britishdominion Reviews

This Is It (2009)

A Bunch Of Home Movies Blown Up To Make Some Money

[5/10 · 18 April 2014]

It is hard to write a review for something so bare-bones and incomplete as "This Is It". It's not really a concert movie, the kind that drops the viewer into the audience, experiencing the big show better than any ticket holder ever could.

No, this simple handicam special is more like a full-length "bonus feature" on a real Jackson DVD. It's Michael Jackson at half-speed, so as not to blow out his vocal chords or wear his body down for the "real" shows - 50 potentially stamina-sapping performances planned for London's 02 Arena.

It's ghoulish to watch a clearly not-young Jackson: inspired at times, sometimes going through the motions, reclaiming past hits, old dance moves - and not think about what is really happening in his life, and what is just about to.

The other reaction is that the film seems shamelessly calculated. The only reason this footage exists is to allow technical crews and talent viewing backstage see where the show needed tightening or improvement. Hastily chopped-in reminiscences repackaged and padded out as a feature film, THIS IS IT smacks of quick-buck opportunism, cold and morbid.

Admittedly, the show looked like it would have been a wowzer, and there's no doubt that Jackson had talent to burn. You do see very bright flashes of it from time to time in several dialed-up performances in THIS IS IT.

Most reports paint Jackson as a perfectionist about his performance (you even see it in this film where he dressed-down a crewmember), and through that lens, I think this film would certainly not have seen the light of day if it had been allowed to pass through Jackson's hyperultra-managed image factory.

Despite it's inconsequential nature, as a last-chance to see him work, the picture may offer fans an emotional resonance not shared by this reviewer - and even some closure from his untimely death.

For viewers interested in reliving the excitement and stage presence that thrilled audiences around the world for four decades, this film is decidedly not it.

The Heat (I) (2013)

Awful Buddy-Cop Picture

[2/10 · 29 March 2014]

A little Melissa McCarthy goes a long, long, long, LONG way - and unfortunately, she's in 95% of this dreadful movie, "The Heat". Sandra Bullock isn't much better, playing the same fish-out-of-water character from her "Miss Congeniality" series. This movie is all-together boring.

I'm incredibly comfortable with swearing, but McCarthy uses all combinations of the F-word like she has Tourettes syndrome. This film is forged from the lowest-common denominator school of crass, where yelling your lines and using pointless profanity as a punctuation point replaces witty comedic invention. "The Heat" mistakenly assumes that obnoxious, lazy pandering and flop-sweat delivery will ratchet up the laughs, making the picture that much more funnier. It doesn't.

"The Heat" is a wildly-overlong, inert, lifeless, practically laughless crime-comedy. If you can't figure out who the bad guy is, you may not have seen a movie before.

Plus-points for casting Jane Curtin, who is nice to see on screen again, despite having few lines.

Man of Steel (2013)

A Pleasant Surprise

[7/10 · 17 November 2013]

An entertaining take on the oft-told Superman tale, MAN OF STEEL is a solemn but imaginative comic book movie.

Dreading both the words 'reboot' and 'origin-story' - I had very low hopes for this expensive-looking picture. To the filmmaker's credit, the movie manages to get a back-story in without interrupting a solid, simple main plot of good versus evil.

The tone is serious, but it is not dour enough for audiences to recognize that MAN OF STEEL is a feature-film version of a cartoon. The movie jumps all over time and place, with a canvas that reimagines Krypton as a Lord of the Rings/Steampunk planet, has Clark Kent a low- key do-gooder embarrassed by his super powers, and a General Zod that is a misunderstood baddie who is only trying to protect his home planet. Occasionally, the big battle at the end in Metropolis echoes some 9/11 imagery and the mind begins to wonder about all the people who are inadvertently killed during the superhero showdown.

Much has been made about the changes to the Superman folklore here. I have no problem separating this version of the legend from the 70s Richard Donner iconic epic or the 1950s TV show or even the last time Superman was rebooted just a few years ago in SUPERMAN RETURNS. They're all interesting, and even in the comics, interpreters frequently devised new story lines - ones that altered the established canon with their own sensibilities and reason to exist. Zack Snyder's version is just one of those, and I'm sure there will be others.

MAN OF STEEL boasts a uniformly great cast, and the picture's style and settings are impressively huge in scope. This big-budgeter delivers visual style and big action set pieces, and refreshes the Superman character just enough to make it new and interesting for longtime viewers. It was a pleasant surprise.

Cinerama Holiday (1955)

Surprisingly High-Concept Yet Low-Key

[7/10 · 16 November 2013]

Despite being a gimmick documentary spread huge on the surface, CINERAMA HOLIDAY actually boasts a surprisingly high-concept storyline: an American couple and a Swiss couple switch continents and discover each other's culture through travel. In the end, the film turns slightly meta with our pair of happy vacationers meeting up in New York City - to watch the film they were just in!

The picture's Cinerama process is eye-poppingly re-rendered gorgeously on Blu-Ray thanks to the loving care of Cinerama archivist David Strohmaier. The film may be a curio, but it's also a looking-glass glimpse of a time where even air travel to other countries was exotic and the providence of the lucky (or wealthy).

The fun really is seeing the Swiss couple discovering America. The set- ups are all obviously faked for the three-panel camera, but there's still the charm of these two European non-actors being dropped into a tiny Las Vegas or discovering the wide countryside. The American duo's jaunt through the Swiss Alps and Paris is equally wooden, yet spirited. Its fun to see the world through both couples' eyes.

