Category Archives: Reviews

REVIEW: Alice in Wonderland

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Alice in Wonderland
Directed by: Tim Burton
Written by: Linda Woolverton (screenplay) Lewis Carroll (books)
Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Hathaway

Burton, the genius imaginateer behind Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands and Sweeney Todd along with a list of other brilliant works, teams up for the eighth time with star Johnny Depp to recreate a classic childhood fantasy in the likes of their 2005 effort Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The story is more of a sequel than a remake, combining elements and characters from Lewis Carroll’s 19th century books Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. It starts with Alice, now 19 and soon to be wedded to a freckled face boy who suffers from digestion issues and happens to now own her dead father’s trading business. The trouble is Alice (Mia Wasikowska) has no intentions of marrying him or living a life where everything is decided for her. When asked to accept her fate of no longer being able to accept her fate, Alice rushes away and follows the white rabbit into a whole where she returns to Wonderland although not remembering having been there before.

In Wonderland Alice is told that she must rescue Wonderland from the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) by slaying the Jabberwocky with the sword of the Red Queen’s sister, the White Queen (Anne Hathaway). With direction from many of the realm’s bizarre characters, including a delightfully peculiar Mad Hatter (Depp), Alice is taken on a journey where she and only she can decide the fate of herself and of Wonderland.

In other versions of Carroll’s story, the story and realm which he creates is more linked to our world, with commentary on villainous Victorian aristocracy, 19th century breakthroughs on philosophy of the self, self-absorption and even perhaps the sad end to world anglo-manifestation. Of course these messages are far above the heads of children, but make great observations for adult audiences. In Burton’s version, this dimension of the story is slightly written out in favor of a more Disney approved feministic theme about being able to make your own decisions and do what it right. It’s not total fluff though, and it’s written into the story quite nicely, with Alice’s real world reflecting her Wonderland world. Burton cleverly has characters in both worlds imitate each other and even mimics his scenes to draw the comparisons. Continue reading →

REVIEW: The Vicious Kind

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Image courtesy of Rama's Screen

The Vicious Kind
Directed by: Lee Toland Krieger
Written by: Lee Toland Krieger
Starring: Adam Scott, Brittany Snow, J.K. Simmons, and Alex Frost

New film discoveries during the earlier months in the year are always a must until Hollywood does its spring cleaning.  Luckily, I’ve found one such film that will hold you in its sinister grasp from start to finish.

Lee Toland Krieger’s The Vicious Kind, spearheaded by a wicked tour de force from relative unknown Adam Scott, is a provocative breath of fresh air for both the holiday-set family drama and the  rotting garbage at the cinema.  Set around Thanksgiving, the film focuses on brothers Peter (Alex Frost) and Caleb (Scott), Peter’s girlfriend Emma (Brittany Snow), and their now-single father Donald (J.K. Simmons).

You think you know how this movie should go.  Mom should be dying of cancer, brothers should resent not only each other but also dad, and they should all reconcile because of the holidays.

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ARCHIVE REVIEW: It Might Get Loud

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It Might Get Loud
Directed by: David Guggenheim
With: Jack White, Jimmy Page and the Edge

Non-music fans please be aware, if you haven’t heard the names Jimmy Page, Jack White or Edge, it might get dull. Though Guggenheim (the An Inconvenient Truth director) plucks three of the most influential and coming of age guitarists of their respectable decades, the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, “It Might Get Loud” misses some of the larger or more vibrant connections these guitarists have, leaving the movie strumming a little too softly.

By bringing three such prominent musicians together, many interesting story-lines are instantly created, Edge’s innovative electronic sound manipulation vs. White’s bare bones blues improvisation as well as each musician’s respective social context and upbringing. At times these perplexing relationships seem undercut to give more time for the guitarist to play fan favorites, leaving the audience a little thirsty for more interaction and unity between the riffs. Continue reading →

BEST PICTURE NOMINEE: Up

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Up
Directed by: Pete Docter
Written by: Pete Docter and Bob Petersen
Voiced by: Edward Asner, Christopher Plummer and Jordan Nagai

Pixar is now 9 for 10 (Cars being the DreamWorks-esque oddball). After previous bests Ratatouille and Wall-E, Up completes the trifecta for Pixar’s seemingly effortless creative machine.

