early 1920s. He expands upon Fitzgerald’s characters and plot by moving the story through the 20th century. Roth clearly invested his heart and soul in this work. The intellectual, romantic, and physical journeys that anchor the characters beautifully converge. This has as much to do with Fincher’s dynamic and astonishing care with detail as it does with the actors’ incomparable performances. Using digital enhancement to age the characters, Fincher makes Button indulgently romantic yet not overly-romanticized. As we’re propelled through the decades, we experience the joy of love and the distinct peculiarity of loss, and gain a keen awareness that as they age these characters are alone just as much as they are together in their journeys.
Pitt’s subtle, seamlessly delicate performance resonates in a gentle way, probably his best cinematic feat yet. Ben is Gump-like in his uniquely peculiar experience in the world. He seems to observe his own life as he goes through it. It’s Pitt’s embodiment of a soul with clarity and strength of will in the face of so much desolation that endears Ben to us. His love Daisy, (Cate Blanchett) is a force of nature. Blanchett is at her best. Her boundless, youthful energy impels us, makes us want to root for them both, despite it all. Perhaps because of the unmistakable differences between them we don’t find ourselves detached from their journey, but rather entirely rapt in the unfolding of it.
Fincher’s poised and tranquil pacing engages us from the start with Daisy ailing in modern day New Orleans--Katrina is on the horizon. Her daughter reads to her from Ben’s diary which becomes Pitt’s narration. We also see Ben’s birth in New Orleans at the end of World War I. He’s a sickly old creature in a young body. Reviled by his father, (Jason Flemyng) he’s abandoned, left in a resting home, raised there by elders, most notably Queenie, played by Taraji P. Henson who’s exquisite performance is imparted with a graceful ease and confidence that resounds like a symphony. Queenie, who is African-American, wants to give Ben wisdom to seemingly shield him from the harsh realities of what is to come.
What is to come is Ben’s meeting with Daisy, the woman he spends his life loving. We sense the palpable transience of their love in an uncanny meeting when she is very young and he is very old, and then they part ways. Ben fashions a career on a tugboat, goes to war--there is a masterful war sequence--comes to know his father, and even has a spicy affair. Suddenly, he’s a strapping young man with the world at his fingertips. As Ben and Daisy come closer to fully realizing their love, we sense both their fear and their longing--when they finally do it’s a liberating moment. They’re at their heyday of physical splendor. Yet, they’re emotionally vulnerable and don’t want to be. Just as Ben seizes love wholeheartedly, he becomes profoundly overwhelmed by how elusive time is to him. More and more we see him becoming less himself.
The narrative resounds with courage and joy, curiosity and wisdom. A story that potentially could be humdrum and comic has instead--in the hands of Fincher and Roth--become deeply contemplative, elegantly heartwarming and candidly heart-wrenching. It enhances our experience and makes us feel and think. It will surely endure.