Lessons of Darkness

Knightriders (1981): B-

The idea of having a troupe of performers stage King Arthur-style Renaissance Fair dramas on motorcycles is a lot less cool now than it must have seemed – to writer/director George A. Romero, at least – in 1981. Nonetheless, if one can get past the somewhat silly premise, as well as a lot of filler that helps pad the film out to an unreasonable 144 minutes, there’s some substance to Knightriders, Romero’s story about the men who follow Billy (Ed Harris), a self-styled Arthur who believes in living a fantasy life free of interference from hick cops and exploitative agents. Billy exists in his own world, sleeping nude in the woods with maid Linet (Amy Ingersoll), turning down autograph requests from little kids (so they don’t get the idea he’s some flashy celeb like Evel Knievel), and risking serious bodily harm by jousting on his steel horse with challenger-to-the-throne Morgan (Tom Savini). Romero’s story is at once too protracted and yet, in the case of Morgan’s dalliance with a greedy promoter who wants him to be the star attraction, rushed to the point of feeling tossed-off. Still, Harris embodies his character with such conviction that the character’s struggle to retain the integrity of his dream ultimately exudes a modest poignancy that’s amplified by the sense that Romero – another renegade trying to fulfill his own cinematic visions, with the help of friends, on the outskirts of the corrupting corporate mainstream – sees more than a bit of himself in Billy.

To survive war, you gotta become war

Because Sylvester Stallone just can't let his '80s icons rest in peace, this week sees the release of Rambo, a largely unnecessary new adventure for one-man army John Rambo that's mostly notable for showing off Sly's veiny HGH-enhanced forearms and for delivering more extreme violence than any film in recent memory. If only some of that carnage had spilled over into the upcoming Fool's Gold...

In Theaters:
Rambo (Slant magazine)
How She Move (Slant magazine)
U2 3D (Cinematical)

Coming Soon:
Fool's Gold (Slant magazine)
Flawless (Slant magazine)

The Monster is Coming! The Monster is Coming!

Actually, Cloverfield is finally here. And as is usually the case with such highly anticipated event pictures, it doesn't live up to its hype. Still, it's more tolerable than most of the other films I've recently seen - and light years better than The Air I Breathe, the early front-runner for 2008's worst of the year.

Out Now:
Cloverfield (Slant magazine)
Mad Money (Slant magazine)
Teeth (Cinematical)
Day Zero (Slant magazine)

Out Later:
The Air I Breathe (Slant magazine)
Chop Shop (Slant magazine)
Caramel (Slant magazine)
Untraceable (Slant magazine)

The Stepfather (1987): B+

The Stepfather is, in one respect, simply another 1980s horror film, albeit one buoyed by a strong lead performance by Terry O’Quinn as a stepdad who likes to murder his adopted family once they cease living up to his expectations. And yet Joseph Ruben’s surprisingly resonant and durable tale also cannily reflects, in a larger way, the era of its creation, both in its critique of Ronald Reagan’s attempt at reviving ‘50s-era family values, as well as in its ability to tap into the terrifying instability and identity confusion felt by adolescents confronted with parental divorce and remarriage. Ruben doesn’t attempt to mask the psychosis of Jerry Blake (O’Quinn), opening his film with a beautifully orchestrated sequence in which Blake shaves off his beard, gets dressed, puts a stray doll into a toy box, and then passes by a decimated living room littered with the corpses of his clan. A year later, Blake has happily established himself as the head of a new family, though problems arise thanks to teenage Stephanie’s (Jill Schoelen) distrust of her new daddy. Blake has a schizophrenic freak-out in a basement and – as befitting an old-fashioned nutjob with serious sex-related issues – goes bonkers upon catching Stephanie kissing a boy, but The Stepfather almost completely refuses to reductively explain the origins of Blake’s lunacy. Instead, he’s simply cast as a cross between Norman Bates and Jack Torrance, embodied with disconcerting cheeriness by O’Quinn and provided ample opportunities for malevolence by Ruben’s B-grade Hitchockian set pieces.