The Endless Summer 2 (1994)

Endlessly Enjoyable

[8/10 · 16 November 2013]

This is another shaggy, low-key Bruce Brown surf docu. Endless Summer 2 has a tone very much in keeping with the chill surf culture, giving you some interesting history and wrapping it all together with some well- choreographed surfing scenes. It is endlessly enjoyable.

I remember this picture screening at a discount second-run house, and walking into the run-down downtown theatre simply to get out of the rain and kill some time before meeting some friends. Little did I know when I sat down that, by the end of this movie, I would totally flip for the sport and that this movie would be the impetus to get me surfing too.

Endless Summer 2 is just a slight, breezy little picture, a DIY travelogue with great scenery, big waves and daring surfers, Most of all, it just made surfing look like it would be a whole lot of fun - like anyone could do it. And I am here to tell you, it really is fun... and you really CAN do it.

There's plenty of other pictures that have dramatized the sport - Blue Crush, Point Break, In God's Hands, Chasing Mavericks etc - but this film is just a simple, pleasant 90 minutes that has a reverence for the sport, the power of nature and those who discover the world while in search of the next big pipeline.

Be warned: this movie will encourage any landlocked viewer to ditch work and catch a wave, too.

The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980)

Upon Reevaluation, An Entertaining Swan Song

[7/10 · 23 October 2013]

"The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu" at first view seems like a lost cause - a slapped-together, throw-away, do-what-you-want star-ego mess earned through star Peter Sellers' 70s Pink Panther popularity and renaissance.

I would suppose that when it opened, it was a huge letdown and an inappropriate follow-up to his career-capping masterpiece, "Being There". I remember reviewers measuring the posthumous "Fu Manchu" against that one, and the film rightfully could only come up as the poorer for it.

Since its release in the summer of 1980, the film has never been regarded as any good. Certainly in watching it the first time, it appears unworthy of any reevaluation. But going back to it again and again over the course of more than 30 years, the movie's charms start to materialize.

Sellers' performance(s) as both the villain AND its hero yield many sly little character bits, unique line-readings and embellish laugh-out-loud set pieces. He can also be heard in overdubs as the King and other characters, which just adds to the attempted tour de force on view.

Despite a fractured plot and uneven tone, the film cautiously reveals its DNA in classic British pantomime and music hall, filled with post- Goons era silliness. There's plays-on-words, humorous asides, larger than life performances, British satire and an abruptly absurd conclusion that is both poignant and stupid - all at the same time. It's a throw- back 50s or 60s programmer that Sellers excelled in, but by 1980, was well out of step with the more punctuated audience taste.

The movie largely ignores coherency, and rarely takes itself very seriously. It doesn't seem to have much in the way of an intentionally nasty bone in its body, though the stereotypes and racial insults embraced do take a bit of the fun out of it in retrospect.

Still the enjoyable "Fu Manchu" highlights Sellers game skills as a handily interpretive and original comic performer. Modestly anarchic, it is well worth watching now for what it is - versus the viewing through the cinematic prism of what came before, or what it could have been.

Machete Kills (2013)

Grindhouse "Machete" Sequel Has Fun Villains, Overlong Plot

[6/10 · 16 October 2013]

Undoubtedly, MACHETE KILLS is the one movie in theatres this past weekend that you may have missed while standing in line for artier-fare like GRAVITY or CAPTAIN PHILLIPS. With a title MACHETE KILLS, there's not a lot of room for subtlety, exploration of the human spirit or a desperate pursuit for the elusive Oscar statuette. If anything, the picture's title sounds less like a movie made for serious movie season and more like an obvious safety warning.

I liked the first MACHETE movie enough. In fact, I liked it even more as a two-and-a-half minute fake trailer in GRINDHOUSE, so based on that, the rest of the 90 or so minutes of the first film ticked-off all that trailer's big moments with a large dose of in-joke silliness. Heavy on the gore and big movie stars like Robert DeNiro winking back at you from the big screen, it all worked.

So, just as promised at the end of the first picture, Machete (Danny Trejo) is back for more in MACHETE KILLS. It's another cinematic bucket from the 70's exploitation picture tribute well that has treated both director Robert Rodriguez and his buddy in B's Quentin Tarantino extremely generously.

Far be it for me to detail the overly-arch plot, because this one basically takes the illegal-alien Machete and turns him into a secret agent superman throwing him into lots of fights where he gets to use his machete and gets to blow stuff up.

The bad news is that most of the silly, cheap fun that propelled the first MACHETE picture is slowly drained from the sequel. It feels like this new film is trying too hard this time out. The movie works in fits and starts - funny in places, even exciting - then it seems to labour for long stretches to keep its compendium of camp, gore and needlessly- extraneous plot in the audience's interest. At 107 minutes, the picture wanders for much longer than would have ever been permitted in the old 1970s drive-in movie days. Where were the "Reel Missing" cards that Rodriguez ingeniously deployed in his other B-picture tributes to paint himself out of a corner and keep the plot turning? Could have used a few of them here to get this sucker down to a Grindhouse-friendly 82 minutes.

The good news here is the villains. Oscar-nominee Demian Beschir as the demented cartel warlord Mendez is incredible - he steals every scene he's in with his crazy-eyed energy and odd line-readings. He makes his character less a plot device and more a kinetic cartoon-y counterpoint to the stoic, mono-syllabic Machete. The other nice get is Mel Gibson as a Star Wars-obsessed aerospace magnate. Both look like they are having a lot of fun, and are so much better that the film that surrounds them - even if that film is supposed to be intentionally bad.

