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Reviews
Here are the
show's weekly reviews of theatrical releases and DVD picks. The
films are listed alphabetically by title. Titles beginning with
numerical values (i.e. 16 Blocks) are listed in the Numbers
section. Foreign films are listed according to the American title
under which they were marketed.
G
Garage
Days
Directed by: Alex Proyas
Premise: A story of a
rock band trying to make it big.
What Works: The film
addresses a lot of the clichés of getting-the-band-together stories but
puts a leash on them. For instance there are drugs, but not too many
drugs. There is sex, but not too much sex. There is an incompetent
manager, but he is competent and human enough that he keeps his job. The
elements typical in this type of genre are presented and included but
controlled so that they feel real and do not become clichéd.
What Doesn’t: The main
character of Freddy (Kick Gurry) is not written well enough is some
spots. It is essential in the picture that we feel the agony and
frustration of trying to hold the band together through him, but the
film never completely accomplishes that. Also some of the romantic
storylines actually distract from the main plotline rather than enhance
it.
DVD extras: Audio
commentary, deleted scenes, backstage pass, cast/crew interviews, and
outtakes.
Bottom Line: This was a
surprising film to get for Proyas, who is known for dark, edgy genre
films like The
Crow and I,
Robot. It is a funny, upbeat film for fans of rock and roll.
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Garden
State
Directed by: Zach Braff
Premise: Andrew (Zach
Braff) returns to his home state of New Jersey and meets a carefree
young woman (Natalie Portman).
What Works: The film is
very charming. Braff and Portman work very well together and give their
romance a quirky authenticity. Some of the film’s best moments are
Andrew’s interactions with his former high school friends and other
residents. The film captures the awkwardness and outsider nature of the
prodigal son in way that is fresh because of the color of those
characters.
What Doesn’t: The
film’s prodigal son model makes things a little predictable and Andrew
is the least interesting character in the film. The conclusion is not
entirely satisfying because it does not resolve the relationship between
Braff and Portman's characters.
DVD extras: Commentary
tracks, deleted scenes, featurette, outtakes, and bloopers.
Bottom Line: Despite its
flaws, Zach Braff has written and directed a gem of a movie. It is not
the most brilliant or original picture but it is refreshing and it does
have some genuine emotions and insight.
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Get
Smart (2008)
Directed by: Peter Segal
Premise: An adaptation of the 1960s
television show. Well meaning but awkward CONTROL agent Maxwell Smart
(Steve Carell) pairs with the highly skilled but cynical Agent 99 (Anne
Hathaway) to prevent a terrorist organization from launching a nuclear
attack on the United States.
What Works: Get Smart is a very good
adaptation, taking the premise and reinterpreting it for a contemporary
audience. The film faces a significant problem in that there have been a
lot of espionage spoofs featuring bumbling spies like Top
Secret! Austin
Powers, Undercover
Brother, and Spy
Hard. Get Smart sidesteps this predicament by giving
Maxwell Smart a little more credit, making him more intelligent and more
coordinated than he was in the television series. The film also plays
the threat intelligently, especially in the final act, going for action
sequences right out of a Jerry Bruckheimer film and then combining it
with slapstick humor where appropriate. This makes the film less of a
spoof and catapults it into a league with films like Ghostbusters
or The
Devil Wears Prada, comedies with a credible dramatic backbone.
The casting is great; the actors include genuine thespians who are able
to emote and do comedy and this brings a lot of credibility to the
story. Steve Carell’s likeable but awkward sensibility fits perfectly
with the new conception of Maxwell Smart and Anne Hathaway is terrific
as Agent 99, making her alternately tough but also vulnerable. Together,
Carell and Hathaway make a great team both as buddies in action and as a
comedic odd couple. Other cast members include Alan Arkin as The Chief,
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Agent 23, and Terrance Stamp as
Siegfried, the leader of terrorist organization KAOS. Arkin and Johnson
gets some great lines and contribute to the comedy but one of the keys
to the film is Stamp, who plays the role straight as though he were the
villain of a James Bond film. This sells the seriousness of the threat
amid all of the comedy and maintains the credibility of the film.