Into Great Silence (2007): B+

Demanding intense submission, Philip Gröning’s Into Great Silence charts the daily rituals and lives of Carthusian monks at France’s mountainside Grande Chartreuse monastery with a rigorous patience, tranquility and – per its title – silence that’s something to behold. Gröning’s film is non-fictional, but it’s less a documentary in any traditional sense than simply a document of painstaking piousness, its subjects going about their daily customs and chores with a methodical precision and calmness that’s amplified by the near total quiet enveloping them. Nothing remotely dramatic occurs throughout the 162-minute runtime, its “action” amounting to sights of monks mending clothes, getting their hair cut, tending to fields, and attending prayer chants. Yet as Gröning’s camera fixates on these seemingly mundane events, a sense of deep faith (aided by intermittent title cards featuring snippets of scripture) becomes palpable, and entrancing. Which isn’t to say that the repetitiveness of the proceedings doesn’t eventually become somewhat enervating, nor that these pious men’s devotion to God, because it’s wholly isolated from other people or the outside world, doesn’t feel a bit like religious masturbation. But even at its most frustrating, Into Great Silence is hypnotic – and legitimately attuned to the spiritual – in a way few cinematic works are.

Breaking in 2008

After the insanity that is the awards season, the start of a new year is always pretty blah, both in terms of quality and quantity of new releases. Nonetheless, I've been slowly getting my critical brain back in working order by slamming a few duds, as the below links confirm.

Coming Soon:
27 Dresses (Slant magazine)
Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show (Slant magazine)

Out Now:
First Sunday (Slant magazine)
One Missed Call (Slant magazine)
The Business of Being Born (Slant magazine)

DVD:
Zodiac 2-Disc Director's Cut - DVD (Slant magazine)