SPOILER ALERT: the third entry of the MACHETE series is actually teased at the very beginning of this film - as a trailer. The concept is loony and knowing: playing like a 'real' film franchise whose creators are so bankrupt of plot ideas that they stick their main character in outer space. It has goofy energy in a two minute burst, and a great BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS/STARCRASH vibe. Perhaps it would be best to leave MACHETE right there.

Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation (1989 Video)

A Fantastic Tribute to a Fantastic Adventure

[10/10 · 10 October 2013]

"Raiders of the Lost Ark" is one of my favourite movies - in fact, to watch it with an audience 32 years later, it plays as perfectly today as when I saw it on a late June matinée at the Vancouver Centre theatre as a 12 year old in 1981.

Steven Spielberg's action masterpiece inspired me, and every one of my friends. We LOVED this movie. I saw it so many times in the theatre as a kid, and when it arrived on VHS in 1983, the film became so imprinted on my brain that I know the screenplay, the action and the music cues backwards and forwards as well as anything, even to this day. As much as I forget many, many things daily now, I still know "Raiders of the Lost Ark".

Along with "Back to the Future", Raiders remains a truly perfect modern-day film - perfectly written, directed, scored, and realized as a piece of exceptional movie entertainment - one that makes people happy, and they leave the theatre talking about it.

Spielberg was the guy. His movies constantly inspired my friends and I to make our own home-made movies (we erred on the side of James Bond pictures, sci-fi, and SCTV-style parodies - with a dash of John Landis anarchy) and we actually wrote screenplays, went out and shot footage, created special effects and worked to create a movie(s) of our own. This was all based on the fact that we were a TV generation - we saw all types of movies, from KVOS 8pm nightly movies, BCTV & CHEK 6 late shows, CKVU special stereo simulcasts with CFMI, everything. We absorbed the new VHS format and watched practically anything that was rentable. Pay TV was brand-new to Canada, too - and between the unedited and commercial-free "A" Hollywood titles, you ended up seeing classics and B-pictures and crappy Canadian tax-shelter dreck. And we studied the movies we saw, even the bad ones. Instead of sitting and just watching them though, with the advent of consumer-quality video cameras (thanks to the high school AV Club), we saw an opening: wanted to make some movies ourselves.

For me and my friends, it was a golden-age of movie making (the 1980s) and there were plenty of directors, ideas and plots to draw from. We put an awful lot of effort into creating pictures, but we never completed one from beginning to end - instead dropping one genre trope and moving on to the next in the excitement of seeing a cool new movie that wowed us. But boy, it was FUN. I learned an awful lot about real movie-making by actually doing it on the fly with my friends, working with a group of people who were all totally inspired by movies too. Even when I'm (rarely) shooting video today, I still use the things I learned working with my friends - editing inside the camera, framing, music, the cheats for shots, creating tension and emotion - stuff we all learned by endlessly studying movies, watching making-of documentaries and actually (sort-of) making short films with big picture ideas.

So, years ago I read an article in Entertainment Weekly or Premiere or somewhere on this thing that a group of friends in the U.S. south that had made a VHS shot-for-shot fan film re-creation of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" over many, many summers in the 1980s. They used the actual Lawrence Kasdan script, used the legendary John Williams underscore, and aped Spielberg's shots to make a kid-centric version of Raiders. Not only that, but they did stunts, created sets, even lit their parents' basement on fire to duplicate Marion Ravenwood's Nepalese bar set-piece where Indy fights the Nazi bad guy and his thugs.

Watching their ersatz movie adaptation simply blew me away. This was my early teenage dream played out on glitchy videotape: my experience as a kid who was crazy about movies, and who loved movies so much that to make a full-length movie inspired by the world's best movie (at the time) and as a way to be a part of making the same kind of entertainment that made audiences happy, excited and connected - just like the way I felt at the Vancouver Centre at that 2pm screening in 1981.

This is really a special film. It is entirely ingenious in its use of substitution, it nails the optimistic spirit of the original film and more over, you end up caring for the kids. I was particularly concerned for them when they actually lit each other on fire.

Their movie recreates in ultra-ultra-shoestring low-budget detail virtually every plot and action beat in the 1981 film so creatively, it's absolutely impossible to find any fault. The Adaptation is endlessly watchable - and as a viewer, you can't wait to see how they creatively tackle the next Spielberg multi-million dollar set-piece.

Just watch their version of the iconic desert truck chase: for my money, it is just as rip-roaringly good as Spielberg's version. And that's a REAL kid being dragged along that real gravel road. A kid that really, truly loves Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

Boldly Retreating Where We've Been Before

[7/10 · 21 August 2013]

As a fan of the old 80's Star Trek movies, the new "Into Darkness" picture is an impressively huge - if sometimes exhausting and confusing - summer action picture that trades most of the simplicity of the old films for big budget FX and massive set pieces.

With the film's quasi-reverential tone and this new series' more-than- willingness to raid the canon that came before, it might be time for director J.J. Abrams' version of the warhorse Trek series to explore new story lines and new galaxies and boldly go where others haven't gone, rather than relying on the tried-and-true that came before.

All the money's up on the screen and it IS entertaining, but a very soft 7/10.

Pacific Rim (2013)

Goofy, Rock'em, Sock'em Robots Vs. Monsters Mahem

[7/10 · 21 August 2013]

In a summer that seems to have a sequel-a-week, a remake, a retread or a rip-off, it is kind of surprising fun to watch "Pacific Rim" - which in a lot of ways, is all of those.

It is, at the very least, a mega-million dollar kiddie matinée crossed with an old-school action/adventure movie. It could be a sequel to a Godzilla movie never made (or, at least an ode to "Destroy All Monsters"), and it thematically borrows from everything between Thunderbirds-Are-Go, Aliens, Transformers to Starship Troopers.

