The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe was, like its source material, a second-rate Lord of the Rings fantasy epic drenched in religious allegory, and Prince Caspian, its follow-up, is similarly underwhelming. Except, however, that it's worse in virtually every way.
Today:
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (Slant magazine)
Yella (Slant magazine)
After Today:
Quid Pro Quo (Slant magazine)
That rare debut in which self-conscious formal daring proves exhilarating rather than excruciating, Joachim Trier’s Reprise is a constantly fracturing wonder that finds exuberant expressiveness in its splintered structure. Trier’s film, set in Oslo, commences by imagining a potential bright future for writer best friends Phillip ( befuddled, morose Anders Danielsen Lie) and Erik (smiling, adrift Espen Klouman-Hoiner) right before they mail publishers their first manuscripts. No sooner has that reverie played out, however, than the film reverts to the present to concentrate – albeit with many fanciful detours – on their lives’ actual, less glamorous paths after Phillip has a breakdown following his book’s well-received publication and Erik learns his work will soon make it into print. Phillip and Erik’s brotherly relationship, their close bond with a diverse group of pals, and Phillip’s affair with beguiling Kari (Viktoria Winge) – which helped spur his psychosis – are depicted in Reprise with absorbing elation and misery, the film, an ecstatically unconventional coming-of-age story, intimately capturing the scraggly, tortuous means by which friendships and romances are born, develop, and die. Throughout, genuine and alternate realities freely commingle via jump cuts, flashbacks, flash-fowards, and scenes featuring dialogue heard over images of the speaker’s silent faces, Trier’s narrative driven by an invigorating associative arrangement in which events spur memories spur dreams spur realizations. It’s a dynamic wherein the past holds constant sway over both the here and now and the future, whether it’s Erik recalling a buddy’s misogynistic opinions as he attempts to dump his girlfriend, or it’s Phillip trying to literally recreate the past through a return trip to Paris with Kari. Complementing its postmodern configuration with an authorial narrator and allusions galore (to literature, punk rock, and cinema) that flirt with pretentiousness, Reprise has the air of a psychologically incisive novel, its aesthetic “prose” attuned to the ups and downs and back-arounds of love and friendship in a way so authentic and affecting that it winds up burrowing deep into one’s marrow.
The best thing about Speed Racer is a monkey, which tells you something about the lameness of the Wachowski Brothers' spazzy remake of the 1960s Japanese cartoon. Still, it's far superior to Uwe Boll's latest, which earns my third zero-star review of the year.
Friday:
Speed Racer (Slant magazine)
Battle for Haditha (Cinematical)
The Tracey Fragments (Slant magazine)
The Babysitters (Slant magazine)
Future Fridays:
Postal (Slant magazine)
The Wackness (Slant magazine)
The Promotion (Slant magazine)
Boy A (Slant magazine)
Summer unofficially begins today with the release of Iron Man, the latest Marvel superhero to warrant a big-screen franchise. It's far from perfect, and certainly no Spider-Man 2. But thanks to Robert Downey Jr.'s fantastic performance, it's also a good way to kick off this spectacle-heavy cinematic season.
Iron Man (Slant magazine)
The summer movie season begins tomorrow with the NYC press screening of Iron Man, and to prepare for this coming onslaught of popcorn, I've been saying my prayers, taking my vitamins, and...oh, wait, that's someone else. Actually, I've been doing very little other than working and sleeping, the latter of which is to blame for this link dump's tardiness.
Playing:
Baby Mama (Slant magazine)
Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (Slant
magazine)
Deception (Slant magazine)
Up the Yangtze (Slant magazine)
Forthcoming:
Tell No One (Slant magazine)
The Foot Fist Way (Slant magazine)
Mongol (Slant magazine)
When it pokes fun at itself – and the low-fi “mumblecore” movement from which it sprang – Baghead can be a minor lark. However, when this latest from Jay and Mark Duplass (The Puffy Chair) attempts to both scare and, to a lesser extent, deconstruct its own horror movie devices, it deflates rapidly. With considerable compassion, the directors focus on four struggling actors desperate to make it big but either untalented or unmotivated enough to actually accomplish their dreams. After attending a well-received screening of some indie hack’s black-and-white film (the filmmakers’ amusing jab at themselves and their mumbly brethren), the foursome retire to a forest cabin for the weekend with plans to write a movie in which they’ll star. Rather than professional productivity, though, the excursion results in romantic tension, as the getaway exposes each individual’s pent-up longing, desires and jealousies. As with The Puffy Chair, the Duplass Brothers, in terms of depicting the knotty emotions that spring from amorous entanglements, get some decent mileage from their Cassavetes-lite, semi-improvisatory filmmaking approach, capturing authenticity in their cast’s fumbling gestures, half-spoken lines, and stumbling advances. And their genuine interest in these screwy people is mildly contagious. However, while our concern for these struggling thespians should, in theory, heighten the subsequent tension once the group – having reluctantly decided to make a thriller about a guy with a bag on his head – finds itself actually stalked by a baghead, the directors botch most every attempt at terror. This is somewhat intentional, as the film often seems to be as much about cinema’s inherent manipulations as it is about straightforward genre chills. But a lackadaisical focus eventually proves debilitating, with the end result of its myriad intentions – character study, relationship drama, scary movie, meta-scary movie – being that Baghead spreads itself thin to the point of flimsiness.
