Lessons of Darkness

The Incredibles (2004): A-

Though its basic storyline is borrowed from Alan Moore’s seminal graphic novel “Watchmen,” and though it never achieves the poignancy of Toy Story (or its sequel), Pixar’s The Incredibles remains the year’s foremost animation showstopper. Directed by Brad Bird (The Iron Giant), this explosion of ingenious gadgets, ‘50s-era art design, and wham-blam-kapow derring-do concerns a family of superheroes who – years after being forced into anonymous suburban exile by frivolous lawsuits and a resentful public – return to crime-fighting after a petulant villain begins killing off former heroes. Featuring the voices of Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter and Jason Lee, The Incredibles leaps off the screen like a vibrant comic book come to life, thanks in large part to endearing characters who, though designed like rubbery caricatures, convey touchingly believable human emotion. The film feels slightly disjointed between its more comical opening half (in which the former superpeople struggle to accept bland domesticity) and the combat-packed frenzy of its later scenes, but this thrilling adventure’s breakneck action – as well as its stirring message that embracing one’s uniqueness is beneficial both for individuals and for society as a whole – packs a Mr. Incredible-size wallop.

Pre-Holiday Stuff

Three new reviews for this Monday-before-Thanksgiving. Links to National Treasure and a DVD review of I'll Sleep When I'm Dead - as well as my Rocky Mountain Bullhorn review of Kinsey - are all up for your reading pleasure.

Plus, I just discovered that I never posted a link to my review of Enduring Love. That oversight has now been rectified.

National Treasure (Slant magazine)
I'll Sleep When I'm Dead DVD (Slant magazine)
Enduring Love (filmcritic.com)

Kinsey

(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn)

Likely to infuriate social conservatives despite its impressive evenhandedness, Bill Condon’s Kinsey details the groundbreaking life of controversial sex researcher Alfred Kinsey. Simultaneously hailed and decried for helping usher in the ‘60’s sexual revolution, Kinsey, a biologist, made a name for himself publishing frank, graphic studies such as the best-selling "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male," and Condon’s impressive film makes no bones about its respect for the iconoclastic Kinsey. Yet in its schmaltz-free portrait of the pioneering scientist – a man who fought to normalize open discussions of sex, but who also viewed Americans’ bedtime habits with a discomfortingly robotic detachment – Kinsey proves itself that rare species of biopic that captures authentic truth by refusing to lionize its far-from-perfect subject.

Rebelling against the Protestantism of his father (John Lithgow, basically reprising his role from Footloose), Kinsey – after discovering that his students were hopelessly ignorant about sex – gave up his studies on gall wasps in favor of attempting to change the country’s pervasive puritanical disdain for sexual discourse. As embodied by a superb Liam Neeson, the imposing Kinsey is a man of stark contradictions – a sexually experimental bisexual who was also a cold, emotionally remote clinician naively convinced that the topics of sex and love could be separated. Fortunately, Condon’s wonderful film embraces Kinsey’s paradoxical personality, refusing to shy away from his shortcomings as a husband (to Laura Linney’s tolerant Clara) and as a researcher (especially with regards to his dealings with a pedophilic monster) while nonetheless conveying reverence for its protagonist’s landmark achievements.

A Very Redundant Engagement

Jean-Pierre Jeunet's latest film, A Very Long Engagement, is a WW1 romance that might as well have been called Amélie Goes to War. I assess the damage at Slant magazine.

A Very Long Engagement (Slant magazine)

I also have a Rocky Mountain Bullhorn review of the new Pierce Brosnan-Salma Hayek crime caper After the Sunset below.

After the Sunset

(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn)

Designed as a respite from winter’s doldrums, After the Sunset gleefully basks in the scrumptious sights and sounds of the Caribbean. Brett Ratner’s crime caper, about a couple of retired jewel thieves roped into stealing a diamond in the tropics, is a convincing commercial for the luxurious pleasures of lounging in the sand, sipping fruity umbrella-adorned drinks, and scuba diving in a crystal clear ocean. The film is a two-hour vacation from November’s cold, and its enticing scenery is a fitting backdrop for a frivolous story about attractive crooks acting exceedingly charming. Yet if you’ve seen The Big Bounce, The Thomas Crown Affair, or any other recent heist film, you’ve also already seen this tale of double-crossing thieves, cops, and gangsters.

Max (Pierce Brosnan) and Lola (Salma Hayek) are burglars extraordinaire, having already snatched two of the prized Napoleon diamonds despite the diligent efforts of FBI agent Stan Lloyd (Woody Harrelson). Having given up the criminal life for fun in the sun, the duo is drawn back into another scheme when a cruise ship displaying the third and final Napoleon diamond arrives in port, tempting the restless Max and alarming Stan, who decides to pay his adversaries a visit to make sure they’re not thinking about resuming their illegal careers. When a local crime lord (Don Cheadle) decides to enlist Max to help him steal the diamond, Max’s plot to snag the rock while not alienating the less-than-enthusiastic Lola is set in motion, leading to a climax featuring an array of twists and turns that’ll catch only the most novice moviegoer off-guard.

