Moody's Movie Blog

Under discussion:

Be Kind Rewind  (2008)

Some critics are slamming director Michel Gondry’s sweet new slipstream comedy Be Kind Rewind for being excessively heartfelt and overly sentimental. I caught the film this weekend and was quickly wooed by its oddball humor, charming story about a neighborhood full of cuddly wackos, and warm message about the power of community spirit.

Those hoping for a thematic sister film to Gondry’s 2004 drama Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (written by Charlie Kaufman) might be disappointed. Rewind wears its heart on its quirky sleeve, and it leaves little room for existential angst or scenes of heartbreak. Still, fans of Gondry’s narrow sense of humor and visionary music video work should find a lot to like in Be Kind Rewind.  Most people reading this have no doubt seen the trailers with Mos Def, doing a great job playing a spacier version of his Ford Prefect from Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, and Jack Black remaking, or “sweding,” movies like RoboCop, Rush Hour 2 and Ghostbusters. The duo’s imaginative zero-budget remakes are an essential part of the film, but they don’t start making them until way after the twenty-minute mark. First, Gondry sets up a story about the gentrification of an historic - to its residents anyway - East Coast neighborhood.

Mr. Freeman (Danny Glover) is forced to make expensive repairs to the building that houses his neighborhood video store. City hall threatens to demolish it and build condos on the site if he can’t bring the building up to code. Freeman takes a vacation to spy on a nearby Blockbuster-like franchise, hoping to ape the business model, and leaves Mos Def’s Mike in charge. Enter Jerry (Jack Black), Mike’s annoying, conspiracy theory-spouting buddy who lives next to the neighborhood power plant. Jerry gets himself zapped (with some cool lightning effects) and magnetized during a failed attempt to sabotage the power plant. Jerry’s newly magnetized body erases all the tapes in Freeman’s store, causing a desperate Mike to start remaking the store’s video catalog with a bulky, circa-1989 video camera.

The remakes are hilarious and, although low-tech, endlessly creative. Mike and Jerry use fishing poles and tinsel to recreate the Ghostbusters’ proton streams, and saucy pizzas stand in for blood pools in their version of Boyz N Da Hood. The sweded movies are a testament to Gondry’s unlimited imagination and charming, singular visual style. (Check out his music video and TV work at Youtube).

Mike and Jerry’s remakes are a hit with the neighborhood residents, who soon become part of their movie-making exploits. The creative projects unite the community and, spurred by the spirit of neighborhood jazz hero Fats Waller, the local Joes and Janes make a bid to reclaim the town from urban developers.

The right kind of person, namely the movie buff, will probably go home loving this movie, especially for its bizarre Sesame Streettone, its championing of the dirty underdog, and the delightful performances by the main cast (especially Mos Def and Glover) and a funny Mia Farrow. Yup, Mia Farrow. Sigourney Weaver even pops up in the third act, a possible signal that the A-listers are lining up to work with Gondry. I’m looking forward to his next project, a true sci-fi film based on the Rudy Rucker novel Master of Space and Time. I’m not sure what to make of his idea for a sequel to Rewind, though.

Review originally posted at SciFi Observer.

Under discussion:

Beowulf  (2007)

I was kicking myself for not catching Beowulf in 3-D as soon as the movie’s titles started flowing across the screen. The Cinemark in my hometown of Brownsville wasn’t offering the 3-D experience director Robert Zemeckis had in mind when creating this animated take on the ancient long-form poem. It’s too bad, since the 3-D gimmick probably would have made this awkward and unlikeable movie worth watching.

Unlike the Lord of the Rings trilogy or even the Harry Potter flicks, little in Beowulf is thrilling, visually arresting or awe inspiring. The filmmakers’ take on the mostly shapeless classic story is dull, one-note and sometimes laughable. The animation and art design is unremarkable and often ugly, especially when the human characters look and move like dead, manipulated meat puppets. There are two scenes — only two — that I found potentially engrossing and fun to look at, but that’s a sad tally for a movie marketed as a rousing holiday spectacle.

Beowulf  opens in King Hrothgar’s (Anthony Hopkins) mead hall with the king and his knights doing an Anglo-Saxon take on Caligula. It’s a gross display, with the vulgar animated knights slobbering all over themselves and a Hrothgar so drunk and undiginified that he doesn’t care if his robe slips off to reveal little Hrothgar in front of everybody. These characters never become sympathetic or interesting at any point in the movie’s 113-minutes.