Published Film Reviews - 2008

7/18/08 - The Doorman (Cinematical)
7/17/08 - The Dark Knight (Slant magazine)
7/17/08 - Felon (Slant magazine)
7/17/08 - Transsiberian (Slant magazine)
7/17/08 - Mad Detective (Slant magazine)
7/17/08 - A Man Named Pearl (Slant magazine)
7/17/08 - Take (Slant magazine)
7/14/08 - Red (Slant magazine)
7/14/08 - Year of the Fish (Slant magazine)
7/14/08 - Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008) (Slant magazine)
7/14/08 - The Exiles (Slant magazine)
7/14/08 - Diminished Capacity (Slant magazine)
7/14/08 - Harold (Slant magazine)
6/28/08 - Hancock (Slant magazine)
6/28/08 - Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (Slant magazine)
6/28/08 - Full Battle Rattle (Slant magazine)
6/28/08 - August (Slant magazine)
6/28/08 - Wanted (Slant magazine)
6/28/08 - The Last Mistress (Cinematical)
6/28/08 - Full Grown Men (Slant magazine)
6/23/08 - Made in America (Slant magazine)
6/23/08 - Elsa and Fred (Slant magazine)
6/23/08 - Finding Amanda (Slant magazine)
6/23/08 - Beautiful Losers (Slant magazine)
6/23/08 - The Free Will - DVD (Slant magazine)
6/23/08 - The Free Will (Slant magazine)
6/23/08 - Expired (Slant magazine)
6/23/08 - Behave (Slant magazine)
6/23/08 - The Sari Soldiers (Slant magazine)
6/23/08 - Traces of the Trade (Slant magazine)
6/14/08 - A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman (Slant magazine)
6/14/08 - The Incredible Hulk (Slant magazine)
6/14/08 - The Happening (Slant magazine)
6/14/08 - Chris & Don: A Love Story (Cinematical)
6/9/08 - Encounters at the End of the World (Slant magazine)
6/9/08 - Kung Fu Panda (Slant magazine)
6/9/08 - You Don't Mess with the Zohan (Slant magazine)
6/9/08 - On the Rumba River (Cinematical)
6/1/08 - Anvil! The Story of Anvil (Slant magazine)
6/1/08 - When Did You Last See Your Father? (Slant magazine)
6/1/08 - Love Comes Lately (Slant magazine)
6/1/08 - Stuck (Slant magazine)
6/1/08 - Savage Grace (Cinematical)
5/21/08 - The Strangers (Slant magazine)
5/21/08 - A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (Slant magazine)
5/21/08 - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Slant magazine)
5/21/08 - The Children of Huang Shi (Cinematical)
5/21/08 - Insidious (Slant magazine)
5/16/08 - Quid Pro Quo (Slant magazine)
5/16/08 - The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (Slant magazine)
5/16/08 - Yella (Slant magazine)
5/8/08 - Postal (Slant magazine)
5/8/08 - The Wackness (Slant magazine)
5/8/08 - The Promotion (Slant magazine)
5/8/08 - Boy A (Slant magazine)
5/8/08 - Speed Racer (Slant magazine)
5/8/08 - Battle for Haditha (Cinematical)
5/8/08 - The Tracey Fragments (Slant magazine)
5/8/08 - The Babysitters (Slant magazine)
5/1/08 - Iron Man (Slant magazine)
4/27/08 - Tell No One (Slant magazine)
4/27/08 - The Foot Fist Way (Slant magazine)
4/27/08 - Mongol (Slant magazine
4/27/08 - Baby Mama (Slant magazine)
4/27/08 - Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (Slant magazine)
4/27/08 - Deception (Slant magazine)
4/27/08 - Up the Yangtze (Slant magazine)
4/18/08 - Son of Rambow (Slant magazine)
4/18/08 - Noise (Slant magazine)
4/18/08 - Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (Slant magazine)
4/11/08 - Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Slant magazine)
4/11/08 - The Forbidden Kingdom (Slant magazine)
4/11/08 - Anamorph (Slant magazine)
4/11/08 - Prom Night (2008) (Slant magazine)
4/11/08 - Smart People (Slant magazine)
4/11/08 - Young@Heart (Slant magazine)
4/4/08 - 88 Minutes (Slant magazine)
4/4/08 - Before the Rains (Slant magazine)
4/4/08 - Bra Boys (Slant magazine)
4/4/08 - There Will Be Blood - DVD (Slant magazine)
4/4/08 - Nim's Island (Slant magazine)
4/4/08 - The Ruins (Slant magazine)
4/4/08 - Sex and Death 101 (Slant magazine)
4/4/08 - Tuya's Marriage (Slant magazine)
3/28/08 - Valse Sentimentale (Slant magazine)
3/28/08 - XXY (Slant magazine)
3/28/08 - We Went to Wonderland (Slant magazine)
3/28/08 - 21 (Slant magazine)
3/28/08 - Chapter 27 (Slant magazine)
3/28/08 - The Cool School (Slant magazine)
3/28/08 - Hats Off (Slant magazine)
3/21/08 - Soul Carriage (Slant magazine)
3/21/08 - Epitaph (Slant magazine)
3/21/08 - Megane (Slant magazine)
3/21/08 - Chapter 27 (Slant magazine)
3/21/08 - Drillbit Taylor (Slant magazine)
3/21/08 - The Hammer (Slant magazine)
3/21/08 - Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File (Slant magazine)
3/14/08 - Munyurangabo (Slant magazine)
3/14/08 - Water Lilies (Slant magazine)
3/14/08 - Trouble the Water (Slant magazine)
3/14/08 - Falling from Earth (Slant magazine)
3/14/08 - Planet B-Boy (Slant magazine)
3/14/08 - Horton Hears a Who! (Slant magazine)
3/14/08 - Sleepwalking (Slant magazine)
3/14/08 - Meat Loaf: In Search of Paradise (Slant magazine)
3/6/08 - Flash Point (Slant magazine)
3/6/08 - Sputnik Mania (Slant magazine)
3/6/08 - 10,000 B.C. (Slant magazine)
3/6/08 - Snow Angels (Cinematical)
3/6/08 - Blindsight (Slant magazine)
3/6/08 - Girls Rock! (Slant magazine)
3/2/08 - Semi-Pro (Slant magazine)
3/2/08 - Jar City (Slant magazine)
2/15/08 - Redbelt (Slant magazine)
2/15/08 - Dark Matter (Slant magazine)
2/15/08 - The Unknown Woman (Slant magazine)
2/15/08 - The Spiderwick Chronicles (Slant magazine)
2/15/08 - Definitely, Maybe (Slant magazine)
2/15/08 - Ezra (Slant magazine)
2/15/08 - The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (Slant magazine)
2/15/08 - In Bruges (Slant magazine)
2/15/08 - Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins (Slant magazine)
2/3/08 - The Bank Job (Slant magazine)
2/3/08 - All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (Slant magazine)
2/3/08 - The Eye (2008) (Slant magazine)
2/3/08 - Over Her Dead Body (Slant magazine)
2/3/08 - Praying with Lior (Cinematical)
1/25/08 - Fool's Gold (Slant magazine)
1/25/08 - Flawless (Slant magazine)
1/25/08 - Rambo (Slant magazine)
1/25/08 - How She Move (Slant magazine)
1/25/08 - U2 3D (Cinematical)
1/18/08 - The Air I Breathe (Slant magazine)
1/18/08 - Chop Shop (Slant magazine)
1/18/08 - Caramel (Slant magazine)
1/18/08 - Untraceable (Slant magazine)
1/18/08 - Cloverfield (Slant magazine)
1/18/08 - Mad Money (Slant magazine)
1/18/08 - Teeth (Cinematical)
1/18/08 - Day Zero (Slant magazine)
1/11/08 - 27 Dresses (Slant magazine)
1/11/08 - Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show (Slant magazine)
1/11/08 - First Sunday (Slant magazine)
1/11/08 - One Missed Call (2008) (Slant magazine)
1/11/08 - The Business of Being Born (Slant magazine)
1/11/08 - Zodiac 2-Disc Director's Cut - DVD (Slant magazine)

