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'MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA'
SPIKE LEE AND TUSCANY DON'T MIX
By Sean Chavel
Quite unusual for him but in this case true, director Spike Lee seems lost out of his territory. Miracle at St. Anna is a World War II battle picture, a murder mystery, a racial divide exploration, a lofty salvation treatise - all told in clunky episodes. Everything is protracted for its own sake, as if the film was trying to use length to cover up how basic some of the plot elements are. The only fresh perspective is Lee's interest in honoring the black servicemen who fought the Italian countryside in WWII.
Among the soldiers are Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso and Omar Benson Miller who wholly entrusts himself in God and religion. They are part of the all-black 92nd Division Buffalo Soldiers stationed in Tuscany, Italy. They are viewed as an experimental platoon, as voiced by General Almond (Robert John Burke) who is a cemented bigot. Many of the white superior officers treat the Buffalo platoon as a bunch of incompetents, or worse, as expendables.
In the first battle scene set over a Tuscan river, Nazi trucks blast the voice of Axis Sally over a loudspeaker, to entice the platoon to surrender. Axis Sally is a seductive voice, using promises of food and shelter as well as hospitality, as incentives for surrender. And on the flip side, Axis Sally uses dogma such as asking the soldiers why would they fight for a country that has a history of segregating and enslaving black folk? The majority the Buffalo Soldiers know it is just an Adolph Hitler ploy, but they are still tripped up by that voice. Then the Nazis unleash heavy artillery fire. Some black soldiers retreat, some lunge forward. A white commanding officer on the American side chooses to order mortar fire onto his own soldiers coordinates because he doesn't believe in the reports given by his own black sergeants. What we get is a terrible, if powerful, depiction of American soldiers killing American soldiers.
At this point of heightened drama, we think that Spike Lee is going to do something with World War II that hasn't yet been done on film. But no. The film takes on significant distractions. The four principle soldiers in the cast stumble upon an abandoned Italian boy (Matteo Sciabordi) who is frightened and without a parental guardian. Angelo, the Italian boy, takes a particular liking to Sam Train (Miller), the religious one, and is adopted the nickname "The Chocolate Giant." Angelo and the Chocolate Giant will be glued together for the rest of the film.
Somehow trapped behind enemy lines, our four heroes find refuge in an Italian village. But the Nazis have the entire region surrounded, so it's only a matter of time - a long time in film length - before we get to more battle cries. The Italian villagers are vulnerable targets of the Nazis, too, with the Italian boy as the primary sympathy device.
Lee has a jump-around narrative that goes from one plodding dialogue scene to the next, one group of characters to the next. We get the Italian humble locals as well as the Italian fascists, the evil Nazis and the good Nazi that wants to defect. But there are lots and lots of talk on what to do with Angelo, the Italian boy. It's the audience that has to realize that they've not stumbled into a World War II saga set in Tuscany, what they've done is stumble into a Land of Melodrama. It's a debate between optimistic black soldiers and cynical black soldiers about what to do with the boy. Beautiful Italian Renata (Valentina Cervi) is a maternal reasoning voice. She's also so beautiful that Stamps and Bishop, the Luke and Ealy characters, both want to hit on her. Racial heat encounters, love triangles, and a cute Italian boy. And a stock-up of other unthreaded storylines.
What's missing is Lee's energetic camerawork and rocket pacing that's evident of his other work. This is a shapelessly structured film that cannot engross its audience because it jumps from one listless subplot to the next. The film also has a framing device of a missing statue head and a cold-blooded murder set in 1983 New York by one of the surviving black soldiers - what did the past have to do with this peculiar death and discovery in the present? It's a lumbering movie at 2 hours and 40 minutes, setting little distinction for itself as a WWII history saga and requiring a huge leap of faith to eat up its miracle pay-off.
In fact, if there's any miracle at all it's that Spike Lee's 4-hour "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem In Four Acts," made two years ago, was a spellbinding film that you couldn't tear your eyes off. For a complete four hours! And now with "Miracle at St. Anna," audiences' attention will likely depart very, very early. You might need some company if you attempt to get through Lee's patronizing melodrama. Here's some company: buttered popcorn, coca-cola, goobers, red vines, bon bons, junior mints. Go ahead and make those two trips to the concession stand. You won't miss anything that you hadn't already got a gist of five minutes earlier.
