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Out in Theaters: NEIGHBORS

I invited my good friend Matt to see Neighbors with me on Tuesday. Matt, was my fraternity’s president last year. I figured if there was anyone to watch this movie with, it’d be him. We’ve lived in the fraternity together long enough to see the pitfalls and the benefits of a lifestyle predicated on brotherly love and often times poisoned by alcohol. But, more than beer bongs and beer pong, Matt and I have come to learn that the stereotype associated with fraternity living is misplaced and disillusioned.

Total Frat Move and the bullshit that pervades today’s society are just facades: guys with small units and smaller brains trying to emulate a lifestyle that was only realistic in the ‘70s. Fraternity living is about the bond that’s shared between boys as they become men and the values and experiences that join them together. Guys who call themselves “frat” aren’t fraternal: they’re idiots. The folks who made Neighbors rely heavily upon the latter. They probably never stepped into a fraternity house in college.

Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne (Bridesmaids) are the Radners, new parents of a young daughter Stella, live in a small cul-de-sac close to a local college. They take bad parenting to the next level: Rogen smokes weed at work, they have sex in front of their baby, and they try to take Stella to her first rave. Yet, they’re completely upset when Delta Psi Beta, a group of new-age frat bros, moves in next door. Had the casting director chosen Katherine Heigl instead, this might just be a Knocked Up sequel

DFB, led by the incessantly frustrating Zac Efron and the brother who got the bad alleles, Dave Franco, are Cro-Magnons who stumbled upon a Brazzers account instead of fire. DPsiB might as well stand for Douchebags & Pretty Boys. Their composite is riddled with guys named Scoonie (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, whose “enormous penis” is cashed in for at least 20 jokes), Garf, Thumbsucker, Assjuice, Jizzface and Balldrop.

Their fraternity’s values bog down to how much one can smoke and drink without dying. Efron’s goal is to live up to past Delta Psi’s. Fun cameos from Lonely Island, Workaholics and Jake Johnson show famous Delta Psi’s who “invented” such fratty traditions as beer pong, the toga party and the boot & rally. Like any fraternity member, Efron wants to craft his own legend and put his name up on the wall.

In order to fraternize with the new neighbors, the Radners head over to party with the bros. Rogen does a ton of mushrooms, Byrne straps a baby monitor to her belt and hits the dance floor. Efron entertains them in an attempt to get them on his good side. When Rogen betrays him and calls the frat on the cops for being too loud the next night, Efron makes things personal.

Neighbors relies on the ridiculous situations that emerge when frat is pitted against innocent local middle-aged family. Efron and his crew rip the airbags out of their car, Rogen and Byrne try to start a hazing scandal. Rogen and Byrne flood the frat’s basement, Efron and his crew start a dildo fundraiser disguised as a bake sale to raise money to fix the damage. It turns into Neigh-Bros. The film feels longer than an hour and a half. Through all that, I didn’t even get to witness a beer-bong or shotgun. Disappointing.

Somewhere in the middle, Rogen’s hilarious wisecracks and the frat’s shenanigans go from raucous to atrocious. Director Nicholas Stoller, a Harvard grad who knows better, flushes the comedic toilet and clogs it with dick humor, offensive fraternity stereotypes and puke-worthy gross-out moments. They turn hazing into a joke, rape into a punch-line. At one point, Byrne spews milk from her veiny breasts. Delta Psi rips a guys’ pubes off. Then, the Radner baby fits a condom in her mouth and their doctor jokes that the baby has HIV. No laughs. The only thing that threatened to come out of my mouth was stomach acid.

Rogen makes raunchy paunchy. He’s by far the best part of this movie and the only redeeming factor that kept it from disaster. His chubby physique is pasted everywhere in this film, but sadly he doesn’t have enough weight to carry it by himself; too often he’s reduced to using his heft as a punchline like Vince Vaughn uses his height. We see him bent over his wife, or modeling in front of an Abercrombie. His ass is everywhere. He’s funniest smoking a joint and cracking wise with his buddies, but we don’t get to see nearly enough of that.

The male form has taken on a new comedic identity, seemingly since Jason Segel flopped his good-looking member out in Stoller’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall. But it’s hard to rationalize that the same person who made Five-Year Engagement, Get Him to The Greek and the aforementioned, made this poo-poo platter of unfunny, homoerotic, gross-out dick comedy. Somewhere along the way, he lost track of who he was. It’s just hard to believe someone this hilarious could make something as laughable as a Tyler Perry movie. I was half-expecting Adam Sandler to play the baby. Maybe that would’ve been funny.

Nevertheless, Rogen and Byrne have great chemistry, and his charm even helps humanize the atrociously bad Efron, who hasn’t gotten any better since That Awkward Moment. Cool cameos from comedians like Lisa Kudrow, Jason Mantzoukas (The League), and Natasha Leggero help the shit float, and there are some great laughs in here—notably Franco 3D-printing his penis and the frat’s careful airbag placement.

By the end, it was too traumatizing to enjoy. Normally one for gross-out raunch, this caught me off guard. Maybe it hit too close to home. Or maybe rape and hazing and dick jokes and projectile breast-milk are about as funny as domestic violence. I’ve seen one too many penises in my day. I’m on penis overload. No homo.

At the end, Rogen turns to Byrne and tells her, “things have changed… I like old people shit now.” And maybe that’s my problem. Rogen’s outgrown this dreck, and so have I. Give me a good book to read or some Game of Thrones. A younger, more impressionable Chris might have loved Neighbors, but I’m turning 20 in four days and this stuff just isn’t as funny anymore. As much as hazing and rape and ragers and alcohol addiction and guys nicknamed Spoonfeeder might be realities in the Greek world, they’re far from what fraternities stand for, and they’re way too personal issues to be remotely funny. Neighbors crosses the line into scary territory. If you’re trying to live vicariously through assholes, go ahead and read Total Frat Move.

I’ve got enough fraternity experiences to write two books. None of them resemble what I saw Tuesday night. Hell, my fraternity chapter was shut down in ’04 for being the most dangerous in the country. They had nothing on DFB. Matt gives Neighbors two stars out of five. I have to agree with him.

C-

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Out in Theaters: PALO ALTO

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James Franco
wrote a collection of linked short stories about growing up in Palo Alto, California: the untold violence, limitless bottles, designer drugs, prescription pills and caution to the wind sexual congress splaying this way and that which defines the sun-bathed, fantasy community of world renown. A third generation Coppola, Gia Coppola in her debut effort (who better to direct a movie about Californian angst and ennui?) adapted that novella into a movie. This is a review of that movie: that movie sucked.

Emma Roberts is April, your run-of-the-mill, somehow awkward, bikini-bridge valley girl who plays soccer, plows packs of cigarettes and has eyes for her older but sexy – in a unkempt, high school dropout kind of way – coach B, played by a scraggly and uncommonly sketchy Franco. He’s a whistleblower (literally, not figuratively) closer in kind to Humbert Humbert than Eric Taylor and his sheepish flirtations with April are just real enough to keep your daughter out of this season’s summer sleepaway camp. But like this land of the living (and oft livid) lethargic, Franco’s Mr. B is only charming to a stillborn or someone recently reanimated. His chemistry with April is no rose ceremony, it’s a Nickelodeon’s sliming.