The movie is an imaginative rock 'em sock 'em robots-versus-monsters amusement park ride: just enjoyable, dumb fun in an air-conditioned movie theatre for 2 hours - perfect for your inner 10 year-old.

And it is pretty cool to see a robot punch a monster in the face.

To the Wonder (2012)

One Of The Year's Very Best

[9/10 · 21 August 2013]

The stunningly-crafted "To The Wonder" is a small romantic drama told through breathtaking images, a beautiful composite of musical selections and very little dialogue.

The film establishes it's own hypnotizing, haunting rhythm in its early moments, and after that, it is impossible to resist.

"To The Wonder" is a simple, intimate story on love, missed opportunities, regret and redemption all filtered through the careful, artistic eye of director Terrence Malick. What isn't said is actually more important that what actually is said in this sparse, fascinating film.

This is one of the most accessible of Mallick's more recent works, and yet, it maintains a strong, individualist take what is a well-worn storyline.

If you liked Malick's "Tree Of Life", you'll dig this one, too.

Truly one of the year's very best.

Grown Ups 2 (2013)

The Worst Movie Of 2013 (So Far)...

[1/10 · 21 August 2013]

Without a doubt, "Grown Ups 2" is the worst movie I've seen this year.

It's fascinatingly bad - the film starts and... just continues to be starting. Every scene could be the beginning of the movie: there's no movement, no action, no incident to propel the characters or start the story.

That, and there's absolutely no laughs.

At one point, I thought the filmmakers were going for some kind of a Robert Altman-style of picture, where the camera seems to be browsing the scene, looking for interesting bits of human interaction. But no, with Grown Ups 2, it was just craft laziness - stick someone in front of the camera, make them say something to another character, make a fart joke, on to the next bit. Story lines start, then stop in virtually the same scene.

It goes on like that for 90 minutes.

The To Do List (2013)

A Pleasingly Raunchy And Sex-Positive Sex Comedy

[7/10 · 21 August 2013]

"The To-Do List" is an entirely raunchy, breezy coming-of-age comedy that is anchored with a solid, fearless performance by Aubrey Plaza.

It's an "American Pie" race-to-lose-your-virginity tale that is not only surprisingly sweet, and at times smart, but also pleasantly positive about sex - filtered through a unique female voice and fresh perspective on age- old genre tropes. It's free of the snickering, juvenile gross-out attitudes of the "Pie" films.

The film is uneven, wanders a bit, and sometimes plays like a series of SNL sketches than a full-on film, but is, on occasion, laugh-out-loud funny.

It should get some more love and attention when it arrives on home video & PPV where it is sure to gain a word-of-mouth following.

Furious 6 (2013)

A Brainless, Souped-Up Guilty Pleasure

[7/10 · 21 August 2013]

The series that just can't quit - "Fast & The Furious 6" is about as preposterous as they come (and I've seen Pacific Rim!), but all is forgiven when there's so much idiotic car chase action and nice scenery.

Like the souped-up muscle cars in the movie, it's noisy and it all goes by very fast, and a few hours later, I couldn't quite connect what the whole James Bond plot was about, or really care.

It does have at least 4 good action set pieces, and by good I mean physics-defying, Wile E. Coyote-type - but the film is somehow cheerfully silly/good none-the-less.

A brainless $3 matinée, well-priced.

The Canyons (2013)

Two Provacateurs Chicken Out

[4/10 · 21 August 2013]

Whoo-boy, saw "The Canyons" and I guess to damn it with faint praise is that it isn't the worst movie I have seen this year (congrats still, "Grown Ups 2").

"The Canyons" does have its minor moments of art-directed, abject L.A. decadence and contains a modicum of car-crash curiosity. Lindsay Lohan is OK in it, as is porn star James Deen - although both are characters I'd pretty much cross the street to avoid in real life.

The movie is as nihilistic and dead-at-it's-core as it was designed to be, particularly expected when you have the guys who collectively created American Psycho and Taxi Driver piloting this thing. In fact, if you took Bret Easton Ellis' "Less Than Zero" and spliced it with Paul Schrader's "American Gigolo", you've pretty much got this movie's number.

Schrader's camera captures the vacuum of this glam couple well in the early going setting up Lohan and Deen's hedonistic, vacant relationship - its coolly pointed in its visual observation. Ellis manages to make a few catty points about the movie industry and those who work in it. It doesn't add up to much, though.

Perhaps coked-up "The Canyons" greatest misstep is that it settles to be forgettable mid-grade trash instead of a batsh*t-great guilty pleasure. The movie seems satisfied to recline in low-speed soap-opera theatrics, softcore antics and smug button-pushing instead of putting pedal to the metal and really going gonzo - which both writer and director are prone to do in their own individual projects.

In the end, the film's final act basically torpedoes whatever low-budget goodwill the picture had cobbled together. Both director Schrader and writer Ellis are expert provocateurs and have done - and will do - better than this shoestring experiment. Still, it coulda been worse.

The Spectacular Now (2013)

A Gentle, Almost Say Anything

[6/10 · 21 August 2013]

Sundance-darling "The Spectacular Now" is a curious one. With a script by the guys who wrote "500 Days of Summer", the movie is about as slice- of-life as they come, and it is interesting and well-acted.

As the film unspools, it may subconsciously remind viewers of the imperfect messiness of Cameron Crowe's teen ode "Say Anything" - complete with a Cusack-like performance by Miles Teller.