Eventually, the monster Grendel bursts in and kills most of these guys and the “hero” Beowulf later answers Hrothgar’s call to kill the monster. The mistake made is that Zemeckis’ Beowulf, along with most of the other human characters in this thing, is about as heroic and likeable as a boasting jock or an obnoxious brute. Instead of turning the classic character into a classic pop hero, Zemeckis and crew (including writers Neil Gaiman and Roger Avery) deliver a boring braggart no one can relate to. Ray Winstone’s voice acting is fine — and loud — but this movie had me rooting for Grendel not Beowulf.

The monster Grendel’s design is too overcooked to be appreciated, but the script turns him into a sympathetic character here, and Crispin Glover’s performance had me wanting to see more of him. Too bad he’s snuffed in an early scene that’ll be remembered, more than anything else, for a ridiculous game of hide-the-exposed genitals, ala Austin Powers.

In a lazy attempt to unify the original text’s disconnected halves, the movie grossly diverges from the poem and goes on to further kill the idea of Beowulf as a hero, leaving the audience with no one to root for and little to invest in. I won’t give away the details here, but what happens after Beowulf meets Grendel’s mother (Angelina Jolie) really sinks this thing.

Beowulf seems less concerned with telling a good story than it is with delivering cheap cartoon thrills and a kinda-sorta naked and spiked-heel sporting Angelina Jolie. The character close-ups look good, and the final action sequence is fun, but that’s not enough to recommend this half-baked movie. And don’t get me started on the music …

Review originally posted at Screen Time.

Under discussion:

Transformers  (2007)

Michael Bay’s fun but bloated epic Transformers hits stores today in a single-disc DVD, a two-disc DVD set and a high-definition HD-DVD version. Did they include bonus features? You betcha. There’s tons of ‘em on the two-discer, including featurettes about the Autobots and Decepticons backstory and the movie’s special effects.

Great, but I think the good people at Paramount missed an opportunity to include the ultimate special feature on the two-discer, 1986’s animated Transformers: The Movie.

Was Paramount afraid to include the two films in the same package? Did they figure that Bay’s flick would pale in comparison to the 1986 Sony Wonder Video classic? Well, of course not. They just didn’t care to do it. But what do you think, die-hard Transformers fan? Is the 1986 version better, or at least more fun, than Bay’s CG crunch fest? In the interest of serious scientific debate, cultural progress and killing time, let’s compare ‘em.

ACTION:

2007: That 30-minute blast of mindless urban destruction that ends the movie is almost worth the ticket and DVD price alone, but the flick takes way too long to get there. Plus, all the short bursts of action before it are cut in between long stretches of characters just standing around or, worse, trying to be funny. The special effects are amazing though.

1986: This one is all action all the time. The thing opens with the brutal killing of a bunch of beloved characters and the fighting never seems to stop. If the Autobots aren’t battling the Decepticons, they’re racing each other, blasting other alien robots or flying through outer space. Of course, it’s all animated in that flat, ’80s, you-gotta-be-pushing-30-to-love-it style.

Winner: Tie

DRAMA:

2007: Shia Labeouf tries to get it on with Megan Fox and seems to have a disturbing relationship with his pet Chihuahua. That’s about it. Oh, and there’s something about a “cube” or “all-spark” (they never stick to one name) that’s gotta be found to save humanity. The drama gets bonus points here since everything Peter Cullen (Optimus Prime) says sounds awe-inspiring.

1986: This movie is almost too dramatic. Prime dies in the first act, as do other favorite Autobots, Megatron has a disturbing identity crisis, Hot Rod goes through robot puberty, the noble Ultra Magnus realizes his limited potential, and everybody has to fight an evil planet-eating robot monster voiced by Orson Welles. (More points for Cullen’s voice here).

Winner: 1986

COMEDY:

2007: Um, Bernie Mac is in it. He’s funny right? Like in most Bay flicks, most stabs at comedy here are all too obvious or awkward (Example: What’s the deal with Josh Duhamel getting the runaround by an unfriendly phone operator during an intense battle scene?). The scene where the Autobots try to hide from the Witwickys is good for a laugh, though. Labeouf is funny throughout too.

1986: Two words: Robot mustaches. Seriously, watch it again. Also, there are tons of laugh-out-loud scenes featuring the Dinobots, the funniest and dumbest robot dinosaurs ever. Oh yeah, there’s also robot sharks controlled by a floating brain with tentacles. Funny, no? Sure, but you laugh at it, not with it.