What Doesn’t: Viewers should be aware
that this is a PG-13 film and in parts it abandons some of the family
friendly tone of the television series. Get Smart is not raunchy
like a Judd Apatow film and this slightly edgier material does help the
film, but fans of the original series might find a few bits of dialogue
jarring.
Bottom Line: Get Smart is a terrific
piece of entertainment. It ought to satisfy fans of the television
series but it will also reach new audiences as well. The film isn’t
going to win anyone an Oscar but it's all about having fun and for that
purpose it’s a great picture.
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Ghost
Rider
Directed by: Mark Steven Johnson
Premise: An adaptation of the Marvel comic
book character. Motorcycle daredevil Johnny Blaze (Nicholas Cage) makes
a pact with Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda) to act as a messenger for the
devil in exchange for invincible riding skills. When another demon (Wes
Bentley) attempts to unleash a secret den of souls, Blaze must protect
this secret or some unspecified catastrophe will result.
What Works: The filmmakers behind Ghost Rider must have realized early on that they were going to make
a bad film and so the actors and screenwriter have smartly injected as
much humor as possible. This helps the movie considerably, especially
throughout the early part of film where very little happens. Sam Elliot
is a welcome addition to the cast, as his voice and authority lend the
film a little class.
What Doesn’t: Despite the humor, it is
difficult to defend a film so blatantly stupid. The demons of the film
are laughable and pose no threat to the hero. Unlike the
animated Spawn television series (but like the
disappointing live action film of the same character) Ghost
Rider is not interested in any of the possible conflicts or
implications of a hero coming from Hell. Instead, it is just an excuse
to use fire and brimstone imagery with no regard for the meaning of that
imagery. When Blaze turns into the Ghost Rider, a flaming skeleton who
rides a motorcycle that looks like it was pimped out by Leatherface, the
special effects are very sloppy. During the action sequences there is
plenty of flash and shots of Ghost Rider zooming from place to place,
but why he goes where he does and why he is going there are rarely
addressed. The actors sleepwalk through the movie, especially Eva Mendez
who plays’ Blaze’s long lost love.
Bottom Line: Ghost
Rider is about a man who turns into a flaming skeleton. That ought
to tell you something about the nature of the film. If it were not for
the humor, the film would be impossible to sit through.
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Ghostbusters
Directed by: Ivan Reitman
Premise: A group of paranormal
investigators goes into business as a ghost elimination unit in New York
City. As the their business takes off, the Ghostbusters uncover a
growing threat that could destroy New York.
What Works: Ghostbusters is
successful combination of horror and comedy, mixing scares and thrills
with gags and jokes. The casting of the film is perfect. Saturday
Night Live alums Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, and Harold Ramis star
along with Ernie Hudson as the four Ghostbusters and the roles play to
each man’s talents, with Aykroyd as a paranoid but good-natured
paranormal enthusiast, Ramis as the straight faced brain behind the
unit, Murray as the hustler who can sell their services, and Hudson as
the blue collar everyman trying to cope with his new job. Among these
four, Ghostbusters features some of Murray’s best work of his
career, and he delivers some classic lines of comedic dialogue. As a
film shot in New York, the picture is one of the best examples of using
the cityscape its advantage, including a lot of the local architecture
and other landmarks. This grounds and sells the far out premise of the
story by embedding the supernatural in the familiar and the real, and
combined with the performances by the lead actors as well as the
supporting performances, namely Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis, and
Annie Potts, Ghostbusters melds fantasy and reality in a very
convincing way. The film also combines its humor and its horror
together, using jokes to deflate tension and set the audience up for new
scares. While Ghostbusters may be considered primarily a comedy,
it does not shy away from the more monstrous elements of the story. This
gives the film a solid dramatic foundation that pits characters the
audience cares about against a worthy and frightening threat, making the
characters grow and change in ways that make Ghostbusters a terrific
story about heroism.
What Doesn’t: Some of the special
effects, namely the matte work, do not hold up as well decades after its
original release. They are still effective and gets the point across to
the audience, but contemporary viewers may notice some of the forced
perspectives.