Franco’s shown a penchant for stonerish, dead-eyed empty stares – stares on full display during his ugly 2011 Oscar hosting duties. In those empty round canyons are a kind of vacuous presumption of boyish candor that emotes stoner philosophy more than anything close to “genius”. Sometimes there’s nothing behind a blank stare save for the blankness (I mean have you read the reviews of his latest “art” installment?). That same faux-artistic tendency to fluff nothing into something is on embarrassing display here. If the Oscars are any indication of Franco charm gone horribly awry, Palo Alto hardly rights the course, chartering Franco into new coves of poopiness.

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As his player/d*ckslayer, April navigates the springs below life’s great water-dump with the pointedness of a waterlily. We hardly get to know the girl outside of her penchant for feeling lonely and moping to and fro. Lest we actually grow attached to any of these characters, the story plops from one turdish storyline to the next as we meet more d-bags and hoes for us to generally not care about.

The central conceit of the movie finds April at odds with should-be beau, Teddy (Jack Kilmer) a baby-faced, is-he-or-isn’t-he ginger who shares April’s love for not caring about much. Teddy is often in hot water with the law – a character flaw exaccerbated by total loser and pejorative fuck Fred (Nat Wolff). While Fred skulks around flying his misogynist flag high, April and Teddy circle one another with the lazy stalkings of a drunken falcon – too distracted by shiny objects to find the field mouse they’re ultimately looking for. They miss and miff again and again, never on the same page at the same time, too  balls deep in court-ordered community service or James Franco to connect. It’s hard to care though because, well, fuck these kids. Teddy adds blowies to his notch from a girl tipping past 11 on the hammer-scale while April’s awkwardly felt up in the hallway. It just brings back all the worst elements of high school, dunnit?

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The issue (as if this wasn’t enough already) is that the character’s have all got very serious problems but keep them stuffed so deep down inside that the actor’s have very little wiggle room to emote. Coppola, like her characters, lives on autopilot heading towards hazardous trajectories – and while that might be an interesting concept to ponder from a metaphysical stance, it doesn’t make for very compelling watching. Especially with a lead like April who’s got the strength of a pussy willow and sways with every breath of wind just about as much as that naughtily-named vegetation. Again though, it’s challenging to feel bad for someone who’s already so occupied feeling sorry for themselves and does nothing to better her situation. Though the waters she traverses are brown and stinky, she still strips down to her skivvies and paddles gingerly around in them.

What transpires is a whole bunch of nothing that adds up to little more than: “Rich white people gots it ruff.” Like the offspring of someone tragically out of touch might be, Palo Alto is an off-putting blend of Hollywood melancholia that invites you to the pity party but promptly turns you away at the door when you’re not dressed in custom Versace. Appropriately, it earns about as much sympathy as a billionaire basking in despair (“But I wanted the Gulfsteam G650 in red!!!”) The project might work better on page than as a movie because self-reflection is hard to play on screen, especially with a crew of actors this… uninspiring. The sparsely intriguing moments of genuine interest are as exciting as finding a raisin in your oatmeal – it’s a slight improvement over the goopy remains but still dried-out and old before its time, like this film.

D

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Out in Theaters: CHEF

I regret to say that my mom was never a great cook, even good cook would be a stretch. And while my stepmom whipped up a mean scallop pasta dish every once in a while, the fabled variety of “home cooked” meals on that front were pretty few and far between. No wonder that I found such affection in the arms of my girlfriend’s parents back in my formative years. Those stay-at-home moms sure knew how to plate up an amuse bouche that would amuse my bouche (if you know what I mean.) And in those meals, I found magic, and a love for food that has expanded my waist-size by an unmentionable amount (I blame you too beer.) Read More

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2014 SIFF Offers 435 Films, I Offer 25 Must Sees

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Update June 3: More reviews added, no standing replacements.

Update May 17: Seeing that some of these didn’t live up to expectation, some prior “Must Sees” have been yanked and new additions have taken their place. After all, who doesn’t love some corrections and omissions?!

For its 40th, the Seattle International Film Festival is again raising the bar on itself, this year offering a whopping 435 films including 198 feature films, 60 documentaries, and 163 short films from 83 countries. Of those, 44 are world premieres, 29 North American premieres and 13 US premieres. All this amongst a slew of festival favorites from this year and last. Let’s just say that the odds of seeing them all just got that much slimmer. 

Kicking the festival off is Oscar-winner (12 Years a Slave) John Ridley‘s Jimi: All is By My Side, a zero frills biopic that chronicles the afro-ed classic rocker’s year in Britain leading up to his iconic Woodstock performance. And all by his side is 12 Years alum Chiwetel Ejiofor who will be in attendance May 19 (6 PM @ The Egyptian Theater) to talk about his new film Half of a Yellow Sun, an African-produced historical drama about Nigerian’s civil war through the 60s. Ejiofor will also take place in a Q&A with an audience eager to speak with the Academy Award nominee that same evening.

The festival will close June 8 at the glorious Cinerama with The One I Love starring Elizabeth Moss (Mad Men) and Mark Duplass (The League) which saw strong reviews opening at Sundance and is said to mix elements of modern romance with “Twilight Zone” twists and turns. Add it to the ever growing “To See” List.

But likely the most exciting and anticipated film of the festival will be found in SIFF’s Centerpiece Gala in Richard Linklater‘s Boyhood on Saturday, May 31 @ 5 PM. I had the great fortune of being amongst the first audience to see this at Sundance and it did nothing short of blow me away. Though I don’t want to be greedy and steal away the seats of those yet uninitiated to Boyhood, I look forward to experiencing it again and may not be able to resist a second viewing.

Since it’s all but impossible to see everything at SIFF, I have a list of 25 must sees that should put you on the right track for this year’s festivities.

The 25 Must Sees of SIFF 2014

Boyhood
Obviously Boyhood is gonna be on the list. I absolutely loved it and could wax said love over this page all day but I’ll spare the gushing and just tell you that of the 80+ films I’ve reviewed this year (!!!) this is the only to have yet received an A+. Sundance review here.

Mood Indigo
Michael Gondry returns to the realm of the weird, this time in his native French language, in what should be equal measures charming, bittersweet, and esoteric. The incredibly alluring Audrey Tatou is Chloe, who becomes wrapped up with a quirky inventor, even though she’s dying (because she has flowers growing in her lungs.)

Grand Central
Blue is the Warmest Color star Lea Seydoux puts in her second turn against A Prophet‘s Tahar Rahim in this French/Austrian production about a risky love affair set at the nuclear power plant where they both work.

Venus in Furs
Carnage wasn’t exactly the prodigal return for Roman Polanski we might have hoped for but it was anything but bad. Polanski continues his recent tradition of adapting lauded plays with Venus in Furs which stars Mathiew Amalric (Quantum of Solace) and is filmed in Polanski’s native French. Venus focuses on a playwright’s battle with his creative side. SIFF review here.

Cannibal
The chilling promo image alone gets me thinking Psycho and added to the fact that this production is in part Spanish, Romanian, Russian and French, gives it the taste of “something new.” Hopefully it brings the scares to the table in a SIFF surprisingly short on them. No longer considered must see, read our SIFF review here.

The Double (new addition)
Jesse Eisenberg stars as two polar opposites in this Orson Welles inspired black comedy. Wickedly weird but quietly potent, The Double might not be the best doppleganger film of the year (that award goes to Enemy) but it’s certainly compelling viewing that’ll leave you oddly fulfilled. SIFF review here.