'THE LUCKY ONES'
THE ILLUSION OF COMING HOME
By Sean Chavel
Every war gets a movie about soldiers coming home. The Lucky Ones has Tim Robbins ("Mystic River"), Rachel McAdams ("The Notebook") and Michael Peña ("World Trade Center") as three soldiers returning from Iraq. They are strangers to each other, stranded at an airport after their connecting flights are canceled, all agreeing to rent a minivan to take them to their final destinations. Once on their route, they are surprised to find that their homecoming is less satisfying than what they had anticipated.
By the second evening, while on time-out at a cocktail lounge, they get themselves into a brawl. You expect at this point for this film to dig deep into the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) issues that are currently being discussed in our soldier disillusionment news headlines today. Instead, the film throws itself into more irrelevant disputes. It teeters off into a road mishap comedy, like a "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" with a military servicemen pride message just underneath. The music score is rat-a-tat drivel, the kind you hear in forced screwball comedies.
The mish-mashed tonality makes this one unlucky picture. Individual episodes do work, such as Robbins' home arrival to a wife who is less than pleased to see him. But we also get laborious detours to a Church mass, a high society champagne and roses gala, and a stint in a jailhouse - plot stops that are less accidental than they are contrived. The central plot fillers are actually worse: McAdams inherits a $20,000 guitar from a deceased soldier, and Robbins just happens to need the same amount to get his kid into a Stanford University enrollment. And Peña has an impotence problem that started at the end of his tour that just might be corrected by a visit with a prostitute.
Along the way, the three of them get asked about what it was like over there. Simply put, the soldiers say they were just trying to stay alive. None of them want to go back to duty (Robbins doesn't have to, his tour is finished), but the other two are on leave for thirty days before they have to redeploy. Which leads to some hazy and uncertain dialogue on whether McAdams and Peña want to defect or not. The film's primary insistence however is to ensure these three never split from each other for too long. They may have different homes to go to, but the film can't bear to see them go their own ways.
The performances by the lead three are just fine, as the three of them wrestle with family estrangement, money scarcity, job shortages and more. You can certainly tell that the actors did their research. But the film doesn't make a difference with its audience. A film with such confused intentions and unrealistic destinations just ends up signifying something dubious. Iraq has got its coming home drama, but this one has no real impact.
The film was directed by Neil Burger, whose previous credit was the romantic mystery "The Illusionist" with Edward Norton. It's hard to believe that Burger went from making a lavish period film, with those evocative sepia-tones that recalled early 1900's Vienna, to this blandly photographed road picture "The Lucky Ones." What a slump by this talented young filmmaker.
'NIGHTS IN RODANTHE'
LAST SPARKS
By Sean Chavel
Richard Gere, Diane Lane and tearjerker seems to be a packagable Hollywood formula. These two actors have played middle-aged crisis and forlorn and heartbroken so many times they could teach semester length classes on it. Of course, heartbroken early and then second chance rebirth is the arc. Nights in Rodanthe, based on sap-meister Nicholas Spark's novel, is the kind of romantic melodrama that wears its heart on its sleeve. Yet Sparks' stories make a connection with his audiences because he understands the forlorn heart so well, and understands soul-searching too. Sparks knows the formula and he knows how to milk it for the best of its worth.
At the beginning, Paul (Gere) and Adrienne (Lane) are strangers. Paul is a big city doctor dealing with a recent tragedy that took place in the operating room. Adrienne is a mother of two dealing with a cheating husband who wants to return home after seven months' absence (the husband got sick of his girlfriend fling and now wants to be redeemed). They meet in Rodanthe, along the Outer Banks of North Carolina with the sea breeze an open window away. Adrienne is temp managing an inn for her friend. Paul, hot and bothered by personal issues, is the sole guest for the entire weekend.
It's hurricane season, thus, the reason for vacancies. It's also falling in love season; these characters just don't know it yet. Adrienne's duty is to pick up here and there and cook for Paul in the eating hours. Paul is a mysterious loner of few words, seemingly self-punishing for some reason, wary of opening up, and unacknowledged of Adrienne's strained hospitality. Once the cork opens on a bottle of wine, the flames of desire ignite in their eyes. Truth in criticism: I'm embellishing just a bit.