DVD extras: The most recent release of Ghostbusters
is the Double Feature Gift Set, packaged with Ghostbusters
II, and includes a scrapbook, featurettes, deleted scenes, audio
commentary, animated episodes, photos, storyboards, and multi-angle
features.
Bottom Line: Ghostbusters
is one of the most successful horror comedies of all time. It combines
horror and humor in ways that enhance rather than cheapen the story and
features some of the most quotable dialogue to come out of the 1980s.
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The
Golden Compass
Directed by: Chris Weitz
Premise: In a fantasy world where each
human has an animal counterpart that constitutes his or her soul, a
young girl (Dakota Blue Richards) is given a magical talisman that is
sought by The Magisterium, an elite organization that controls
civilization.
What Works: The film has a unique mix of
characters, including a cowboy (Sam Elliot), a witch (Eva Green),
Egyptian royalty (Jim Carter), and a talking polar bear (voice of Ian
McKellen) and the environment is an interesting mix of new and old
technology.
What Doesn’t: The Golden Compass
has been designed to follow on the heels of 2005’s The
Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe but
the material suffers from following this model. The story and themes of The
Golden Compass are far more mature and sophisticated than those in Narnia
and would have been much better envisioned following a look used in the
original Star
Wars or Blade
Runner. The story has more characters than it can balance in a
two-hour film and each supporting cast member enters the story only to
stay on the periphery, rarely engaging with the heroine and rarely doing
anything of substance. The journey of the young heroine is devoid of
cost, revelation, goals, or accomplishment and the story lacks any
foreseeable endgame for the characters to reach for. It is unclear why
the Magesterium fears the golden compass or why this little girl is so
exceptional to be the subject of a prophecy. The polar bear fight, which
ought to be one of the major set pieces of the film, is an apt microcosm
for the rest of the picture; there is no apparent story reason for the
fight, nothing is gained by it, and what starts as a fun idea quickly
becomes ridiculous, peaking in a ludicrous climax. The film follows the
same pattern, establishing interesting ideas in its opening but never
expanding upon them, just restating those same ideas over and over
again. The story ends up being a collection of disconnected events that
end in a climax that comes out of nowhere and does not really resolve
anything. The film simply ends with nothing accomplished and huge holes
are left in the narrative.
Bottom Line: The Golden Compass is
not a very good film. The plot is disconnected, the journey leads
nowhere, and the film gets stupid when it should be inspiring. The
picture aspires to The Chronicles of Narnia and The
Empire Strikes Back, but its much closer to Eragon
and Attack
of the Clones.
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Gone
Baby Gone
Directed by: Ben Affleck
Premise: An adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s
novel. A little girl is kidnapped and her mother (Amy Ryan) recruits a
private investigator (Casey Affleck) to work with the local police find
her.
What Works: Gone Baby Gone borrows a
lot in style from Mystic
River, another Lehane adaptation, but this is to the film’s
credit, as the story shares the same kind of characters, locations, and
themes. Like Mystic River, the characters of the film walk the
tricky line between trying to do the right thing and following the
rules. In Gone Baby Gone, Casey Affleck’s character finds this
line constantly shifting and his unwavering attempt to maintain his own
sense of righteousness is constantly being challenged by characters on
all sides. The film treats this very smartly. Corrupt police officers
are not simply bad or greedy people, but individuals who are frustrated
with a system that lets heinous criminals go, and in their attempts to
bring about justice the authorities find their own righteousness is
compromised. The acting in Gone Baby Gone is very good,
especially by Casey Affleck as an embattled private detective, Amy Ryan
as the drug addicted mother, and Ed Harris as a passionate police
detective. Gone Baby Gone
deals with dark and disturbing subject matter, including violence
against children, drug abuse, and pedophilia, and director Ben Affleck
shows a great deal of courage and taste in handling this content. The
film does not water it down but does give just enough detail to avoid
being exploitative and roots the scenes in the horror of the survivors
rather than in the joy of the perpetrator.
What Doesn’t: Although the clues leading
up to the film’s climax are laid out well, the final revelation is a
stretch of credibility. Also, Gone Baby Gone has a troubling
finale that opens more issues than it closes. It is thematically
consistent with the film but it is not entirely satisfying because some
of the key issues are left unresolved.