Wetlands
A brilliantly told German satirical sexploitation/black comedy based on the popular and controversial German novel from Charlotte Roche. Wetlands is ooey, gooey fun that’ll make the hardest of stomachs churn every now and again but fully worth it for anyone up to the task. Sundance review here.

Lucky Them
What better to symbolize Seattle than the Sub Pop music scene? Megan Griffiths, who directed last year’s critically acclaimed Eden, takes on an entirely different subject right here in the rainy city and feel aided by performances from Toni Collette, Thomas Haden Church, and Oliver Platt.

They Came Together
Although the trailer shown seems to suggest a movie so deep in meta that it didn’t know which way was up, They Came Together found loads of fans when it played at this year’s Sundance. The ingredients alone – Amy Poehler, Paul Rudd, David Waine (director of Wet Hot American Summer) in a doubly farcical, heavily tongue-in-cheek rom-com – seems primed for success.

How to Train Your Dragon 2
This is a tricky one to really anticipate as sequels are as much of a toss up as one can plan for but if the quality boast of Toy Story 3 and the wild success of the first How to Train Your Dragon are any indication, this could be the best widely-released animated feature of the year.

Time Lapse
Bradley King‘s directoral debut follows a group of three friends who discover a camera that shows events in the future, and looks to combine elements of sci-fi and horror into a thrilling narrative ride. Set for it’s North American premiere at SIFF, Time Lapse looks more promising than most within its field. Not gushing SIFF review here.

The Trip To Italy (new addition)
Four years after The Trip, Steve Coogan may be more clean cut than the shaggy Brit we once was but his and Rob Brydon’s chemistry is as flammable as ever. “Their old-as-they-are relationship paves the way for improvisation prowess so organic its feels more like second natural than performance. More impressions, absolutely stunning vistas, Alanis Morissette’s croon, lazily waxing on life and pasta, pasta, pasta gives intrepid life to The Trip to Italy.” SIFF review here.


The Skeleton Twins

SNL favorites Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig join Bellingham director Craig Johnson to tell his droll comedy about a pair of twins who cheat death and reunite to vent about it. Glowing SIFF review here.

Happy Christmas
Joe Swanberg returns to SIFF to present yet another unscripted, inescapably 21st-century dramedy this time starring Girls creator and star Lena Dunham. I was a big fan of Drinking Buddies and hope this can replicate a similar sense of realism in its relationship. SIFF review here.

Leading Lady
One of SIFF’s world premieres and the return of Fanie Fourie’s Lobola (SIFF’s 2013 Best Film winner) director, Leading Lady sees a struggling actress move to South Africa to prepare for the role of a lifetime but ends up finding so much more. An absolutely abysmal film that I regret ever suggesting. Please accept my apology.

Intruders (new addition)
Considering that I’ve hacked a lot of Foreign language World Cinema out of this list of Best Sees, I wanted to make sure to draw some attention to one of the better of the foreign films and a film that is sure to excite audiences willing to pop on their glasses for 90 minutes. Intruders is Hitchcock by way of South Korean, an exciting thrill ride that doesn’t let up until the credits roll. SIFF review here.

Obvious Child
Jenny Slate might be the new face of NYC faux-chic after the string of success Obvious Child has seen. Honest, hilarious and horny, this tale of growing up in a modern age has been winning support like Daenerys liberating Slavery’s Bay. SIFF review here.

Calvary
If you leave the theater after Calvary dried-eyed, you must be at least part Fembot. With a monstrous performance from Brendan Gleeson, stunning cinematography and a decidedly more mature turn for director John Michael McDonagh, Calvary is a must see. Sundance review here.

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Firestorm
This 2013 Hong Kong feature was nominated for a slew of native film awards including Best Action Choreography, Best Editing, Best Visual Effects and Best New Director and with my penchant for violent Asian cinema, I have trouble believing that this won’t be a surprise victory for SIFF. Could not be less of a must see. Ugly SIFF review here.

10,000 KM (new addition)
A vivid portrayal of love fading under the constaints of long distance, this Spanish romance is filmed with lively realism and overflowing with brillant performances from its captivating leads. A definer of the phrase “must see”. SIFF review here.

Frank
Although the stars seem alligned to keep me from this film (I stood in line for it at Sundance and SXSW and was denied) the fact that it’s coming to Seattle seems to either be mocking me or setting up a third times a charm situation. The fact that I already own a Frank mask pretty much necessitates me seeing this strange musical drama starring Michael Fassbender enclosed in a giant head. SIFF review here.

The Grand Seduction
Taylor Kitsch plays a doctor, Brendan Gleeson a fisherman in this Canadian comedy that looks to play fast and loose with the deadpan side of things. Seeing Kitsch and Gleeson (much anticipated) return to comedy oughta be worth the price of admission alone. SIFF review here.

Creep
Mark Duplass returns again, this time as a twisted stalker. He chews up the scenery like never before and is an absolute joy to watch. First time director Patrick Brice has made the found footage flick his own, crafting an unnerving thriller that’s frightening and cleverly twisty to boot! SXSW review here.

The Internet’s Own Boy
I asked someone at Sundance what their favorite film at the fest was and they pointed out this unassuming documentary. Following the life of Aaron Swartz, who laid the groundwork for RSS feeds and all but invented Reddit before killing himself at age 26, The Internet’s Own Boy appears heartbreaking and need to know. SIFF review here.


In Order of Disappearance
Stellan Skarsgard plays a snowplow driver who’s son is brutally murdered, leading to a chilling dark comedy that marries bloody revenge to belly laughs in this twisted fantasy said to be a tonal cousin to Fargo. SIFF review here.

Difret
SIFF programmer Dustin Kaspar gave the insider tip on the Africa Film segment, calling Difret the early “best of fest.” A 14-year old Aberash guns down an attacker that leads into a long court trial that bleeds into an ethical tribunal on Ethiopia’s warped marriage traditions that smile on kidnapping and rape. All based on a true story. Mild SIFF review here.

To Kill a Man
You know when you’re a critic when you look at a movie’s description and “Grand Jury prize-winning,” “vigilantism” and “Chile/France” pop out to you like solid gold. In sum: a man weighs the benefits and consequences of taking revenge. SIFF review here.

Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter
There must be something in the water making us all think Fargo as the cult Coen classic seems to be at an all-time high in terms of its popularity and influence. Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter sees an outcast Japanese misanthrope travel to Minnesota to seek out Steve Buschemi‘s abandoned satchel stuffed with cold, hard ransom cash. It’s a delightfully unorthodox romp, nothing short of epic. SXSW review here.

Fight Church
A documentary about a group of church goers who beat each other up to prove their devotion to God? Sign me up. Mildly disappointed SIFF review here.

Starred Up (new addition)
A brutal prison drama starring Jack O’Connell and Ben Mendelsohn showcasing the transformative power of a jail cell, Starred Up is certainly a hard watch but one that will leave you thinking. SIFF review here.

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Surely there are many, many (many) more and there’s a good chance that some on the above list may end up stinking and sinking but we’re still mostly doing guesswork at this stage. However from word of mouth, early reviews and first hand experience, you have a good chance of catching some great material if you follow any above recommendations.

Check out the trailer for SIFF’s 40th anniversary here and visit SIFF’s website to buy tickets and check out more of the lineup.