Teller's Sutter character is smooth, confident, charming, occasionally- unlikable and flawed. It's an accomplished balancing act.

The centerpiece performance is really Shailene Woodley, as Sutter's new girlfriend Aimee. She gives the most natural performance of a teenager on screen in ages. Her unaffected, open assignment elevates every scene she's in.

Both performances are in service of a film that drifts through the senior high students' last weeks before the end of high school, and takes a mutedly-pessimistic approach of the future before our two leads. These two kids are invisibly shackled to their town, in their home life, their pasts. Echoing the crux at the centre of 1989's "Say Anything", Aimee figures an escape plan; Sutter seems to be blindly comfortable in his 'spectacular' now.

Pulling "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" alum Jennifer Jason-Leigh into the film as Sutter's world-worn mother was a nice touch. Her vacant-eyed mother is in keeping with the film's less-glamorous take.

The picture labours a bit too much in over-emphasizing Sutter's crutch, and the mid-film scenes visiting Sutter's estranged father had trouble finding the right tone between character and caricature. The movie doesn't feel any urgency to build to a conclusion, but when it does, it is understated, uneventful - kind of like our two characters, and sort of like real-life, too.

Life is messy, as is "The Spectacular Now". It eschews the studio slickness and over-plotted determination of more polished teenage products. Despite two grounded, award-worthy lead performances, this film seemed a touch sketched and ever-so-slightly inert.

Before Midnight (2013)

Still There... but Gone.

[9/10 · 28 June 2013]

BEFORE MIDNIGHT continues the unerring quality that director Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke created from their first incredible films.

Those movies were romantic, melancholy and life-affirming. The pair has wonderful chemistry and the two imbue their characters hopes, thoughts and realities like few on-screen pairings have ever done. I enjoyed revisiting the films over a weekend in the nearly 10 years since the last entry in this film series has taken place.

This third film continues that - it is expertly directed, written and staged in gorgeous Greece landscapes. And - it maintains the trademark walk-and-talk and talk and talk signature that were the first two films' heralded mise-en-scene.

As a viewer, I was impressed with the new film in how the story progressed since we last visited. These are good, interesting and followable-characters. We think we know them. Unfortunately at the same time, the magic and the wistfulness the cast received to make it work comfortable between the two and patience or understanding seems to be in exceedingly short supply.

Instead - and kudos to the creative team - this rocked the audience away from expecting a welcome but been-there, done-that sequel pattern.

The SPOILER surprise is the couple is actually together now, with twins of their own, and a life their lives are less than perfect.

Here is where I disengaged with the film on an entirely personal level. The fights, the yelling and the accusations were very intense and brutal. The acting is so good, that it makes anyone who has lived through this kind of relationship meltdown feel as though they are living through it ALL OVER again. Sitting in my multiplex, I know I did. It made me anxious and sad.

BEFORE MIDNIGHT is a completely original and fully-realized film: it's hands-down one of the best movies of 2013. But unlike the two previous installments, I just don't know if I ever want to sit through this one again.

It's real, it's actual, and it just skips right over the years of good and anchors itself in what is bad in a relationship.

Bring on the 4th movie, folks!

Project X (2012)

Congratulations! The Worst Film of 2012.

[1/10 · 26 December 2012]

"Project X" is the worst movie I have seen this year. Full-stop.

Actually - un-stop: it is probably in the running for one of the worst films I have ever seen, and I've seen "Glitter". NOW, full-stop.

This isn't some old fogy who doesn't "get" what's happening - no. I love thumbing-your-nose-at-establishment type of pictures. Anarchy has been a well of inspiration for great cinematic comedy for decades.

This is joyless, shapeless, sloppy, mean-spirited, ugly, thoroughly misogynistic and nihilistic teen-sploitation piece of junk that insults its audience by forgoing any semblance of story or characters that you can cheer for. It's just one long anti-human, soul-crushing iPhone-shot movie.

Carelessly ripping off much better movies like "Superbad" and "Risky Business", the filmmakers (wrongly) figured that the success of those smart films was just the lure of the all-night party... and that its lead characters are just the flimsy entry point to the massive, destructive annihilation that audiences assumable want put down good money to see.

"Risky Business" and it's decades-later offspring "Superbad" recognized that the night-long journey of an "epic party" was a chance to learn something about its characters, and for the characters to learn something about themselves. It was also an opportunity for audiences to identify with and even come to like a Tom Cruise or a Jonah Hill or a Michael Sera as an entry-point to engaging in the movie as a viewer and caring about the character's outcome.

No care was spent in making the three children (which is what they are) sympathetic, interesting, smart or aware. The roughly-sketched characters were all instead boorish, crude, unlikable douchebags whose ultimate goals (getting laid, getting drunk, getting high and getting laid, in that order) are so off-putting, one almost wants to see these insufferable stock characters (dumbfounded nerd/classless fat-guy/jerky mouthpiece) get the full punishment that they really, truly deserve at the end of the picture, instead of rooting for their plucky, ingenious wiliness.

This is such a sad, vacant, cruel picture that cares little about anyone. The leads - and filmmakers - see their female teenage cast as submissive whores who either need or should be taken, and the boys as party-hard frat kids with no personality traits other than being sex-crazed idiots who have random hookups, get high and destroy things.

Your life is so much better than this, and your time is worth much more than spending 90 minutes watching this crap.

Haywire (2011)

Another Great Soderbergh Mash-Up

[8/10 · 15 September 2012]

"Haywire" is one of the smartest, stylish and surprisingly zippiest of recent spy genre films in recent memory. It's a C-movie that delivers an A-movie experience. It's pretty fun, too.