Martin (1977): A-

Zombie movies made him a legend, but George A. Romero’s finest achievement may have been Martin, his 1977 character study about a young, lonely man living in Pittsburgh who may or may not be a vampire. Martin (John Amplas) is certainly convinced of this, claiming to be 84 years old and drinking the blood of his victims. However, rather than fangs, the tools of his trade are syringes and razor blades, and he regularly mocks the “magic” talismans like garlic and crucifixes that his senior citizen uncle Tada Cuda (Lincoln Maazel) wields against him. Romero leaves the central issue of whether Martin is undead ambiguous, which lends greater creepiness to the protagonist’s romantic black-and-white flashbacks to past crimes and flights from torch-bearing mobs, as well as more suspense to his present-day slayings. The writer/director’s employment of disorienting camera angles and perspectives contributes to the low-budget feature’s scraggly tension, while his portrait of urban decay and discontent brings a measure of sly social commentary to Martin’s spree, which seems driven by sexual (rather than nutritional) hunger. Thanks to Amplas’ morose countenance, Martin comes off as a surprisingly sympathetic figure, though even more impressive than Martin’s ability to elicit compassion is a murder sequence involving a woman and her extramarital lover that’s staged with a breathtaking level of taut, brutal precision.

The Simpsons Movie (2007): B

Homer Simpson’s love affair with an oinker he dubs, during one particularly absurd prank, “Spider-Pig,” is the type of purely dumb-bizarre-ridiculous-hilarious moment that has helped make The Simpsons a cultural treasure. Woe, then, that there aren’t more such moments sprinkled throughout The Simpsons Movie, the iconic clan’s first trip to the big-screen after 18 revolutionary years on the tube. A brain trust of Simpsons masterminds put plenty of love and care into this cinematic adventure, which involves an environmental crisis brought about by Homer’s careless disposal of Spider-Pig’s poop, and there are enough priceless gags and zingers packed into its 87 minutes to more than justify its existence. Yet while I can’t – and wouldn’t want to – deny that this is one of the year’s funniest theatrical releases, it’s also tough to shake a feeling of mild disappointment. Is that because of one’s intimate familiarity with not only the story’s tone, but also its themes (marriage, family, community) and satire (of religion, government, corporate America, consumerism, etc.)? Or is it because the Simpsons’ maiden movie, despite its gorgeous computer-aided 2-D visuals, fails to take significant advantage of film’s expansive creative freedoms? Regardless, The Simpsons Movie is consistently funny, touching and exciting, but it’s also nothing more than a solid, slightly overlong episode of the show that (as Homer teases us during the opening sequence) we get for free each week on TV.

2007 LA Weekly/Village Voice Film Poll

2007's last (list) hurrah arrives in the form of the LA Weekly/Village Voice Film Poll, which returns after a one-year hiatus and, like so many other critics lists, is topped by There Will Be Blood. My ballot, which differs only slightly from the one I submitted for indieWIRE's poll, can be found at the below link.

My 2007 LA Weekly/Village Voice Film Poll Ballot