Bottom Line: Gone Baby Gone does a
lot right and despite the weakness of the conclusion, it’s a very good
film.
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The
Good German
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Premise: In post World War II Germany, an
American military journalist (George Clooney) is tangled in a murder
investigation involving his former lover (Cate Blanchette) and his
driver (Tobey Maguire).
What Works: Steven Soderbergh is often
regarded for his visual style and The Good German is a great
example of that. Shot in black and white, Soderbergh attempts to invoke
hardboiled detective stories and film noir pictures and in its design
the film succeeds.
What Doesn’t: Despite its visual savvy, The
Good German is not a particularly good film. The mystery story
imitates pictures like The
Maltese Falcon but it is never really compelling. Despite
considerable effort, Blanchette’s femme fatale role does not have the
kind of ambiguousness that makes characters like hers work in films like
this. The main inspiration of The Good German is Casablanca,
but The Good German does not have the sharp dialogue, rich
texture, or subtle character development that makes Casablanca
one of the most highly regarded films of all time. Traffic
aside, one of Soderbergh’s major weakness throughout his filmography
has been his attempts to be seedy or deal with the taboo. He simply does
not do this very well with this kind of material; compare The Good
German to David Fincher’s Se7en
and the weakness becomes clear.
Bottom
Line: The
Good German is another tribute film to a bygone genre or style. What
plagues many of these tribute movies is that they depend too much on
imitating the past rather than translating that past style into a
contemporary form. Where Kill
Bill and Raiders
of the Lost Ark took elements from their inspirations and then
combined them with contemporary filmmaking sensibilities, The Good
German fails to do that latter and ends up a weak imitation of its
predecessors rather than a tribute.
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The
Good Girl
Directed by: Miguel Arteta
Premise: A convenience
store clerk (Jennifer Aniston) frustrated with her life begins an affair
with a new employee (Jake Gyllenhaal) and turns her sense of right and
wrong upside down.
What Works: The Good
Girl is a very effective film. The story uses very familiar
characters and situations and presents them in a new way. Admirably, the
film expands upon the stereotypes of the characters and creates sympathy
for nearly every character. The stand out performance of the film is
Aniston, who strays very far from the roles she is usually associated
with and gives a nuanced but very real portrayal of a woman in a midlife
crisis. There is some wonderful black humor to The Good Girl.
Although the film will often be found in the comedy section of
the local video store, the story is serious enough that it ought to be
categorized in the drama section.
What Doesn’t: The
storyline is a bit by-the-numbers as bored wife meets exciting quirky
new guy, and has hurtful choices placed in front of her. This kind of
story has been done a lot and there are not many surprises in the plot,
but The Good Girl is really more about character. Those who are
expecting the usual sarcastic, hip Aniston character should be aware
that this film does not provide that.
DVD extras: Deleted
scenes, alternate ending, commentary track.
Bottom Line: The Good
Girl is a diamond in the rough that really deserves more attention.
Although the plot does not deviate much from its formula, it does
present interesting characters with textured portrayals.
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Good
Night, and Good Luck
Directed by: George Clooney
Premise: The true story
of CBS commentator Edward R. Murrow’s (David Strathairn) conflict with
Senator Joseph McCarthy.
What Works: Good
Night, and Good Luck has a great look to it. The film has been shot
in black and white and includes commercials from the time period to give
the film an authentic 1950s flavor. McCarthy appears in the form of
stock footage from the period, which gives it an added sense of reality.
Strathairn’s performance as Murrow is dead on and it captures the
man’s intelligence and his dry sense of humor.
What Doesn’t: Viewers
who are not as familiar with the period might get lost in some of the
references and the film is going to be more entertaining to those who
have an understanding of broadcast news.
Bottom Line: Good
Night, and Good Luck is a great film about the responsibility and
function of journalism in society. It has a contemporary urgency but
never gets too didactic.
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The
Good Shepherd
Directed by: Robert De Niro
Premise: The story of Edward Bell (Matt
Damon) and the origin of the Central Intelligence Agency from World War
II through the Bay of Pigs operation.