Credit director Steven Soderbergh: this is a low-class fad-gimmick (instead of kickboxing, it's MMA) genre movie as-if filtered through the huge talent of ace screenwriter Lem Dobbs. Soderbergh has nothing to prove other than he's amusing himself with how seamlessly easy he can do these things (the Oceans 11 films come to mind). It's not only giddy, but infectious.

Soderbergh's choices of production design, editing and style are endlessly cool and very 1970s. This film is a movie geek fever-dream of what might happen if an "A" director (like Soderbergh) would ever lower himself to direct an 1980's Cannon action film - only this time with a bigger budget and a few more brains.

In classic would-be cult form, the film is built around a MMA non-actor like Gina Carino, but this time the cast is filled to the edges of the frame with a first-rate actors like Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Michael Fassbender, Channing Tatum, Bill Paxton and Antonio Banderas. In her first film role, Carino is more than game for a first-time thesp, and she rises to the crackerjack cast that is surrounding her.

It's such a pleasure to watch this film unspool - the action is tight, the feel is stylish, energetic and exciting, and it seems that everyone in the production is in on the joke that this is way MORE that what it really ever should be.

"Haywire" may be slight, but it's another easy win for director Soderbergh. Similar to the UK's Michael Winterbottom, Soderbergh aptly wears a crown of a multi-disciplined genre king. He's a machine, cranking out top-flight entertainments with an ease and steady hand - moving effortlessly between drama, comedy and action and even experimental storytelling - and scenario tropes high and low-brow.

Soderbergh's technical mastery makes these kind of "assigments" both interesting and pleasing. "Haywire", although genre-serving, is no exception.

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

A Subversive Achievement That Is Easy To Admire, But Hard To Like.

[6/10 · 9 August 2012]

"The Dark Knight Rises" sees trilogy director Christopher Nolan's thematic vision straight-through to its logical and supposed end, and if anything, it shows that Nolan is probably the director-to-beat for dramatic superhero storytelling.

After the candy-confectionery "The Avengers" earlier this summer with its equally huge crowd-pleasing mash-up of graphic novel heroes and heroines, this film is like a brutal poison-pill of apocalypse and anger.

It is certainly one of the most surprisingly subversive Big-Studio pictures ever to twist the nose of big targets like capitalism, socialism, the issue of police states and definition of law & order, as well as both sides of the environmental movement.

If the film is a success, it certainly is exciting that in this era of 'safe' cookie-cutter movie-making, director Nolan was given carte-blanche to create a sequel to a universally-beloved franchise with such an overarching, nihilistic scenario. Surely ticket buyers may not have had to factor into or wrestle with such counter-oppressive messages in their Batman popcorn entertainment before, but the film is a curious delivery system of unsettling real-world observations wrapped in the mythos of a cartoon character.

The picture's epic scope contains an abundance of dazzling technical achievements filtered through a fractured prism of comic-book storytelling coupled with plot elements ripped from today's headlines, such as the Occupy movement to the Wall Street meltdown. It's excessively violent, sometimes shockingly so.

Despite "The Dark Knight Rises" solid, illustrious pedigree in front of and behind the camera, as an entertainment, the film lacks the wit, creativity and viewer release of previous installments of the franchise. Perhaps sacrificed in a percussive effort to create a sinister tone that may play well to some, Nolan's "The Dark Knight Rises" amounts to a dizzying, bombastic 'big-ideas' canvas that - for better or worse - re-frames the overall thematic structure of his series.

The film's big caveat is that it recognizes that Bruce Wayne is an older, beaten man, and not a superhero of some amazing cosmic superpower. Despite of all of the possible gimmicks and technological frou-frou that the character of Wayne might have at his disposal to dispatch bad guys and save the world, Christian Bale's character is reduced to a physical human being who is pummeled endlessly at the mercy of the film's main villain, the confused patriot Bane (actor Tom Hardy) - whose expressive face is seen only in a flashback.

A good film is best with a good villain. The Bane character anchors the film as an intriguing - if enigmatic - adversary to Batman, with careful goals and an early devious Macguffin plot. However by the end Bane is reduced to an angry avatar with nothing but hate for all human race, and no way to beat him.

In the film's final reels, "The Dark Knight Rises" trades its expected superheroics in to revel in a non-stop onslaught of physical violence, humiliation and brutal force that is both indignant and mostly over the top. TDKR lacks the canny outplotting of previous entries in the series, and instead takes a leisurely 150+ minutes to reinforce that this is not a fantasy film, but in fact an unwinnable sturm un drang.

For the first time in a Batman entertainment, I found this picture's constant affront distressing and off-putting to the point of better judgment urging me to leave the theatre and do something happy and more enjoyable with my time. I stuck it out.

Easy to admire but very hard to like, "The Dark Knight Rises" is one of the most aggressively depressing, joyless movies I have ever sat through.

Shoot the Moon (1982)

Undeniably Real and Sad

[9/10 · 26 April 2012]

SHOOT THE MOON is an unbelievably heartbreaking movie. I saw this as a kid, by myself, in my local theatre in 1982. I love movies - then and now - particularly adult-skewing films, even when I was 13. I don't know what I was thinking, but at 13 I wanted to experience everything... from RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK to REDS.

Like Alan Alda's serio-comic THE FOUR SEASONS the year before, this was an introduction to how complicated relationships could be in my future. I came from a happy family, and my parents are still happily together. But my reality is that I lived around this exact movie with my school-aged friends: parents' separations, divorces, the anger and the selfishness, and the confused kids caught in the middle.