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Talking with Steven Knight of LOCKE

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Bold move Mr. Steven Knight, bold move. Making a movie that takes place entirely in one car over a series of blue-tooth enabled phone calls doesn’t exactly pop out as exciting but it does lay the groundwork for a phenomenally restrained performance courtesy of Tom Hardy while showing an avant-garde approach to what cinema can be.  Even though I didn’t find myself completely bowled over by Locke, I appreciate how off-the-cuff Knight’s film was – an ode to the everyman forced to reckon with real life decisions. Maybe it was the early morn of a Sundance 8 AM screening that found me drifting in and out of interest but I was always captivated by Hardy’s turn. Talking with Steven did imbue a further appreciation of the film as his earnest sincerity and boldly esoteric approach certainly makes the film different, if not entirely enticing.

Join me as we talk about Tom Hardy being the best living actor (in his opinion), the allure of the open road, Eastern Promises 2, being a writer versus being a director, and, well, cement.

 

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In the production notes I read something that said that from the inception of the film you thought of it as more of an installation piece that you’d see at an art gallery than a film in itself. Now, having completed the film, would you say that that ideology also reflects your thoughts on the final product?

Steven Knight: Yeah, I’m sure you’ve read that we camera tested film before, and we shot from moving vehicles just to test the sensitivity of the cameras and I thought it was very hypnotic and beautiful. But then I thought that we’d turn that into a theater and have an actor in there and shoot a play with that background, all the time not worrying about the continuity of the real motorway. I wanted there to be Tom in his bubble of life trying to make everything rational and fixed and solid and around him is just this swirl of life that can’t be controlled. I said to the director/photographer in the beginning that I hoped that it would also be possible to turn the sound down and just look at it and wonder what it is; do you know what I mean? I think we achieved that; I mean Harris achieved that. He’s the DP and he worked wonders on how the thing looks.

You said that he was actually doing all of the driving. Were there ever any situations where there was maybe any kind of problems on the road?

SK: I think we did six nights where the car was on the low down flatbed truck, wheels off strapped to it. Two nights we took the back seats out of the car and the cameras were in the back and that’s when Tom was driving for real. I think there was one occasion when he got a little bit…because we had a sort of a convoy and we were taking an exit and it went a bit wrong.

When you’re doing something like that, are all the other cars on the road hired guns?

SK: No, this was real stuff. It was quite late at night so we weren’t gonna hit traffic jams but it was sort of between 10pm and 4 am.

I also read that Tom signed on for this over drinks with you before there was a script, basically right in the very fledgling stages of the project. What did you say to him to get him to sign up?

SK: I told him the story of the moving images and shooting it in a particular way and also saying that I wanted someone to play the most ordinary man in the world. That was the original concept. He’s a rational ordinary man, married with two kids and nothing is out of the ordinary. As he said himself, he’d never played a straight role before. He’s always been monsters or crazy men. This was the total opposite, which intrigued him as well. We were talking about doing other projects and I mentioned this in November, wrote it over Christmas, and we shot it February.

What was your approach to directing him in this? Working with only the one actor, aside from the various voices through the phone, I would be led to assume that you have to be quite an actor’s director. Would you describe yourself in that way?

SK: I’m definitely primarily almost exclusively interested in capturing a performance which is why we wanted to shoot it the way we shot it, which is beginning to end with as few breaks as possible. I think actors thrive when they can calibrate their own performance instead of stopping and doing takes. The conventional way is to turn up one morning and you have one scene you have to get done that day. With this, you’re shooting the whole thing, you know you’re gonna get it wrong somewhere different tomorrow and you’re gonna get it right somewhere different tomorrow. You can play around a little bit more and be a bit more free. That’s the thing that I’m most interested in, getting the performance on the screen. I hope that there is an audience for that, where they just want to see the performance.

So I know that in Spike Jones’ ‘Her’ for instance, when they were doing the voices of what ended up being Scarlett Johansson’s character, at first it was Spike Jonze doing it then they had Samantha Morten doing it and then they went finally to Scarlet Johansson. When you were filming your scenes was it always with the voice actor on the other line?

SK: Absolutely. All the calls were for real because we had a phone line from the conference room where they were into the car. So Tom would take the call and the conversation would begin because I didn’t want to change any of the actors. I think people can tell whether it’s subliminal or not and people can tell if it’s not real.

Did you require them to be on set, or rather, where were they calling from?

SK: They were in a conference room in a not very good hotel near to the motorway with red wine and biscuits from 9pm to 4am every day. They would be there on call and obviously they’d be hanging around a bit and then they’d come and do their calls, would stop to have a breather, and then we’d shoot the whole thing again. We tried to shoot it twice at night.

So I know this was filmed over a very abbreviated period of time and yet Ivan (Hardy) pretty much spent the entirety in this one car-bound scene. How many of the shooting hours did Tom Hardy actually have to sit there scrunched in?

SK: Almost all of them! Without him there was nothing to shoot so he was there about 100 hours.

Did he ever get cramped up?

SK: Well there’s a couple of things. First of all he’s an actor that’s prepared to physically put in the performance that’s right. Also when you’ve got a short shooting period people bring absolute enthusiasm and energy to it because they know it’s going to be over soon. Even if you get no sleep, people are completely full-on for that period and I think that shows on the screen.

At one point I read that the reason you sought Tom Hardy out was that, in your opinion, he’s the best actor working today. Which performances in general made you feel like that?

SK: Inception was the one that got me, the reason being that he walks into that film with lots of brilliant actors around him and takes it over.

I remember watching Inception and going, “Oh who is that guy!?” as if you’d known him forever and yet he was totally new on the scene. I thought that was extraordinary. Speaking of extraordinary, you just said that this is a film about an ordinary man living an ordinary life and the circumstances he’s put in are not extraordinary but they have extraordinary significance in his life. Now, did you feel that there was a slight possibility of maybe alienating an audience who do expect the extraordinary in movies?

SK: The point of making the film was to say we’re not gonna point the camera at kidnap or murder. We’re gonna point it at an ordinary man who has this night journey that changes his life and hope that the audience that sees it sees elements of themselves and their own lives in it where they wouldn’t in a fantastic Jason Bourne movie; no one feels themselves to be Jason Bourne but I think people can identify with Ivan Locke. The reaction we’ve been getting which I find the most heartening is that when the lights go up it’s often the people who’ve been dragged to the cinema, who didn’t wanna go. They have seen something of their own life in it. They’ve forgotten that it’s an experimental way of making a film and they’re now engaged with the story and with the characters so I think that vindicates the method of doing it this way and not choosing some dramatic events.

Sure, can you talk about some of the risks of making a film that is about ordinary events?

SK: Yeah, there are many risks and it’s almost deliberate to pile on the risk because he’s an ordinary man, there are no car chases, he works with concrete, you know, he’s got a beard, and he’s got a knitted jumper, and he’s not an action hero. It’s almost saying to an audience, “that’s what it is on paper but come and have a look and you’ll be surprised”. People who’ve seen it say that very thing. They say, “When I came in I thought one thing but now I realize it’s something totally different”. It’s very difficult to convey and the only way to do it is by going and seeing it.

You just brought up that he’s a foreman at a cement factory. I read briefly about the symbology behind concrete representing building a foundation and the significance of getting the pour right the first time. Can you talk in a little more detail about that symbology?