What Works: The film’s structure is
compelling and it makes an interesting history of the intelligence
community, particularly in the early years. It successfully cuts between
the origins of the CIA and the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs disaster in
ways that allow the two parts to comment on one another. The story has
some interesting but subtle commentary on the familial transference of
power in the parallels between the lives of Bell and his son (Eddie
Redmayne), who also joins the intelligence field.
What Doesn’t: The Good Shepherd is
troubled by a desire to cover more scope than can possibly be addressed
in one film. Many A-list actors, including Alec Baldwin, William Hurt,
Joe Pesci, and Robert De Niro, are given supporting roles that do not go
anywhere and make the film a parade of cameos rather than a collection
of characters interacting with each other. The Good Shepherd is
primarily a biopic of Bell and how life in the field of counter
intelligence grates on his personal life. While that is conveyed, there
is little sense of what is lost or at stake of being lost. Bell’s
marriage is depicted as miserable from the beginning and the further
strain that his job puts on it just makes the relationship with his wife
(Angelina Jolie) worse with no rise and fall of emotion. In Bell’s
relationships with his son the problem is reversed and the son loves his
absentee father to a fault with no challenge. The picture spends a great
deal of its present-tense story attempting to discover the source and
identity of a mysterious piece of film delivered to Bell after the Bay
of Pigs disaster. Although it links to other story elements, when the
mystery is finally revealed it is very much a let down and does not
allow for much of an ending. The conclusion of the family story has very
little to do with the spy story, except by contrivance.
Bottom Line: The Good Shepherd goes
too far and tries too hard and in the end it comes up short in both of
its narrative goals. The picture could have been great, but it has too
little of anything and ends up with a lot of interesting fragments that
do not add up to a cohesive whole.
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The
Gospel
Directed by: Rob Hardy
Premise: An up and coming
hip-hop star (Boris Kodjoe) returns to his father’s church when the
parent develops health problems.
What Works: This
retelling of the prodigal son story has some very strong performances,
especially by Idris Elba as an egotistical preacher who is driven by
pride as much as faith. There are some other promising actors including
Kodjoe and Nona Gaye. The film includes musical cameos by Christian
performers and the music and its story will appeal to fans of that these
genres.
What Doesn’t: On a
technical level, the film leaves a lot to be desired. The sound quality
is poor and the dubbing is very noticeable in the musical sequences. The
storytelling in the opening of the film is very muddled and terribly put
together, which denies the narrative a strong foundation to build on,
although the film does get better halfway through. Some of the character
relationships meander and do not really move or they move too quickly.
Bottom Line: Like many
religious films, The Gospel is a film made for a specific
audience, and so it ends up preaching to the choir. Viewers who have
enjoyed films like Diary
of a Mad Black Woman might find this rewarding, but the film
cannot get past the technical problems and its weak script.
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Gracie
(2007)
Directed by: Davis Guggenheim
Premise: A true story of a female high
school student (Carly Schroeder) who tried out for the boys soccer team,
enabling Title IX and paving the way for future female athletes.
What Works: Gracie is a very good
example of the sports hero story. Although it is ostensibly about
soccer, Gracie is really about female adolescence and gender
identity, using the character’s burgeoning maturity and her
relationships with her family, with other girls, and with boys to gauge
and characterize her development. Like Rocky
and Raging
Bull, the film spends as much time on the protagonist’s
interpersonal relationships as it does on the training and sports
elements of the story and the two elements reinforce each other. Of
these relationships, Gracie’s relationships with her mother (Elisabeth
Shue) and her father (Dermot Mulroney) are most interesting because
Gracie is such a combination of the two and her tension with each of
them acts out the tensions in the marriage. The other element of Gracie
that is very interesting is the film’s development of the
character’s maturity and her emerging womanhood. The film does not
reduce Gracie to a girl acting like a boy, but makes her into a woman
attempting to compete in a man’s world. The film allows the character
to retain her femininity but also her dignity.
What Doesn’t: The film does not have the
polish of many other films of its kind such as Invincible.