The film captures the subtle reality of divorce and the demolition of a relationship through the screen writing of the legendary Bo Goldman and the beautiful direction by Alan Parker.

To this day, the combination still floors me as a viewer. Albert Finney and Diane Keaton have never been better, as a couple going through a separation, a divorce and yet a difficult familial uncoupling, and are perfect for this film. Their performances are stunning. Dana Hill as their child caught in the middle of this separation is phenomenal, that nails the confusion and conflict of forced-adaptation brings.

SHOOT THE MOON helped me understand at a very young age that this is how relationships collapse, and illustrated that people are imperfect. It showed that hubris, loneliness and expectation come with exceptional price-tags - it was a shocker at an early age.

This is one of the lost "great" movies of the 1980s, and I am glad it is on DVD. It's just a movie that is so difficult to embrace, but I am pleased that it exists. It is an amazing movie.

The Raid: Redemption (2011)

A Slick, Extremely Brutal - But Ultimately Exhausting - B-Movie

[7/10 · 7 April 2012]

"The Raid" (that awful, curious US-imposed add-on "Redemption" tag not withstanding) wears its genre black belt extremely close to its mean little bullet-proof vest. The subtitled-line readings in the film's brief dialogue plot bursts reach to tip-off audiences that this might not be your standard Hollywood action-film by-product.

Don't worry. It is. "The Raid" is Indonesian-style ersatz Hollywood punk-junk; a will-be cult film that wears a solemn, straight face as it blood lets over the course of a zippy 100 minutes. It's a modern-day version of those cheapy Roger Corman Philippine prison pictures minus Pam Grier and the rag-tag social commentary.

"The Raid" wastes little time in establishing its own trademarked violent spirit and kinetic tone, which owes plenty to Howard Hawks' "Rio Bravo" as much as it does to latter-day auteur offerings like John Carpenter's "Assault on Precinct 13", Walter Hill's "The Warriors" and even the Robert Zemeckis/Bob Gale-screenplay for the forgotten 1992 thriller, "Trespass".

Like any good genre picture, it judiciously picks at the bones of past story structures and well-hewn cinematic inspiration to make something that is both broadly derivative and narrowly it's own.

The overall film is exceedingly well-shot and tightly edited, and manages to create a very tense plot escalation through several ingenious escape set-pieces in its early goings. If this frantic, economically-scripted, and low-budget action film can best be qualified, it is most certainly a bloody, aggressive calling card for "The Raid's" director. Hollywood, meet Gareth Evans.

The plot, such as it is, forms a very simple skeleton for what is essentially a brutal haunted-house-meets-video-game story. An elite special-forces team is involved in a covert mission involving the extraction of a brutal crime lord from a rundown fifteen-story apartment block. But when their cover is blown (to bits), the Godfather offers lifelong sanctuary to every killer, rapist and thief in the building in exchange for the elimination of the police "infestation". As the police team snakes its way through every floor and every room to complete the mission, they face attack by fist, foot, firepower and double-crosses by the score.

Though exciting for a good spell of the running time, after a smart set-up the film shifts into one long, punishing fight sequence punctured only by set changes. Once the feral hand-to-hand fight choreography kicks in during the mid-section of "The Raid", it's hard not to be dazzled by the vicious, over-the-top chop-socky of characters good and bad as they pummel, shoot, strangle, gouge, slice, stab and blow-up pretty much anyone who comes in their way.

As brilliant and vital as every punch taken and received appears on-screen, its pulse-racing relentlessness pushes "The Raid" out of the frame of a muscular foreign b-movie update into what could generously be viewed as a series of endless levels in a particularly violent first-person-shooter Playstation game.

Experiencing "The Raid" was akin to watching a gamer friend play through a violent Xbox title while you sit off to the side, looking on: engaging fun at first to see the sheer onslaught of challengers and challenges to take on, but empty thrills soon transcending into one long mind-numbing parlance for dizzy action.

The film keeps piling on the fight scenes with villains for the heroes to cut down, one after another, that this viewer ultimately became thoroughly desensitized to the stylized, hyper-realistic violence on show. At several points, the movie plummets into plain, perhaps ironically intentional, overkill so punishing that the fancy of Evans' perpetual motion machine occasionally verges on oppressively tiring.

Fault or no fault, the movie refuses to trade breathlessness for times where we as viewers might just need just a bit of a break from the killing and maiming. Just like that video game - as the movie soldiers on: "The Raid" segues to an aggressive, exhausting blur of blood and brutality, with interchangeable good and bad guys – but not one character that you truly care about. Sketches of stock traits and generic plot mechanics stand in for identifiable personas. Aside from a corker end of second-act turn, fleshed-out character development takes a backseat to seat-of-pants carnage. It's a stylistic choice that the director is doggedly consistent with throughout the film's running time.

Having said that, the fisticuffs, kicks and gruesome carnage is so imaginative and balletic it sometimes reaches the level of intricate Gene Kelly-dance patterns crossed with John Woo-meets-Stephen Chow anarchic ultraviolence. There is energy to burn in the staging, and the film benefits highly from director Evans' assured construction technique.

The film's one technical snafu is that the spare and intentionally-monotonous production design leaves the viewer scrambling to figure out the marked progression of our heroes' quest up through the building – leaving punch-drunk audiences to guess how close or how far the protagonists are from realizing their bruised and beaten finish line.

This is not to say that this tense and scrappy film is not without its merits. The below the line aspects of this film are peerless. With a budget of just over a million dollars, "The Raid" is a miracle of low-fi genre filmmaking that shames bloated, multi-million dollar studio action pictures of this or any other year with its vital camera-work, casting and furious energy.