Up’s plot takes off when young Carl Frederickson meets Ellie, a fire-cracker and adventurous girl that shares his interests. The two eventually fall in love and spend a lifetime together dreaming of going to South America and following their youthful spirits. But when life gets in the way, their dreams and plans are grounded. Seventy years later, after Ellie has died, Carl is forced to move to a retirement home and give up the home and life he built with his wife. Before they can take him away, he and his home fly away on the grand adventure the two always dreamed of. Continue reading →

DVD Must-watch: Spike Jonze’s Oscar snubbed Where the Wild Things Are

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Image courtesy of Screen Rant

The biggest crime perpetuated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Peter Travers of Rolling Stone prefers “Farts and Biases” and I tend to agree) this year is ignoring Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are. Today, you have the opportunity to partially correct that mistake by going out and renting or buying the film yourself and seeing what great work he has done.

Jonze had the audacity to adapt a 12-page, mostly illustrated children’s novel to the silver screen.  Guess what?  He succeeded admirably.

Wild Things is a beautifully told vision of childhood.  The fears, anxieties, tribulations and joys told through the eyes of a young boy named Max (portrayed by terrific child actor Max Records) are all brought to vivid, beautiful light in this film.

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BEST PICTURE NOMINEE: An Education

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Image courtesy of New York Daily News

An Education
Directed by: Lone Scherfig
Written by: Nick Hornby (screenplay), Lynn Barber (memoir)
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Alfred Molina, and Rosamund Pike

Warning: boring period piece this is not. Adults looking for a time capsule back to the early 60’s should stick to AMC’s Mad Men.  Though evoking that same atmosphere, An Education is a decidedly modern film, especially thematically, and that atmosphere will most likely be one that those growing up in the period don’t remember.

A wise-beyond-her-years 16 year old falls for an older man in pre-Beatles London. It sounds like a boring premise, but it couldn’t be more exciting, hilarious, and well-executed.  Director Lone Scherfig, working with an excellent adapted screenplay by Nick Hornby, makes sure of that.  Scherfig is yet another female director to emerge out of the 2009 renaissance.  Along with Kathryn Bigelow’s film, Scherfig’s movie is the best to come out of it so far.  Those at the top questioning whether or not female directors have the capability to do more than low-brow  romantic comedies should look here.

While Scherfig’s film is both romantic, and a comedy, it does not fall into either of these genres.  In a way it is anti-romantic, and the humor arises more naturally than the stupidly forced punchlines of The Proposal or The Ugly Truth.  Also unlike those two horrible films, it comes second to the character development, refusing to make caricatures out of its characters.

Newcomer Carey Mulligan gives  the greatest performance of 2009 as Jenny, pressured by her father (Alfred Molina) to go to Oxford and rebelling by having fun instead. Mulligan does the type of acting that many veteran actors still can’t do.  The raw, youthful nature of Jenny is perfectly captured.  She can say more with a look and the way she holds her cigarette than Sandra Bullock does during the whole movie in The Blind Side.

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REVIEW: Shutter Island

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Shutter Island
Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Written by: Laeta Kalogridis (screenplay), Dennis Lehane (novel)
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Patricia Clarkson, and Michelle Williams

Martin Scorsese’s first narrative film since his 2006 masterpiece The Departed had a lot to live up to.  Then again, anytime people in the film business hear that Scorsese is doing a film, he has a lot to live up to.  The master behind the aforementioned Boston crime epic as well as classics like Taxi Driver and Goodfellas puts a violent stroke of genius on almost everything he touches.

Shutter Island is no exception.  The fantastically directed, acted, and edited film comes alive like no film in the movie-dead winter months should.  Will it be one of the best films of 2010?  It may very well be, but typically the earlier ones get drowned out by the falling leaves of Oscar bait in the fall.

Teaming up with Leonardo DiCaprio for the fourth time, Scorsese adapts a Dennis Lehane novel about a mental institution that is hiding more than meets the eye.  Washed up premise?  Yes, but it is constructed so well that you won’t really notice until you think about it later.

DiCaprio plays Teddy Daniels, a  federal marshal sent to investigate the disappearance of the patient Rachel Solondo on the maximum security psych ward known as Shutter Island (San Francisco’s Alcatraz penitentiary with even more fog if that helps you visualize).  Daniels is a tragic character, seasick when we first meet him and grief-stricken over the suicide of his wife Dolores (Michelle Williams).