Also, although Gracie does the sports story well, it is very
cliché. The clichés are forgivable because it does the formula so
well, but moviegoers who are looking for something more may be
disappointed.
Bottom Line: Although Gracie does
not do much that is original in the sports genre, it does do it very
well. The film gives its actors something to do besides play soccer and
contains deeper levels beyond athletic competition.
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The
Great Debaters
Directed by: Denzel Washington
Premise: A true story of Melvin B. Tolson (Denzel
Washington) a professor at Wiley College in the 1930s who formed a
debate team that used rhetoric and the spoken word to challenge Jim Crow
laws and eventually participate in the first interracial debate
tournament.
What Works: The Great Debaters is a
terrific example of a film that simultaneously adheres to genre
conventions to deliver crowd-pleasing entertainment while finding room
within those conventions to create a thoughtful story. Despite following
the formula of a sports film, including training montages, team
building, and a David and Goliath finale, the film reaches outside of
the confines of the school and the debate round. Like the best sports
films such as Rocky,
Friday
Night Lights, and Raging
Bull, The Great Debaters gives the act of competition
meaning and significance outside of the debate round. In this case, the
film places the debaters and their work in the historical context of the
Jim Crow south and the story links the student’s attempts to expand
their minds with the oppression exerted on them by a racist system. As a
result, the film puts much more at stake than just a trophy. Human
dignity, equality, and even the student’s lives are put at risk by
their actions. Like the plot, the characters of The Great Debaters
are given room within traditional roles to grow and expand beyond stereotypes. As the debate coach, Denzel Washington
gives the kind of strong performance audiences have come to expect from
him. At first it risks being just a phoned in repeat of his work in Remember
the Titans, but the script and Washington’s performance allow
the character greater flaws and much more complexity. The students,
played by Jurnee Smollett, Denzel Whitaker, and Nate Parker, are also
given a lot of room for growth. Denzel Whitaker in particular creates
some terrific scenes as a much younger man who is placed in between two
older students, comes to know and confront a racist world, and rotates
between opposing paternal figures: his coach played by Washington and
his father played by Forest Whitaker.
What Doesn’t: The story is rather
formulaic, following the format of most sports films while sliding in a
spoonful of Dead
Poet’s Society. While the actors playing students all do a
good job, Jurnee Smollett’s role seems disproportionately smaller than
her male counterparts. Smollett does a nice job with the material, but
compared to the material given to Parker and Whitaker, it’s a little
disappointing to see such a simplified female role in an otherwise
complex film.
DVD extras: The two disc collectors edition
includes a commentary track, a documentary, deleted scenes, and music
videos.
Bottom Line: The
Great Debaters is a great tribute to the power of reason and
oratorical skill. Despite a few shortcomings and a reliance on formula,
the film does that formula very well and is able to inject gravity and
substance into it, making the film a much better picture than the
typical sports story.
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Grindhouse
Directed by: Quentin Tarantino and Robert
Rodriguez
Premise: A recreation of the grindhouse
cinema experience of the 1970s. The film features two back-to-back full
length movies, Planet Terror (directed by Rodriguez) and Death
Proof (directed by Tarantino), plus trailers for fake horror films
stylized to look like the exploitation cinema of the 1970s and 80s,
running before and in between the two films.
What Works: Grindhouse is a very
interesting experiment in film and it achieves its goal to recreate the
grindhouse cinema experience on screen. Planet Terror and Death
Proof are very much like Roger Corman pictures of the 1970s both in
their story and in their style. Planet Terror involves a military
experiment gone awry, and a small American town is besieged by flesh
eating monsters. Death Proof is a road story about a killer using
his car to attack groups of young women. The films have no moral to
speak of; they are exercises in gratuitous violence, gore, and
unnecessary nudity and the films revel in that. Of the two features, Death
Proof is far better. The film resembles Kill
Bill in that it takes the useful elements of the past style but
combines those elements with contemporary sensibilities. The
presentation of the features has been fashioned to fit the grindhouse
look, including missing reels of footage, scratches and discolorations
on the print, and an intermission with movie trailers, creating an
overall experience that is fun in a nostalgic and self conscious way.