SK: First of all an ordinary man can have a very dramatic day in their work. Lots of people who do lots of different sorts of jobs actually have high drama in their work, which is not reflected usually in films. I worked briefly on building sites when I was younger and the arrival of concrete is a big deal that day. The foreman’s job is on the line, Millions of dollars are on the line, and you have to get it right. You don’t get a second chance, it has to be poured. It also was great for me because it sort of represents Ivan Locke’s approach to life: It’s concrete, it’s solid, and it’s hard. You shape it and you make it right. You don’t make mistakes because if you do make a mistake the whole thing is gonna collapse and that is so perfect for Ivan’s Life. He has a very concrete solid life but he’s made a mistake. The cracks in the film… we’re watching the cracks of his.

I like that. So obviously you’ve had a bit of a parabolic rise as a writer and then director, ’cause the last couple movies you’ve done you’ve been directing, and yet scoping out the page you have on IMDB, I don’t see any further directing credits pop up immediately.

SK: I’ve been doing my day job which is writing. There are a couple of my films that are coming out.

It makes me wonder, as having directed now, is that something that you’re maybe shying away from? Or have you just whetted your interest?

SK: I’m hoping to shoot the next one in January with hopefully a good cast of British actors, again doing it quite experimentally with a shooting period of 21 days. I think Tom may be in the cast of that one too. We’re looking forward to doing that one but again the day job is writing. Now when I write, I give the difficult part of directing to someone else.

As a writer, how do you find that affecting your directing and vice versa? Are there certain approaches that you’re taking to writing now that you had not before?

SK: Being the writer of something you direct is fantastic because there’s a sure talent you can use in yourself and you don’t have to explain something sometimes that is unexplainable. You can just do. In terms of the directing affecting the writing, I think one of the tangible things is trusting the actors more because you know that some of the lines you’ve put into a script are not necessary because the actor will do that anyways. Also, whenever you write, the film is in your head. You see the film in your head completely and I suppose it’s not necessary the best thing but you do then start to adapt it because you know what’s possible and what’s not possible. You start to make it a little more possible to do.

Having done both, what are things you prefer about one over the other?

SK: Well, the writing process is great because you’re not getting involved. It’s warm and dry and you’ve done your job when you deliver the script. However, directing is better after the fact when you look at something and you know it’s yours. When there’s something wrong it’s your fault and something good is down to you. It’s much more of a complete experience.

Would you ever consider just directing something?

SK: No, I wouldn’t direct someone else’s stuff. I can’t imagine it. Having been the writer and having the director take it off you and changing it, it’s not great. I wouldn’t want to be in a position where I’d take someone else’s dialogue and direct it. I can’t conceive of it.

Obviously the other way around is fine for you? You’ve worked with some really great directors. What are some things that you learned from directors such as David Cronenberg that have influenced how you direct on the set?

SK: Lots of things, both subliminal and practical. Before I started directing redemption I went to the directors that I had worked with and asked them for specific advice. They all told me different things but really practical things. No one gave me vague advice, it was all very specific. One director said if you get a good take, do it again but faster; so simple but straight forward. Another said on the first day stand on a chair and yell loudly, “Shut the fuck up”. I didn’t follow it. I learned the importance of getting the performance and everything else can sort of look after itself.

Having worked with David Cronenberg on Eastern Promises, that was a project that for a long time there was speculation that there was going to be a sequel. Can you give me an update on that?

SK: It’s been dead and resurrected so many times but it’s something that I think would be better than the first one. But like Locke, most films take a long time to be put together financially and getting the actors in their right place. But I think it will get made eventually.

That’s good news. Speaking of sequels, what is your approach to writing a follow-up? This will be the first and only sequel you’ve ever done. What do you think of the sequel culture that has been dominating Hollywood?

SK: At first when someone suggested an ‘Eastern Promises 2’ I assumed it was a joke. It’s not the sort of film that you have a sequel to. It’s not a franchise by any means. But some people said it had been left open on purpose which it was a bit. Looking at it again I thought it was a good experience so what I did with the second one was sort of finish the first one in the opening two minutes and then start the new story with the same characters. It goes in a different direction but I think it’s worth it.

In terms of how saturated the market is with sequels, do you think from an artistic standpoint that that’s a negative thing or a positive thing?

SK: It depends on the sequel. You take your template as ‘The Godfather. There’s nothing better than that.

Final question: do you have a dream project in mind?

SK: I want to do a western at some point

What’s your hope for that?

SK: I just want to do a western. I’ve got some ideas. Something like ‘The End of the West’. ‘The End of the Frontier’.

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Out in Theaters: THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN 2

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Even with a 73% on Rotten Tomatoes, a 7.2 on IMDB, and a 66 on Metacritic, it’s almost universally agreed that The Amazing Spider-Man was mostly garbage. Despite electric chemistry between stars Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, the story bowed to the whim of the bizarre and childish, painting a doltish picture that recycled much of Sam Raimi‘s 2002 original. That is when it wasn’t involved with a villain’s pea-brained attempts to turn the residents of NYC into lizards. It was so inexplicably dumb that The Amazing Spider-Man 2 finds Harry Osborn – as a penitent mouthpiece for director Marc Webb – pointing out the absurdity of the reboot’s web-footed plotting. Thankfully this latest iteration will leave children and adults stupefied for a (mostly) different reason.

Since the events of the first film, Spider-Man has become a symbol of hope, a harbinger of otherwise overlooked justice, a vestige of good. Hell there’s even a scene where he interrupts a gang of bullies picking on a schoolyard nerd. Topical with potential real world impact? Double check.

As the weight of his promise to “keep Gwen out of it” weighs heavily upon him, his most meaningful relationship is in a constant state of “Whosawhatsis?” Even in the midst of his own high school graduation, he blows off Gwen and his awaiting diploma to put down Aleksei Sytsevich – Paul Giamatti sporting a deliciously xenophobic Russian accent. It’s clear that Spider-Man is his priority numero uno.

During that riotous downtown spectacle, Spidey saves Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx) who goes on to court an unhealthy obsession with Spider-Man that eventually evolves into electric-charged malice. More on this later. Between reacquainting with old pal Harry (Dane DeHaan), piecing together the clues of his parent’s mysterious past, getting it on with Gwen, beating down Electro, making skrilla with freelance photography, keeping hordes of bullies at bay, and you know, just being f*cking Spider-Man, there’s a spider lot on his spider plate. Little does he spider know that his little spider world is about to get totally spider rocked. End plot summary. 

Webb and his team of vix effects gurus have upped the ante by a significant margin, making Spider-Man’s in-air acrobatics simply stunning when not entirely nerdtastically jaw-dropping. Webb manages to offer a taste of variety in Spidey’s web slinging action, slowing things Synder-style or occasionally stopping time (it’s the web time to The Matrix‘s bullet time) and zipping around what blocking this way comes to fulfill a sense of Parker’s preternatural senses.

In doing so, his peppy camerawork mostly draws dumbstruck excitement but even manages to milk some dramatic gravitas, that is until Spidey’s web shooters go dry – or short-circuit. Webb’s direction sings when he stops the clock but its his knack for staging the big set pieces with rich, tactile aplomb that make him so perfectly suited for the job. Though Spider-Man will likely never be the best of the supers, what Webb is doing with his actions scenes (which are surprisingly sparse throughout the film) is certainly next level.

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But like Webb’s direction, Garfield and his cast of cohorts have also matured a bit, to the many thanks of this audience member. Without a noxious Denis Leary (though he does appear in ghost form) and a wasted Rhys Ifans cluttering up the stage, this installment makes way for a crew of all around better characters and welcomes the continued adoration of those cheering for the Gwen Stacy/Peter Parker (is that abbreviated to Pewen or Gweener?) romance. It results in a Spider-Man movie that’s notably darker, more confident and markedly better than its predecessor. But that doesn’t mean it’s not without its faults.