Onto Paul's disclosure of issues, he's up in Rodanthe to meet the husband of the woman who died in surgery. No patient of his ever suffered a fatality, and he's still disarrayed. The husband of the deceased is played by Scott Glenn, who brings his emotional baggage to the table. In addition, it seems like Paul's marriage fell apart and his relationship with his doctor son (James Franco) has become estranged. Christopher Meloni, also good as brute and selfish, plays the scoundrel husband to Adrienne. And her two children seem unruly and bratty since the break-up of mom and dad. On this particular weekend, though, a hurricane storm does hit Rodanthe after all. This adds more melodrama to the occasion.
The hurricane is of course a big turning point - it's the time for all passions to be unleashed. What else to do while covering up inside? But the temperaments of the characters are what softens. Once Paul gets past his self-punishing guilt, he becomes, uh, Richard Gere! Suave, handsome and romantically attuned graying man! Lane does sexy and yearning mom better than any actress in Hollywood, moistening her eyes with craving whenever she's ready for a sudden embrace. These two are ready for each other.
Once Paul and Adrienne have accepted each other, and love blooms, they are free for a romance montage. There's a particular scene on a bridge by the water at night in which Gere and Lane are beautifully backlit and shadowed with exquisite photo-glamour sumptuousness. There's some discreet love-making from the upper chest up, and then some hugs, some tears of joy, some old-fashioned thoughtful dialogue between two adults in love, and maybe some more. And then there's this wonderful scene where Paul starts up his car, ready to return home to family and job, and then stops. He jumps out and runs back to Adrienne and tells her how much she means to him, and reminds her when they'll meet again. Such genuineness and sincerity. And heart on its sleeve. This is the kind of thing a man does to make a woman's heart swoon.
This is nevertheless a shameless tearjerker, a movie that requires implausible hardships to prevent Paul and Adrienne from achieving ultimate ecstasy - at least not enough too soon. They are separated for an agreed length of months so they can settle in with their professions, their family obligations, etc. There are constant love letters exchanged in a sublime extended montage. If you ever wanted lessons on the essence of good love letter writing, this movie's third act has exemplary romantic passages. It might be considered sap to the romantically challenged viewers out there, but it's beautifully composed sap.
'EAGLE EYE'
ENEMIES OF THE STATE
By Sean Chavel
The clock is ticking in Eagle Eye for its average citizens Shia LeBeouf and Michelle Monaghan whom are thrown into an imminently dangerous situation. As Jerry Shaw and Rachel Holloman, they are on the run - not away from but towards a fate they can't escape - dupes that become unwitting enemies of the state. A mysterious voice contacts their cell phones and blackmails them to carry out a very sinister, but until the third act passages, indeterminate act of treason. It's a deadly game of Simon Says.
Taking on the approach of a virtual surveillance thriller, the mysterious voice is always accurately trace Jerry and Rachel's location. They are tracked by cell phones, surveillance cameras, Internet and ATM activity. Jerry is put in custody early on pinned with suspicion of terrorism, interrogated by FBI agent Thomas Morgan (Billy Bob Thornton), until omnipresent Simon Says orchestrates an escape for Jerry who would have been better off staying in custody. On the loose, Jerry has to adhere to a series of instructions that become increasingly dangerous. When he tries to switch subway trains as an act of disobedience, the train is derailed. Shaken but still compliant, Jerry continues to jump through Simon Says' hoops.
Then Jerry meets Rachel whose little boy is a death target unless she carries out her instructions. The big apprehensive moment occurs when Jerry and Rachel have to commandeer a steel briefcase with a ticking countdown (a bomb?), but in fear of their own lives, our two scapegoat heroes hurry towards their destination. The FBI is constantly on their tail, as demonstrated in a number of high-speed chases that are bombastically staged. In some scenes, there is a viewer's lag time in figuring out whether it's the FBI's cars getting banged up or our heroes' car. The action POW and kaboom in "Eagle Eye" is a hodgepodge of visual disorientation. (Trigger-finger editing worked in the "Bourne" action series, but not here where there's no coherent chain of images). In response, Jerry and Rachel huff and puff in the scary moments.
If the action scenes actually go into uncontrollable spasms, the behind-the-scenes intelligence work by various agents is more moderately acted and directed. Rosario Dawson plays an Air Force investigator who is more sympathetic to Jerry and Rachel, questioning their possible innocence. Michael Chiklis is the Defense Secretary of the United States who is wary of a secret military project that may have gone haywire. Enmeshed in all this chaos is a supercomputer that needs some serious tweaking - imagine the Hal 9000 computer from "2001: A Space Odyssey" gone berserk on Earth.