The dream sequences and flashbacks Scorsese constructs featuring DiCaprio and Williams are some of the most hauntingly beautiful images the filmmaker has ever created.  Daniels revisits the events of her death in his nightmares, watching as she bleeds out and collapses into ash.  Those thinking Scorsese is only capable of violent crime epics will be stunned at the raw feeling and cinema poetry he creates in these dream sequences.

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BEST PICTURE NOMINEE: District 9

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District 9
Directed by: Neill Blomkamp
Written by: Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell
Starring: Sharlto Copley and Jason Cope

The year 2009 has been a splendid year for sci-fi, with Cameron’s Avatar pushing the limits in film making technology as well as box office potential, Abram’s sleek and erogenous revival of Star Trek reaching wide commercial success, and the pyscho-thiller Moon grabbing newcomer director Duncan Jones some serious attention. It is safe to add to the list District 9, which happens to be the best of the bunch.

Originally, producer Peter Jackson had picked South African born Neill Blomkamp to make his directorial debut with an adaptation to the video game phenomenon Halo. But when financing put the project in development purgatory, Jackson gave Blomkamp the go ahead to make whatever film he wanted. Under one condition: a fraction of the budget.

District 9 comes from a mini-mokumentary made by Blomkamp when his career was still only Nike commercials and digital shorts. It’s all set in his own birthplace, Johannesburg, where there are townships, slums, heavy accents, and barbed wire fences that give the film a harsh and gritty setting.

Twenty years prior to modern time, a large space craft stalled above the city, unable to move. After humans entered the ship, they encountered something much different from the “light of heavens” interaction they were expecting. The aliens were diseased, famished and hopeless. So for twenty years, the government kept them isolated in a ghetto which experienced crime, discrimination and poverty. It is up to the world’s second largest weapons manufacturer, MNU, to relocate the “prawns” into a far-off concentration camp after humans can no longer take their burden. In charge of the evacuation is Wikus (Copley), a pencil pusher looking to prove his place, who begins to find himself split between the two worlds in a great chase for weapons and power that he barely understands.

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BEST PICTURE NOMINEE: The Blind Side

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Image courtesy of Jack FM

The Blind Side
Directed by: John Lee Hancock
Written by: John Lee Hancock (screenplay), Michael Lewis (novel)
Starring: Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw, Quinton Aaron, and Kathy Bates

Good wholesome Southerners have their movie to cheer for this year at the Academy Awards.  John Lee Hancock’s bombastic, preachy and watered down The Blind Side is the one movie nominated for Best Picture this year that didn’t deserve its slot.

This is the crowd-pleasing, melodramatic sports movie that moved both the Monday Night Football crowd and Sarah Palin wannabes to tears.  It also moved serious film critics to tears, but not for the same reasons. Hancock directs this film with a style right out of the sports film playbook, taking no chances and milking every crowd-pleasing scenario for maximum fluff.

“Sandra Bullock in a football movie,” is a great selling point for studio executives.  In order to sabotage and exploit an audience’s emotions, you need a marketable lead.  In the year 2009, there was no one more marketable (or undeserving of their profits) than her.  Her Oscar nomination (and likely win) for playing Leigh Ann Tuohy is the result of a frivolous, cooly calculated business decision.  Though her performance is the reluctant highlight of this film, it is by no means anything more than her spouting off clever one liners with a Southern accent.  Bullock plays emotional-yet-controlled in almost all of her films, and never that greatly.  She does the same thing here, but with a drawl so it’s Oscar worthy.

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BEST PICTURE NOMINEE: Avatar

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Avatar
Directed by: James Cameron
Written by: James Cameron
Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana and Sigourney Weaver

Once upon a time, famed sci-fi director James Cameron made a little film known as Titanic. Made with a record $200 million, the picture earned a record $1.8 billion at the worldwide box office, won a record 11 Oscars (Ben-Hur and Return of the King are the only other two films to do this) and ignited the Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet to become the most sought after talent today.

That was over a decade ago. Now Cameron is back with another next big budget saga, to once again defend his self-claimed title as “King of the World.” Mission accomplished. The film has already broken most of Titanic’s records, earning a staggering $2.4 billion worldwide. And with critical praise, nine Oscar nominations, and his 3D technology reshaping the industry, it looks like Cameron may need an avatar of his own just to share his great success.

But records, innovations and box office aside, how does good is Avatar? Continue reading →