Winner: Tie

MUSIC:

2007: Linkin Park. Disturbed. Goo Goo Dolls. No thanks.

1986: Stan Bush’s ‘The Touch.” There’s never been a better theme song for a young robot Pinto’s evolution from scrub to savior of the universe.

Winner: 1986. You can’t beat “The Touch.”

Originally posted at Screen Time.

Under discussion:

Volver  (2006)

Volver, a charming minor work by Pedro Almódovar, is probably my least favorite film by the great Spanish director.

Since the 1980s, Almódovar has delivered a successful string of florid and risky melodramas about Spanish women and their families. For his last two films, Almódvar focused his lens on men, with glorious results. He won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay for 2002’sHabla Con Ella (Talk to Her), a tender drama about two very flawed men in love with comatose women. 2004 saw the release of La Mala Educación (Bad Education), the director’s acclaimed and gripping Hitchcockian suspense tale about two male lovers connected by sexual abuse.

Volver, which means “to return” in Spanish, is an apt title for Almódovar’s latest, his comeback to the land of the lady. It marks another film about strong women, another great role tailored for Penélope Cruz (the two worked together on 1999’s Todo Sobre Mi Madre), but a small regression for the director.

With Volver, Almódovar tells a female-centric story that touches on all of his hallmark issues — death, abuse, deceit, family and friendship — but he lets the melodrama simmer instead of boil.

Most directors categorized by their penchant for the melodramatic offer laughable or cold results, but Almódovar has always turned high drama into high art. Check his earlier work, especially Madre, and you’ll find visually explosive and powerful films that can essentially be read as artful soap operas. Volver is a story made to be told with such roaring operatics and only traces of the intimate tone present inHabla Con Ella. Almódovar opts for the opposite this time, dampening what could have been a more lively, hot-blooded tale of lives rekindling with a tone too muted. It’s almost like he was timid about displaying his knack for flamboyance.

Cruz plays Raimunda, an overworked mother married to a vulgar drunk in Madrid. We meet Raimunda on one of her many trips to her hometown village, scrubbing away at her parents’ tombstone with the help of her teenage daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo) and her sister Sole (Lolela Dueñas). After refurbishing the gravesite, the women visit their geriatric and comically loopy aunt (Chus Lampreave), who’s on the verge of death herself. The first twenty minutes of the film play out slowly, establishing the central characters’ tight bonds and complicated relationships. Things pick up after Paula kills her father with a kitchen knife defending herself from his sexual advances, spurring Raimunda to hide the body and, in essence, take charge of her own life. Then, Sole returns to the village for her aunt’s funeral and comes back accompanied by her mother’s ghost.

Almódovar plays all of this surprisingly straight. He documents the strangeness and struggles Raimunda must endure after her husband’s death — which includes stuffing his body in a large freezer and burying it by a lake — with much less of the dark wit and high style he’s famous for. What follows are a number of diverting and funny, but only mildly compelling, scenes of Raimunda and her clan making sweet music, sometimes literally, out of their hard lives and painful pasts. Life changing secrets are exposed, the dead rise from the grave and a once-broken family finds solace from the harsh world within itself. It’s all well done, steadily tailored and glossed, but the bigger moments don’t pull you in like they should.

Cruz delivers like a champ despite the film’s mostly flat tone. The early raves for her performance are dead-on. She’s never been better, not even in her other much lauded Spanish-language work. Her verve here is infectious and her pain believable. She knew she was making a Pedro Almódovar film. It’s too bad the director seemed to be aiming for something else.

Review originally posted at Blog Critics.

Under discussion:

Ghost Rider  (2007)

The Fountain  (2006)

The Science of Sleep  (2005)

Have you ever watched a movie and thought, "Wow, that was a mess, but I loved it"? I have, and I have a name for movies that make me feel that way. I call 'em "beautiful failures."

Beautiful failures are usually too long, too weird, too sloppy or just plain stupid, but they're always strangely compelling and, well, beautiful. They're the movies you think you hate but you can't stop thinking about. You come back to them over and over and you can't figure out why. They can be very complex, pretentious or even too simple or mass appealing. Other film buffs might tell you different, but there's really no formula to creating a beautiful failure.

Some of my favorite beautiful failures are Steven Soderbergh's Solaris, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut and David Cronenberg's awkward 1996 thriller Crash. I love these films for different reasons, but I recognize that they're all a little ... dreadful.

Here are a few titles I've recently added to my list of beautiful failures.