What Doesn’t: Audiences should be
prepared for what they are getting into. Neither of the movies are
themselves that great, even by the standards of their genres, although Death
Proof fares better than Planet Terror. The trouble is that
even if a filmmaker has created a self-consciously bad movie, as
Rodriguez has done, it is still a bad movie. As an attempt to recreate
the grindhouse experience, the film is intended as a social experience,
like going to see a midnight showing of The
Rocky Horror Picture Show. That is not bad, but the enjoyment of
the film will largely be dependent on who the viewers see the film with
and it will certainly play better in the theater than it will on home
video.
Bottom Line: Grindhouse is not so
much about its individual pieces as it is about the sum of its parts.
This is a unique and experimental picture, an attempt to manufacture a
cult film (and I mean that in a good way). Grindhouse is about
how we (used to) experience the movies and like Pulp
Fiction it is a love letter to pop culture.
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Grizzly
Man
Directed by: Werner Herzog
Premise: The film explores the life of
Timothy Treadwell, an ecology activist and Grizzly Bear enthusiast who
was killed by the animals he loved.
What Works: Grizzly Man went into
production after Treadwell’s death and the film constructs its
portrait out of interviews with his friends and family and the hours of
footage that Treadwell shot in the wild. The film skillfully edits these
resources together and creates a portrayal of a man that is sympathetic
but not sentimental.
What Doesn’t: Herzog attempts to bring us
to a conclusion through his narration, which gets a bit intrusive in
parts.
DVD extras: Documentary on the film’s
music.
Bottom Line: Grizzly Man is able to
accomplish a fairly complex portrayal of Treadwell, going beyond his naïve
image and uncovering the demons that put him in danger and led to his
death. The film is also able to examine the desire to impose human
qualities on nature and the potential danger that can cause.
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The
Grudge
Directed by: Takashi Shimizu
Premise: A day nurse
(Sarah Michelle Gellar) gets wrapped up in a curse transmitted by the
house of one of her patients.
What Works: The Grudge
has a very clear vision in terms of its look. The cinematography has a
visual savvy that walks the line between being organic and plastic and
the visual effects are integrated very well.
What Doesn’t: The
film’s story is a mess. The characters are dull and uninteresting.
Things do not come together until the very end; in essence, the
first act is in the last third of the picture. As a result, there is no
sense or rising action; the body of the film is exposition and feels
very disconnected. Worst of all, it is just not scary. There are a
couple of jumps but The Grudge lacks any atmosphere of dread that
would make it actually scary.
Bottom Line: The
Grudge may have some visual flair but as a horror film it ultimately
fails.
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The
Grudge 2
Directed by: Takashi Shimizu
Premise: This sequel to the
2004 film has three narratives. Aubrey (Amber Tamblyn) travels to
Japan to discover what happened to her sister (Sarah Michelle Gellar),
the protagonist of the first film, while Lacy (Sarah Roemer), an
American high school student studying abroad in Japan gets intertwined
in the mystery of the house. Meanwhile, a Chicago family is stricken by
the Japan-born curse.
What Works: The Grudge 2 has a
narrative that is very ambitious and for the most part the film succeeds
in merging them, cutting between the stories in ways that leave
satisfying cliffhangers and allow the resolution of one narrative to
effect and inform the others.
What Doesn’t: While the film’s
arrangement of the narrative is admirable, The Grudge 2 ends up
cutting each one short and cannot build much in the way of character. As
a result there is no dramatic weight to the jeopardy that the characters
find themselves in. The scares are repeats of the scenes in the first
film, particularly the shower sequence, but they are done with even less
atmosphere and to a less frightening effect. It is a wonder that a
sequel was made to The Grudge at all, as it was an inferior film
that was riddled with imitation and cliché. The pale, longhaired, wet
Asian ghost was interesting and frightening when first seen in The
Ring (or more properly, in The Ring’s Japanese
predecessor Ringu),
but by now this horror icon has outstayed its welcome to become a bore.
Bottom Line: Although an improvement over
the original film The Grudge 2 is not very scary and more
confusing than engaging.
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