Acclaimed documentarian Errol Morris tackles the infamous Abu Ghraib photos with Standard Operating Procedure, though his latest film is ultimately less an investigation into uncovering the scandal's true villains than an examination of image construction and interpretation. Morris discussed his motivations for making the film, as well as his dramatic recreations of the Abu Ghraib pics, when I spoke with him earlier this month for IFC News.
Errol Morris on Standard Operating Procedure (IFC News)
Errol Morris’ trademark aesthetic – a combination of free-reign confessional interviews, dramatic recreations, expressionistic interludes and a grandiose score (here by Danny Elfman) – does more harm than good in Standard Operating Procedure, the documentarian’s examination of the Abu Ghraib scandal. For his latest, Morris provides a forum for the thoughts of, among others, Lynndie England, Sabrina Harman and Megan Ambuhl (but not Charles Graner, whose ongoing prison stint prevented participation) regarding the photos that made them infamous, while simultaneously scrutinizing the snapshots themselves and restaging them in artful sequences. His well-argued point is that the real culprits behind the crimes committed weren’t the grunts doing the actual dirty work but the higher ups who encouraged and sanctioned such behavior. As those folks aren’t in the photos, Standard Operating Procedure becomes a semiotics-tinged investigation into the nature of images themselves: how the contents, arrangement, and manipulation of the frame (such as with the dog-leash photo, where Ambuhl was deliberately cropped out) all affect interpretation and help define meaning. This thematic preoccupation comes to an eye-opening head during a centerpiece sequence in which Morris reveals which of these distasteful photos contained behavior that was “illegal” and which contained actions that were merely “standard operating procedure,” forcefully highlighting the power (and subjectivity) of the visual image. Yet given the filmmaker’s subject matter, it’s exasperating (if, given his past history, not overly surprising) to find him distastefully fetishizing the images via a series of recreations shot with plenty of lavish, self-conscious attention to visual beauty. Epitomized by gorgeous close-ups of dripping blood and shadow-drenched men in hoods, these segments – disingenuously elegant and classy, and thus wholly devoid of the real photos’ raw, ugly power – don’t bring us any closer to a profound understanding of what happened or who’s to blame. Rather, they’re just examples of Morris’ own insistent desire to creatively embellish the central images for unseemly dramatic effect.
Because most of this week's new films screened early, and because Iron Man seems to have scared most other movies away from late-April, early-May, I only have three new links - including my second zero-star review in 7 days! - for this gorgeous Friday morning. Enjoy.
Out Now:
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (Slant magazine)
Out Later:
Son of Rambow (Slant magazine)
Noise (Slant magazine)
George Clooney loses the proverbial thread with his third directorial outing Leatherheads, a 1920s football saga that blends rusty screwball comedy and perfunctory romance under a period piece veneer. Clooney is Dodge Connelly, the leader of a ragamuffin pro football team during an era when the sport was played with few pads, no rules, and in fields of grazing cows. When he hears that his squad is about to fold, Dodge sets in motion a scheme to recruit legendary high school player and celebrated WWI hero Carter Rutherford (The Office’s John Krasinski), who’s accompanied by a devious agent (Jonathan Pryce) and a tough-cookie reporter named Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellweger) who’s secretly planning to expose Carter’s combat heroism as a charade. Clooney means to generate humor from the resultant romantic triangle between Dodge, Carter and Lexie, but his script delivers neither zippy dialogue nor dynamic scenarios, leaving his “screwball” sequences sluggish and limp. The rest of the film fares similarly, seeing as it charts Dodge and Lexie’s budding affair with a dewy earnestness undeserved by this chemistry-free pairing’s shrug-worthy amour. All the while, Clooney (working from a script by Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly that he reportedly also had a hand in penning) perplexingly avoids concentrating on the quirky particulars of anything-goes ‘20s pigskin. Consequently, he thoroughly sabotages a climax in which Dodge is ordered to avoid using illegal trick plays during the big game, a directive that’s meant to spell monumental trouble but – because his team’s reliance on such chicanery hasn’t been previously established – just seems random and tacked-on.