Thanks to Sony’s heinous marketing blitz that knew no bounds, I fully expected to be guffawing at Jamie Foxx’s transbluescent Electro and thoroughly put off by yet another iteration of The Green Goblin (the third in 12 years) but they were unexpected easy highlights of the film. What I did not expect was to be face-palming over the repetitive nature of Gweener’s intimate scenes. Their on-again-off-again love fumble harkens to Raimi’s annoying Mary Jane/Peter Parker ‘will they or won’t they’ saga but I guess I should just expect Parker to be as inconsistent about his girlfriends as he is about his attitude. Seriously, this guy is pretty much full-blown bipolar.

Oscillating between nice guy with face-breaking grin to prissy grumbler flinging things across the room like he’s Honey Boo-Boo three slices of Dark Forest cake deep, Peter Parker would benefit greatly from a chill pill. Since much of the film is dedicated to his wavering attachment to Gwen, Peter’s pretty much stuck on “mope” setting. Yet as Spiderman, he’s got more whip to his wisecracks than Mr. Epps in a cotton field. We see the seams between Webb’s (500) Days of Summer ways colliding with the action figure slinging studio heads.

Everything is cherries and cream inside that spandex onesie and yet whenever he peeks his head out of his costume, his real world problems weigh him down tremendously. Threading together Spider-Man’s iconic quip-heavy persona with a decidedly angsty Peter creates some tonal inconstancy that the film never manages to resolve.

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A similar complaint can be directed at the villain department. With two full villain arcs to charge through, neither Max Dillon/Electro or Harry Osburn/The Green Goblin are given ample time to settle before they’re shaken up and thrown ravenous at NYC.

For a man whose powers come from bathing in a pack of radioactive electric eels, Dillon/Electro’s initial hesitation about his role was actually surprisingly potent. Rather than immediately turn to evil (here’s looking at you Mr. Osburn) he’s like a man transported into the body of a bear, unaware of his true potential and yet armed to defend himself against hostile enemies. His puppy dog introduction wins over our sympathy even if his whole “destroy everything” mantra that later comes into play seems inorganic and cheap. As Dillon/Electro, Foxx embraces the ridiculous elements of a big blue dude made of electricity but never embarrasses his Academy Award trophy in the process.

And though Harry Osborn’s transition would have been much better and carried more gravity had he been introduced earlier in this iteration of Spider-Man, Dane DeHaan does magnificent work in his glider-bound shoes. Seriously, this guy is a revelation, smugly arriving on the scene to show up the smattering of veteran talent surrounding him. I’ve always loved DeHaan’s dramatic work but really appreciate something so campy and unhinged from him. He’s soulful but deeply maniacal, a Joker-lite. Is it too early to call him a menacing, young version of Leo? Time will tell.

Even set to the background noise of Webb and Garfield pondering leaving the series sooner rather than later, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 does move the puck forward a significant amount, setting up future installments that look to deviate further and further from Raimi’s beloved trilogy (ok first two are beloved, third is deservedly reviled.) With certain characters still in play and others notably missing from the picture, I have to admit that I’m actually looking forward to what’s next (especially the unorthodox sounding Sinister Six movie) rather than simply awaiting another mandatory installment…or four.  

C+

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Out in Theaters: DECODING ANNIE PARKER

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Like looking through a stranger’s photo album, Decoding Annie Parker takes aim at the heartstrings but misses by a country mile. Samantha Morton is tenderly powerful as the titular lead who’s lost a legion of family to the C-word but the film surrounding her is smugly self-satisfied and executed with the gushy panache of a Hallmark Mother’s Day card. Director Steven Bernstein‘s fingers are sticky from the cans of syrup he’s drizzled this sickly memorialization with – from the gag-inducing tearjerker ballads he employs to his frustratingly cloying bedside manner.

With his focus laser-pointing all over a woman so hopelessly hopeful, Bernstein attempts to marry his Oprah Channel intent to the reputation of his subject, but fails to parse said subject from should-be subtext. Had she watched the movie, we imagine the real Mrs. Parker would occasionally yuck over the final product (that is, if she weren’t contracted to peddle this sadness porn.)

Annie Parker is meant to stand in as a statue of feminine stamina: a mother, a daughter, a witness to innumerable loss; a cancer survivor, an amateur researcher, a hairless cuckold; a woman wronged at every turn. She’s seen her mother, sister, and father whisked away at the hands of sickle-wielding cancer and before she’s ever diagnosed, she knows the creeping digit of death is pointing her way next.

Like a certifiably crazed hypochondriac, Annie molests her own breasts hunting for lumps like Indiana Jones for treasure. The way she’s man-handling those tatas, we assume we’ve missed the scene where she wines and dines them. Her visits to the boob doctor’s office are so frequent that she’s essentially the titty-fondling office lucky penny. When she does finally unearth a scoop of tumor in her breastal region, the doctor tells her, “Stage 3. Quite advanced.” The lesson: vigilance doesn’t pay?

Annie drops knowledge bombs on the doctor along the lines of, “My grandma, mom, and sister all had breast cancer, there must be a genetic connection!” to which the doctor gives her the equivalent of a head pat and a pair of eyes that say, “I’m sorry, did you say your education stopped after your high school diploma?” Cue: more frustration.

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Helen Hunt
then shows up as some feminist Joan of Arc scientist/superdoctor, willing to burn in a conflagration of peer-reviewed journals to prove that breast cancer is as hereditary as genital alopecia or Down’s Syndrome. The guy in charge of handing out what would be her grant money might as well be Annie Parker’s dickish doctor’s son though, because he’s apparently received the same gene that allows him to cast glares at women and their “breast cancer” with all the glib sympathy of “Are we done here?”

At this point, Bernstein knows exactly what his audience wants and delivers a deliciously juicy montage of chemo-fatigue, hair loss of the wispy variety and vomiting green goo into bed pans. He’s trying to twist our arm into surrendering tears but his power is weak and his tactic folly. You sit there and take it but can’t help but shrug when the pity wave washes over you. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not sympathy I lack so much as tolerance for trivializing trauma in such a ho-hum manner.

Though Hunt is nothing shy of unremarkable (especially when taken in the context of her stunning performance in 2012’s The Sessions), Morton brings sympathy and full-bodied authenticity to Annie Parker. She’s a trooper, a patented solider on the warpath with breast cancer and her “aw shucks” earnesty does nothing but earn our favor. While Hunt feels dilatory and cold-blooded, Morton fleshes things into the realm of the real complete with the comedy and tragedy that occupies the randomness of life. Other characters though feel short-changed.

Give me more Aaron Paul with butt-length hair (and less Aaron Paul in deep-set eyeliner) or another serving of that spunkified Rashida Jones – apparently just freed from what must have been a long tenure in Macy’s makeup department. But no, everything is glossed and glossy- nothing more so than the timeline in Bernstein’s film. He gives each scene a few minutes to establish who’s dying now and then floats to the next tearjerker before allowing the last one to sink in. A cracked out Easter bunny doesn’t hop around as much as this noob. As he bounds from month to month, year to year without allowing us to get a feel for the dynamics or chemistry between the characters, we lose synch with anything and everything, save for Morton’s tasteful characterization of Annie Parker.

