MOVIE REVIEW
The Trip (2011)
Phil Fisk/IFC Films
One can never accuse Michael Winterbottom of making the same film twice, but “The Trip” comes pretty darn close. To be fair, the project is a six-episode BBC Two series edited down to feature length, but here you have Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon again as themselves à la “Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story.” The premise involves Mr. Coogan embarking on a cross-country journey to sample a few eclectic restaurants, and Mr. Brydon tagging along after Mr. Coogan’s American girlfriend drops out. Although fashioned after “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” what transpires instead is a British “Sideways” or “Old Joy” that substitutes celebrity impersonations for midlife crises — and not with stellar results.
Continue reading “Out in the Sticks, a Bish-Bash-Bosh Journey” »
MOVIE REVIEW
13 Assassins (2010)
Magnet Releasing
Takashi Miike has more than cemented his reputation as the sickest filmmaker known to man. Fans gush (and hurl) endlessly over each and every Miike defilement of all that is sacred, but rare is the mention of his fairly conventional and humble beginnings as Shohei Imamura’s assistant director. We actually got a sneak peek of his classical sensibility in “Audition” of all things, up to the point when the movie finally breached the boundaries of decency and earned cinematic infamy. His new film “13 Assassins,” though, is that true classical jidaigeki feudal epic that those who have seen “Audition” know he has in him. And Mr. Miike executes (pardon the pun) it so beautifully that it’s breathtaking.
Continue reading “In Feudal Japan, Rounding Up an Ocean’s 13” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010)
2011 Tribeca Film Festival
It’s a good thing that Tsui Hark has never jumped on the “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” bandwagon. Although to be fair, he probably didn’t see any point in impressing audiences outside Hong Kong after his pair of underwhelming Hollywood one-two punch Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicles, “Knock Off” and “Double Team.” Poor Mr. Tsui. Even Mr. Van Damme has since redeemed himself with “JCVD” (which incidentally features a character who is an obnoxious hot-shot Hong Kong filmmaker, presumably based on you-know-who). Will Hollywood learn to forgive?
Continue reading “Kung Fu Hustler” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Confessions (2010)
Japan Society
“Confessions,” the official Japanese entry in the Best Foreign Language Film category for this year’s Oscars, made the shortlist of nine but fell short of a nomination. Curiously, the film has much in common with the eventual victor, Denmark’s “In a Better World.” Each tackles the subjects of revenge and vigilantism through the delinquency of a fair-haired juvenile mastermind and his social-misfit accomplice. But whereas “In a Better World” offers a cop-out ending with no actual harm done, “Confessions” serves up shattering collateral damage far and wide.
Continue reading “Crucified on a Cross, Not Pitied” »
MOVIE REVIEW
My Piece of the Pie (2011)
Chantal Thomine-Desmazures/Studiocanal
With “My Piece of the Pie,” Cédric Klapisch seems to want to strike a happy medium between the hyperkinetic, post-E.U. “L’auberge espagnole” and the mature and hence snoozy “Paris.” The result recalls lighter Robert Guédiguian fare (think “Marius and Jeannette”), which entertains without offering anything of substance on its blue-collar protagonist disenfranchised by the global recession.
Continue reading “When the Job’s Away” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Incendies (2010)
EOne Films
Nominated for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film category, Denis Villeneuve’s “Incendies” uses Middle East unrest as a framework for classic Greek tragedy. What transpires is a brutal and compelling meditation on war, survival and reconciliation, even when its core Sophoclean aspect starts reaching really far into daytime soap territory.
Continue reading “Unearthing a Secret Carried to the Grave” »
MOVIE REVIEW
To Die Like a Man (2009)
Strand Releasing
“To Die Like a Man” opens with a Weerasethakulian prologue, during which two barrack buddies wander away from their regiment for a little butt sex in the woods. The remainder of the film, though, is purely Almodóvarian. And we’re not talking about the irreverent 1980s Almodóvar here — think the melodramatic, utterly joyless Almodóvar of the last two decades. It’s a story about an aging tranny (Fernando Santos) with a thieving junkie boy toy (Alexander David) and a fugitive biological son (Chandra Malatitch). When her implants cause her breasts to ooze blood, she decides to sashay into the countryside à la “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.” There are also occasional nods at Tsai Ming-liang and Todd Haynes, but we’re still mostly left in Almodóvar territory.
Continue reading “Mourn This Way” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Your Highness (2011)
Frank Connor/Universal Studios
It’s hard to fathom precisely how the makers of “Your Highness” may have pitched the film to the studio executives: Think “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” with excessive vulgarity and gore? Picture a live-action “Shrek” sans the lovable green ogre? Envision newly minted Oscar Swan queen-Mother Leia transforming herself into Fiona the Warrior Princess? Consider an Oscar co-host-daytime soap star-Yale professor dabbling in a film that revolves around a severed penis instead of a severed arm? And how about it all in a vehicle starring the next Seth Rogen–Zach Galifianakis?
Who in his or her right mind would green-light a movie with such a premise?
Continue reading “The Monty Half-Empty” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Insidious (2011)
FilmDistrict
With “Saw,” Australian director James Wan and screenwriter Leigh Whannell created arguably the most successful horror franchise of the last decade. Although the two brilliantly plotted all the twists and turns in that film, they evidently made a huge miscalculation by distancing themselves from five out of its six sequels. Instead of being branded as one-trick ponies, they now run the risk of being known as one-hit wonders.
Four years after the embarrassing double whammy of “Dead Silence” and “Death Sentence” (the latter Mr. Whannell did not pen and only starred in), the two finally redeem themselves with the respectable “Insidious.” And they have done so in spite of many obstacles, not the least of which is that the film’s first major twist is now an open secret. “It’s not the house that is haunted,” the trailers and posters explain. Thanks a lot, marketing geniuses.
Continue reading “A House Is Not a Host” »
MOVIE REVIEW
In a Better World (2010)
Morten Søborg/Sony Pictures Classics
Bullying sucks. And with so many young people around the country and possibly around the world having taken their own lives because they could no longer endure it, the subject is most certainly ripe for cinematic exploration. So the newly minted Oscar Best Foreign Language Film “In a Better World” looks at the phenomenon and all its manifestations: your classic schoolyard tormentor, the redneck fight-picker and an African tyrant who does unspeakably heinous things to young women.
Although this being a film by Susanne Bier, there is unfortunately a good measure of unneeded melodrama stirred in to trivialize the very important thematic concerns. Just as she took post-traumatic stress syndrome into daytime soap territory with the original “Brothers,” Ms. Bier peppers the multiple threads of bullying in “In a Better World” with various domestic dysfunctions involving widowers, divorcees and absent parents.
Continue reading “Something Is Rotten in Denmark” »