The Science of Sleep

The problems start with the packaging and advertising for director Michel Gondry's follow-up to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The trailer and DVD box try to sell the film as a quirky romantic comedy full of whimsical dream sequences and cute one-liners. What you really get is a seemingly chaotic but densely structured character study of an unlikable, mentally ill manchild (Gael Garcia Bernal).

There's a lot of good here, though. Bernal's character has trouble disassociating fantasy from reality, and Gondry illustrates this with some charming and singular visual tricks. Also, the ending is somewhat of a stunner that brilliantly unites all the disparate ideas and elements that came before. Unfortunately, most viewers will be confused and sick of all the seeming randomness before the third act. Bernal and the rest of the cast are great, but most of the characters are unappealing or hard to relate to. Still, I'll go back to this movie again for its brave storytelling, strange comedic bits and great visuals.

The Fountain

Where to start? The Fountain is the perfect beautiful failure. It's at times fiercely incoherent, silly and pretentious, but it's also visually impressive and features a very strong lead performance by Hugh Jackman.

All of the "big ideas" director Daron Aronofsky (Pi, Requim for a Dream) attempts to convey here can be gleaned from the preface of one of those Don't Sweat the Small Stuff books, but he delivers his dime store philosophy in an extravagant package that constantly switches from compelling to laughable (picture a bald Jackman reaching nirvana while sitting in a lotus position). Add to that a bunch of muddled biblical references, plot strands that go nowhere and performances that range from sleepy (Rachel Weisz) to irrelevant (Ellen Burstyn) and you have a "bf" that somehow demands repeat viewing.

Ghost Rider

This campy comic book adaptation is about a guy with a flaming skull for a head, but that's the least ridiculous thing about it. After delivering two joyless duds based on Marvel books (Daredevil and Elektra) writer-director Mark Steven Johnson ampsGhost Rider's absurdity factor up to 11. Unfortunately, that's way too high -- even for a comic book movie.

The film is a poorly written, painfully simplistic and predictable popcorn flick, but its worst attributes are what will keep me coming back to it. You have to admire a film that so economically delivers the cheap thrills and seems willing to suck ass to do so. The cast members do their best to make sure that Ghost Rider makes you smirk for 90 minutes and slips out of your system faster than a Diet Coke. It's a sick and fascinating thing to watch Nicholas Cage violently hammer tons of trite quirks and ticks into his character (He eats M&Ms from a champagne flute! He listens to The Carpenters! He speaks with an undefinable accent!). Peter Fonda and Sam Elliot ham it up, but the real kick here is Wes Bentley as the film's impossibly witless and fruity villain, Blackheart.

Originally posted at Gold Teeth.

Under discussion:

1408  (2007)

In 1408,  John Cusack plays a depressed writer trapped inside an "evil fucking room" that's clearly bent on driving him nuts and then driving him dead. Once shut in the room, Cusack's Mike Enslin endures tons of disturbing tricks straight outta Stephen King's big bag of horror randomness. He's left witless by flapper-era spooks, attacked by a mask-wearing slasher and even receives a visit from his dead daughter. Most of what happens in 1408 is pretty creepy (especially the periodic blasting of The Carpenter's "We've Only Just Begun"), but it's not the source material or the script, based on a short story by King, that makes 1408 one of the best King adaptations since 1980's "The Shining." The credit should go to Cusack and director Mikael Håfström.

Cusack fully commits to his role, somehow adding weight to Enslin's reheated back story and the ensuing tale of redemption. He makes you feel his emotional, psychological and physical pangs -- whether you want to or not. Håfström's film is refreshingly gore free, but it's still scary as hell. The Swedish filmmaker's suspense-crafting skills cannot be overstated here. The expository scenes leading up to the frights progress with a haunted air, thanks in part to a great supporting turn by Samuel L. Jackson, but things get really tense once Cusack checks into the suite of horrors. Those who don't suffer from anxiety or vertigo will get a chilling taste of both watching Cusack sneak across a ledge in an ill-fated attempt to escape the room. Things get so nerve-wracking that some might want to look away from the screen (like I did) for a few seconds in the third act.

If gripping suspense films are your thing, then 1408 is a must-see. Be warned though. Like most horror/suspense mash-ups, the ending here is more than mildly ambiguous. What might seem like a Hollywood ending to some might seem bleak to others. The ambiguity doesn't spoil what came before though, and it's sure to spark tons of theories from chatty film buffs.

Review originally posted at Gold Teeth.