Bernstein works the movie like a circus clown, loading suckerpunch after suckerpunch into his cinematic cannon, but they strike with dull thuds. His pleads for heartbreak hardly break a sweat; his swings of outrage leave us unscathed. He’s the Superman of indifference, the Flash of going nowhere fast. Ostensibly about cancer, this movie is actually about throwing a pity party and pillow fighting your way out of it to an N’Sync soundtrack.

D+

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Restored and Revisited: Godzilla (1954) Celebrates 60 Years


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has long stood as a universal symbol of destruction – a mighty metaphorical monstrosity whose roots are embedded so deep into the cultural zeitgeist that few corners of the world would be caught unfamiliar with the city-toppling beast. With over 28 films featuring his prehistoric personage, countless pop culture references and a slew of television, comics, video game, and toy appearances featuring the original kaiju, generation after generation have been clued into the lasting impact of this reptilian icon. But even with such a long line of successors, no film in its pantheon – or in the monster movie oeuvre at large – has left as large a footprint in the world of film and pop culture as Ishrio Honda‘s original 1954 Godzilla. Today, you may be able to pick out a man in a rubber suit but the satirical and tragic symbolism live on in robust, fiery glory.

Rialto Pictures have spearheaded this latest restoration in junction with the film’s 60th anniversary. Their previous endeavors have included such films as Breathless, The Battle of Algiers and The Third Man and have earned them the title of “gold standard of reissue distributors”. With their latest clean-up, the Godzilla of the past looks fit for the big screen again.

As all films age, they lose their original sparkle and dazzle. Not only does a shift towards new groundbreaking technology date older films in the context of the latest and greatest but the original material itself loses its cinematic punch over time. Sound gets stuck in its throat, pictures fuzz and skip, the film becomes washed out. Like a debutante out of her prime, it sags. You’ll be happy to hear then that this newest makeover of Godzilla looks and sounds, quite simply, rip roaring. The bellows have bark, the black-and-white cinematography has bite and the picture, all captured in gloriously old-fashion Academy ratio, is as epic as ever. Though some larger scale set pieces look like they could have been filmed in a sudsy bathtub, the chaotic swirl of Honda’s camera locks you tight in the moment. Dated or no, Godzilla is still a behemoth to behold.  

For those who’ve never actual seen the film, a quick plot synopsis. When a skiff full of fishermen sinks into the sea under mysterious circumstances – with a bubbling vortex reminiscent of a Kraken’s turning the crew to screaming jetsam – authorities are left baffled, and wives and children are left to cry and swoon. As the town seeks an answer, only an elderly islander can rightly identify the beast lurking in their waters. Godzilla, he mutters. Godzilla.

As the buzz of rumors swarm the town, Godzilla finally reveals himself a fire-breathing menace to the scurrying populace of Japan’s coastal regions and greatest cities. A tangential subplot involving young Japanese maiden Emiko and her beloved, but not betrothed, salvager, Hideto Ogata, takes us through the human end of this larger-than-life saga. As Hideto and Emiko flirt around revealing their forbidden love to Emiko’s archeologist father, Serizawa, to whom Emiko is engaged, invents a weapon capable of bringing down the beast that’s bringing down their city. Young love lives in one corner while mass destruction is pondered a few doors down. The juxtaposition of such youthful hope against calloused calamity feeds the tension to Serizawa’s conundrum. If he is to use the likes of such a catastrophic weapon, it would unveil a new level of destructive prowess to the world’s already thirsty superpowers. But the alternative involves the likely death and destruction of his entire country. Decisions, decisions.


This junction of themes of war-time morality, superstitious mythology and thoughtful historical reflection are set against a Japan decidedly haunted by Big Boy. Godzilla even looks like a nightmarish atomic bomb personified. Unnaturally pot-bellied and rounded out like the ghastly hourglass of the world’s most destructive weapon, his figure itself portends destruction.

As a metaphor for WWII-era America, the beastly, thoughtless rampager seems less a condemnation of Japan’s former enemies than an admission of invitation. Honda’s is a film that doesn’t place blame on the enemy for Japan’s history. Rather, Honda takes head-hanging responsibility for Japan’s great calamity. Godzilla is a dark beast awoken, his vengeance hot, his destruction wanton but warranted. Honda’s song is solemn and ponderous, his voice rings through Serizawa’s soulful mantra. There’s a remorseful sense of deservedness to Honda’s waxing morality.

Gojira (Japan’s word for Godzilla) is a hybrid of two Japanese words: gorira, meaning gorilla, and kujira, meaning whale. Originally, Godzilla was seen as a whale-like figure come to roam Japan’s shorelines after a bout of radioactive alteration. It seems a far cry from the spiny, T-Rex-like monster we’re familiar with today, but Godzilla does live on as a whale of a property. With a new version to hit theaters on May 16 of this year and who knows how many more on the horizon, we’re left hoping that the spirit of Honda’s brooding black-and-white monsterpiece can be replicated, or at least properly homaged going into the future. For those who are longtime fans or still unfamiliar with this original classic, be sure to make it out to see Godzilla roam the big screen. Otherwise, you might have to wait for the 75th or, God forbid, 100th anniversary.

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Weekly Review 45: DEVIL, PARANORMAL, DIVING, WOLVES

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A relatively light week at the theaters in which I saw Chef (review to follow), Paul Walker‘s last completed project Brick Mansions (buhuh) and a half-way decent horror movie that’s failed to make much of an impression at the box office, The Quiet Ones. Aside from those you’ll find below, I also revistied The Amazing Spiderman at home to prepare for the screening this week and will briefly say that aside from the the smart casting of Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, it really has very little to offer. The screwball plotline, Glasgow-grinnin’ Lizard and henious score alone are enough to retire this to the anals of the unnecessary (and thank God that Denis Leary‘s character is dead). Oh and I also quickly became obsessed with Comedy Central‘s Review, a brilliant comedy series in which Andrew Daly plays a man that reviews not food, books or movies but life experiences. Definitely check it out.

I SAW THE DEVIL (2010)

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A deliciously devious tale of revenge, Kim Jee-woon‘s I Saw the Devil shows South Korea for the bold cinescape it truly is. Kaleidoscopically epic, hopelessly violent and ruthlessly vengeful to a fault, this two-and-a-half revenge saga tells the tale of a special ops agent, Kim Soo-hyeon (Byung-hun Lee) who seeks retribution against the twisted serial killer (Mik-sik Choi of Oldboy) who raped and decapitated his pregnant wife. As he becomes a bona fide hunter of the criminally lecherous, Kim loses himself in a battle with his own soul. The blood drips bright stripes of red, complimenting the engrossing, challenging and yet playful story from Hoon-jung Park. With each new South Korean film I encounter, I get more and more addicted. Next up: The Man from Nowhere, New World andThe Good, The Bad and the Weird.

A-

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE MARKED ONES (2014)

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There’s not much to say about this newest installment/first spin-off of the Paranormal Activity camp aside from mentioning the fact that if you’ve liked/put up with the earlier installments, this is just more of the same. It fleshes out some of the mythology but in no concrete or truly satisfying way. It’s like the ending of a lesser Lost episode that just leaves you with more questions than answers. There are moments where it seemed like director Christopher Landon dared to go in a whole new direction (the Chronicle-esque subplot was easily the film’s best moments) but eventually turned into your standard, if not subpar, PA movie.