What is thrust upon Jerry and Rachel is not just blackmail but battling technology itself which is an invasive Big Brother tampering with all human lives. What's cool is how this flick brands itself as a paranoid surveillance thriller. What's not cool is the Shaggy Dog plot twist halfway through - you know, it's a meaningless reveal that has followed a needless pursuit. So really, what was the point of holding up the Armored Truck? "Eagle Eye" eventually doesn't stick to the plot essentials, and the more it tries to wow us in its climax the less engaging it all becomes.
"Eagle Eye" is ludicrously entertaining and likely to spike a few pleasurable gasps. But it also twists its own arm to offer cop-outs and forced happy endings. Let's all exclaim at once: Oh, come on! Give audience intelligence a break. A few clichés are okay, in order to rev the plot engine, but "Eagle Eye" hammers itself down with way too many clichés.
Sex Drive
By Theodore Ott
Sex Drive may be the quirky little picture that can. And if it, in fact, becomes that, the reason will be the almost unbelievably painstaking attention that was lavished on its every facet. You can start with a very funny script that is sharp and employs an economy of words rarely seen. There is no throw-away dialogue, there are no scenes put there to fill in a time requirement. Everything there is there because it is needed to develop the characters and move the storyline along.
The casting is in a league all its own. Sean Anders, the writer/director has a keen eye for visual comedy and for the value of casting against what is Hollywood's version of type. I mean, pudgy, short Clark Duke as the quintessential ladies' man and hunk, who can play a woman's body like Heifetz with a Stradivarius? Who would believe that? Anyone who sees this movie, that's who!
Seth Green as Ezekial, a young with-it Amish guy? As a young hip dude, sure! But, Amish? Green makes it work and sucks you right in. He's so young that it's easy to forget how long he's been in the biz. But, he's obviously been paying attention and delivers a richly comedic turn.
Then, there's James Marsden fresh from his triumphs already this year in Enchanted and Hairspray as Rex the older brother of Josh Zuckerman's Ian in a total reversal of type. And, he just simply suckers you along and makes you (1) believe it, and (2) develop a rooting interest in their interaction without hating him in the process.
The story is that Zuckerman's character is eighteen years old and about to begin college and still a virgin. He doesn't want to arrive at college while still in that classification. In fact, he's desperate not just to 'lose' his virginity, but to escape it like running from a jail cell. He's hooked up with a hot chick, Katrina Bowden's aptly named Ms. Tasty, on the 'net and needs to get the several hundred miles from his home to where she's impatiently awaiting him with plans of her own. His problem is that like many a young guy trying to impress a girl, he hasn't been totally accurate in describing himself or, more importantly, his ride. Alright, he outright lied! But, don't be hard on him any young guy in his straits would, too.
Zuckerman, when boasting about his non-existent car, was describing his older brother's car and that's what his sexy female correspondent is all revved up to see. That brother would sooner cut off his arm than lend him the car. But, fortunately big bro is leaving town for the weekend with the 'rents. And, since he won't be home and driving that beauty himself. . . .
What ensues is a classic road picture brought hilariously up to date by Anders and his writing partner John Morris. Of course, Zuck-erman's life is complicated by his being in heavy 'like' with his best pal, Amanda Crew's Felicia. Zuckerman's Ian would frankly prefer to make an easy transition into a relationship with the beautiful Tiffany, but the girl, who is very much aware of his feelings wants to keep their friendship alive and fears it would be the first casualty were they to go to the next level and become 'friends with privileges' or worse, to go even further and become dedicated lovers. Anybody who's ever lost a friendship because sex became a part of that mix can understand her worries.
But, being understanding and considerate is not solving Ian's core problem, ridding himself of his unwanted virginity. Neither is it getting him any closer to Ms Tasty and her promises of the kind of interaction that will make for a lifelong memory.
If you can imagine Animal House meets It Happened One Night, you'd be in the ballpark for Sex Drive. Yes, it really is that funny! At least to a guy. I'm not sure how your date will take to it, but you're going to love it! This is one very funny film and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see it develop a cult following. This is, after all, a first class guy film and how often do those come down the pike?