Director/editor Evans has got a great eye and an impeccable sense of timing which keeps his film moving at a literal break-neck speed. His storytelling skills are selectively spare and in deference of "The Raid's" action and thrills trajectory as a B-movie time-filler should be. Surely Evans is now on every Studio Head's must-hire helmer list for bigger movie franchises in the not-to-distant future.

"The Raid" is a standard man-on-a-mission action thriller wrapped into a primal, shamelessly gritty, comic book simple exercise in style over substance. Exceedingly well-mounted and gore-ously realized, the movie as a whole is both aggressively imposing and as pointedly vacant as the building its fictional warlords prevail.

One Week (I) (2008)

A Truly Great Canadian Movie - Yes... They Still Make Them!

[9/10 · 26 July 2009]

"One Week" is not necessarily a revelation in Canadian film-making, but it is an honest-to-God crowd pleaser; a moving and well-crafted movie that should make any homegrown Canuck feel proud about their country, and feel great about the time spent catching this one.

Joshua Jackson assigns a surprising, affecting and all-together terrific performance as a young guy running away from his obligations, demons and The Big C across Canada. The journey, the people he happens in to and the scenery he traverses is both memorable and inspiring. Jackson is absolutely first-rate, and it's a performance that should go to the top of his acting CV. Narrator Campbell Scott is the icing on the cake.

Perhaps I have a soft spot for the locales the film chose to shoot in, but the Banff, Alberta and Tofino, BC sequences are both memorable and perfectly capture the ambiance and inherent magic of those places. Seeing the film you'll want to pack up the car and do the trip.

Don't pass this casual, small-scale gem by. It's one that you'll be sure to recommend to friends.

Be Kind Rewind (2008)

YouTube - The Movie

[8/10 · 26 February 2008]

Hip-Hip-Hooray to Michel Gondry.

Here is one of our most creative directors putting a face to the community of Do-It-Yourself and the art school innocence and passion of a lets-make-a-movie aesthetic. This is a heartfelt and giddy trip to the video store in another time - even perhaps another world - where VHS still reins supreme.

Mos Def and Jack Black are wonderful (particularly Mos Def) as partners in a scheme to "swede" (or remake) popular films of the 1980s and 1990s using a crummy VHS camcorder via the imagination of music-video director Gondry. The creativity on display in the re-dos of "Ghostbusters," "Rush Hour 2" and "2001" are nothing short of charming and hilarious. Although the entire film looks a little rough and handmade as the films it is parodying - it's the unique vision of the director who brought Bjork and The White Stripes videos to life, and the absolutely stellar "The Science of Sleep" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" to our consciousness is fully in play here.

There are so many quirky, seemingly off-the-cuff visual touches going on in this flick. The montage sequence is a particular marvel that is easy to enjoy but I'd bet was very complex in execution, and might get lost on the casual viewer on the first go. For those who enjoyed it, this is a film that will benefit from second or even third viewings on DVD.

It also celebrates the fact that we all live and breathe film and video culture. It is a kind of shared visual language. Today, we know how films are made, we know the technology, we reference them in our everyday lives and know almost instinctively how we can use these tools of video cameras and film to tell our own stories. You don't have to go to film school to articulate (or in this case, re-tell) a good visual story anymore.

I'd also offer that "Be Kind Rewind" is also the first valentine to the DIY zeitgeist of YouTube and MySpace - where people are creating content, distributing thoughts and actualizing their dreams for all to see and share. It's also about the power and celebration of celebrity through these kinds of electronic conceits.

At the end of "Be Kind Rewind", it is movies that are the one thing that can bring a community together and make everyone feel like they're sharing in something magical, even if it is just for two hours one night. What a message: isn't that what great films are all about?

Going the Distance (2004)

Fun, Guilty Pleasure With Great Scenery

[7/10 · 20 September 2007]

"Going The Distance" has absolutely nothing going for it, and nothing that would make you think that it would be good... after all, that's my tax money going into this thing.

It does prove that Canadian filmmakers do have the capability in the 21st century to devise just-as-dumb a teenage sex comedy as their Americans counterparts, albeit now with equally as good production values. All involved in this production must have learned something after being endlessly subjected to the same kind of junk for so long, to somewhat perfection. The twist is, it's less ironically Canadian and more or less proud of what it really is.

And what it is, lo and behold, is actually a fun little movie that manages to take the well-worn cross-country road trip and, although hewing close enough to its formula not to break any new ground. At least turns itself into something that is more giddy, polished and less painless than an all-Canadian production like this might typically boast. Yep, it's surprisingly good, all things considered.

This film makes superb use of the mostly BC and Alberta landscapes that it drives its crappy motorhome through, and has a young, game cast of Canuck newcomers that would not be out of place in a similar US-type Skin-e-max enterprise. At least the cast seem wholesomely Canadian - honest, fun-loving, beer-drinking, horny - and not mean-spirited dolts like those who populate dreck like "Eurotrip" or those other "American Pie" knockoffs.

Overall, you can feel the brain cells just drying up as you journey through its short-and-sweet running time, and it pretty much runs out of gas by third act. That said, Canada plays Canada, and makes for a pretty decent travelogue, encouraging those around the world who happen to catch this one on the tube probably in the middle of the night to book a direct flight the next morning. It's that, or at least to revel in the insanely pleasant quality of good-natured, fun-loving and willing Hosers that might await them on their arrival.

A minor guilty pleasure to be sure, probably best after a few beers and little-to-no expectations. Have fun!