C-

THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY (2007)

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Somber and brave, much like the film’s subject, The Diving Bell and The Butterfly takes the perspective of Jean-Dominique Bauby who suffered a massive stroke that resulted in a rare case of “locked-in syndrome”. If the name “locked in syndrome” sounds kinda shitty, you don’t know the half of it. Bauby didn’t lost any mental acuity but became so deeply paralyzed that he became unable to speak or move – that is, all but his left eye. With only the power of blinking, Bauby learns to communicate through long-winded sessions with a caring therapist. Julian Schnabel’s film charters the many lives he touched and how he went on to write a touching memoir, all through opening and closing his one bloodshot eye. More similar in tone and style to The Sessions than My Left Foot (and glisteningly ripe for a parody title of My Left Eye) The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a deeply soulful and philosophical venture that explores what it means to be human in wonderfully simplistic terms yet it never quite offers the caliber of showmanship, in front of or behind the camera, to muster up the tears – or emotional gut punching – you might expect it to elicit.

B

BIG BAD WOLVES (2014)

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Quentin Tarantino named this Israeli thriller/black comedy the best film of 2013, earning it a place on many a movie buff’s radar. Perhaps the expectation of greatness and Tarantino’s stamp of approval led to my ultimate disappointment with the film but I’d like to think that it has more to do with quality issues than my going into it with preconceived notions. The story is certainly one that would catch Tarantino’s eye: a teacher framed for raping and murdering little girls is kidnapped and tortured by a victim’s father and a roguish detective. But the film runs aground a slew of narrative issues and is saddled with mostly poor performances from the Israeli crew, most notably from Rotem Keinan who plays “is he or isn’t he?” rapist/murderer Dror. Watching a man’s fingers gets smashed to bits by a hammer or his sternal charred by a blow torch should be torture to watch but Keinan always looks like a man who’s stubbed his toe. It just didn’t work for me. There’s enough intrigue and tension to keep affairs interesting throughout but it’s certainly not a film that I would run out to recommend to anyone unless they’re dying of curiosity.

C

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Out in Theaters: BRICK MANSIONS

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A silver lining to Paul Walker‘s death: the world has been spared a Brick Mansion‘s sequel (2 Brick 2 Mansion?). This rat-faced nincompoop of an actioner begs for franchise play with hands outstretched like a Cambodian child with a nub for a leg, hawking tin whistles and salivating for a hot bowl of gruel. You pity it, look down on it, wish that someone out there in the world had the decency to clean it up, give it a good meal and place a little Grinch pat on its misshapen Cindy Lou Who head. If someone served up this movie to the Grinch, you better believe his heart would have shrunk three sizes. Had Brick Mansions been my sad, dilapidated child, I would have never let it leave the house dressed like such a drunken buffoon and whoever did was borderline abusive (to its unsuspecting audience most of all). Like the inhabitants of the eponymous Brick Mansions (a walled in ghetto distinct of Detroit), everyone involved in making this failing, flailing, faltering deuce of a movie must have been on mild to “Chase the dragons!” amounts of sweet black tar heroin.

Brick Mansions is a movie so discordantly dull, so mindlessly thickheaded, so enduringly tongue-tied that bounding from plot point to plot point is an exercise in parkour itself. From a French man, who is over and over again referred to as such, trying his (half-hearted) hardest at an American accent (WHY?!) to Wu Tang Clan’s finest actor, RZA, slicin’ and dicin’ up red pepper after red pepper (don’t ask), there’s just no amount of yarn to string together the many cacophonous plot elements. And RZA? Seriously?

From the performance to the character itself, RZA is everything wrong with the film. He enunciates through a mouthful of marbles, the well-manicured fine-point beard that is his face drooping like a guy hopped up on Vicodin and about seven bong rips deep. His “performance” is the equivalent of purple drank – it’s mind numbing and will fill you with regret. Watching him act is like being roofied. It’s supposed to hurt so good but leaves you clutching at your hind parts. How anyone keeps handing this guys roles is a mystery for the likes of the Twilight Zone.  

Co-star David Belle, as the incessantly dim but limber-legged Lino, is equally as interesting as a pet rock. For a man who all but invented parkour, Belle’s acting abilities couldn’t be more out of line with his impressive physical feats of physics-defying gymnastics. As he zips and flips off walls, crawlspaces, and rooftops, he’s like a firecracker in action. When he’s poised to spit out a line, he’s a man who trips over his shoelace at the report of a starting pistol. And even his “amazing” ventures of athletic prowess are edited down to footloose irrelevance.  

Parkour loses its “kour” – read: core, as in hardcore (*guitar solo*) – when it’s split up into millisecond by millisecond snippets. A sequence involving a guy who sprints off a building grabs a ladder, swings down that ladder and smashes through a window would look patently hardcore if captured in one fluid shot. Having said that, I would pay good money to see Alfonson Cuaron’s Brick Mansions. What we get instead is a sharp series of events shot from different angles, smashed together so haphazardly and so mindlessly that each piece of the puzzle looks rehearsed to death and wallpapered with safety nets. Anyone can edit a sequence together to achieve the unreal but few people can actually achieve the unreal. Camille Delamarre‘s hackneyed direction robs any and all thrills from what would be otherwise breathtaking entertainment of the simpleton variety, the likes of a daring YouTube video or a David Blane stunt.

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Oh Jesus, we haven’t even gotten to the plot. Just imagine Fast and Furious snuck Dredd into a showing of Dances With Wolves. All the horrid cliches are there, waving their hands over their heads like fools, begging to be recognized and called on.

Roguish undercover cop playing fast and loose with government resources? Check. Misrepresented noble savage in the form of heroine-shooting ghetto dwellers? Check. Bringing only fists to a gun fight? Check. Oh, and unlikely duo. Double check!

We’re so many layers deep in the knock-off assembly line that Brick Mansions doesn’t mind stealing from ANOTHER FUCKING PAUL WALKER MOVIE – the original Fast and Furious, which in turn stole from Point Break which probably ripped off a caveman’s painting somewhere down the line. There’s so little to the plot developments that explaining it is just a waste of your time and mine. Just take my word when I say that after Brick Mansions, we’ve now witnessed one of the dumbest movies of the year.

See a flat-chested Russian brute fight two men leaping around like flying squirrels, a vaguely foreign woman chained to a ticking bomb that’s in turn hogtied to a USSR-era Russian nuke and car chases that sprout out of thin air … .because Paul Walker (*guitar solo*)!!! Also, acting on par with The Canyons.

Precariously balancing on Walker’s already not-so-gilded legacy, this is nothing short of an embarrassment for all involved. Brick is so recklessly conceived and shoddily written that by the end of it, it’s as if the writers entirely forgot what movie they were making in the first place. Plot resolutions are such an afterthought that pretty much everything wraps up with a shrug and a “Nah, JK!” In all its detestable glory, it’s a shining example of cocktail napkin scribbles gone horribly wrong, now complete with a happily ever after ending so flat and lifeless that you’ll be pining to watch a Rush Hour marathon in its stead.

It’s a ton of fun, if your idea of fun is wasting an hour and thirty minutes of your life. Brick tries out a few jokes here and there – mostly backflip-centered – but the real joke is on you for seeing the damn thing. This is a movie destined for the recycling bin, begging to be forgotten after it earns its keep, and crossing its fingers at Walker’s legacy equating to box office bucks. The sad reality is that the execs behind it are probably doing a smug little victory dance since this probably would have gone straight to Redbox if not for Walker’s early exit.

D-

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