Which, to some extent, is beside the point of After the Sunset. Ratner, working from a script by Paul Zbyszewski and Craig Rosenberg, makes no pretenses about narrative ingenuity or depth – his goofy lark is primarily interested in allowing viewers to gawk at a shirtless Brosnan or buxom Hayek, whose bountiful cleavage is on laughably prominent display while she works under the hood of a car or uses power tools to create a new deck for her island home. An under-the-covers scene in which Brosnan and Harrelson are made to appear like lovers rather than opponents has a slightly discomforting undercurrent of homophobia. However, the film’s chief problem is simply an inability to enliven its familiar shenanigans with anything more than a smidgen of sexuality (Hayek is stunning to look at, but shares no steamy chemistry with the equally good-looking Brosnan) and a series of borrowed gimmicks (including a remote car-driving doohickey from Tomorrow Never Dies). The star-studded cast is delightfully cheery (in part, I’m sure, from getting to spend months making a film in paradise), but as the latest entry in the “last big score” genre, After the Sunset is behind the curve.

The Men Have It

The most hotly contested category at this year's Academy Awards will likely be for Best Actor. And after last week's Ray, this week I review three more films with Oscar-contending lead male performances - Finding Neverland , Bad Education and Sideways - as well as Alfie, which won't nab Jude Law anything. As you'll see, I think a couple of these guys have great shots at the gold; the other one, unfortunately, will probably have to wait until next year.

Finding Neverland (Slant magazine)
Bad Education (filmcritic.com)
Alfie (Slant magazine)

My Rocky Mountain Bullhorn review of Alexander Payne's Sideways is posted directly below.

Sideways

(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn)

Paul Giamatti, the pudgy, balding, slightly despondent character actor of Man on the Moon and American Splendor, gives a performance of such pent-up desperation and heartbreaking moroseness in Sideways that he single-handedly cements Alexander Payne's film as one of the year's finest. As Miles Raymond, a struggling novelist, high school English teacher and enthusiastic wine connoisseur still trying to cope with his two year-old divorce, Giamatti projects gloomy, worn-down dejection born from a streak of professional and personal disappointments. A short-tempered and sullen killjoy, Miles would be pathetic if not for his cutting sarcasm and irrational optimism, and in the hands of the cagey Giamatti, this perpetual loser becomes a figure of quiet, tender tragedy.

Adapted from Rex Pickett's novel by Payne and long-time collaborator Jim Taylor, Sideways charts the weeklong road-trip of Miles and his best friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church), a small-time commercial actor and former soap opera star. Jack is about to get married, and as a gift Miles sets up a guys-only vacation through California’s wine country, where (he envisions) they'll hop from winery to winery reveling in the refined aromas and textures of the region's transcendent vino. Unfortunately for Miles, Jack is something of an uncultured dunce – he chews gum during one wine tasting – and an unbridled horndog, and sees this getaway as a last chance to indulge in as many female flavors as time will permit. Miserable Miles is naturally perturbed by his jocular companion's desire to have mindless fun, especially once Jack picks up the feisty Stephanie (Sandra Oh) and forces Miles to pursue the fetching, wine-loving waitress Maya (Virginia Madsen). Yet as the trip becomes derailed by love, sex and lies, Miles – against his own wishes – begins to spy a long-sought opportunity for happiness.

Unlike his condescending, faux-humanistic About Schmidt, Payne’s Sideways largely refrains from eliciting cheap laughs at its characters’ expense, though a shot of Miles’ sleeping mom (as well as the image of burly, hairy M.C. Gainey in the buff à la Kathy Bates) comes perilously close to mockery. Predominantly, however, the director structures his gentle film like the wine Miles adores – light, sweet, and refreshing to both one’s senses and intellect – and brings the Sonoma Valley to radiant life through Phedon Papmichael’s supple, sun-dappled cinematography. The film can be slightly redundant (three music-set montages is at least one too many), but Payne’s consistently humorous script maintains a deft balance between breezy joviality and understated poignancy, and his supporting cast is, from the shallow, hedonistic Haden Church to the cautiously romantic Madsen, enchanting. Sideways, however, ultimately belongs to the great Giamatti, who makes the dour, elitist Miles nevertheless sympathetic and endearing. Give the man an Oscar.

Blind Devotion

Don't believe the hype - Ray is hardly one of this year's finest films. I take director Taylor Hackford to task for this sloppy, sappy, insincere biopic over at Slant magazine.

Ray (Slant magazine)

Below, I've also got new reviews of Saw, Primer, The Machinist and George Lucas' first film, THX 1138.

Saw

(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn)

Cinematic serial killers are a lot like James Bond villains – they claim to be nefarious evildoers and frequently commit dastardly crimes, but always wind up unnecessarily complicating their dirty deeds. That’s definitely the case with the baddie of James Wan’s grisly Saw, a fiend known as the Jigsaw Killer who kidnaps people, presents them with torturous life-or-death dilemmas, and then watches to see if they’ll kill themselves or each other. Case in point: when Dr. Gordon (Cary Elwes) awakens chained up in a grimy bathroom shared by a stranger named Adam (Leigh Whannell), his evil captor informs him that if he wants to save his abducted wife and daughter, Gordon will have to kill his companion and perform some impromptu amputation surgery to escape.

Oooh, how diabolical! Such moral quandaries have a macabre, Edgar Allan Poe-inspired exquisiteness, but Saw is so busy concocting ghoulish set pieces that it rapidly becomes overburdened by narrative overload. Whereas Dr. Gordon and Adam’s predicament promises bone-chilling claustrophobic terror, the script (by Wan and Whannell) mistakenly takes regular detours out of the lavatory to flash back to Gordon and Adam’s unsavory pre-abduction activities, as well as to tell us about a haggard cop (Danny Glover) hot on Jigsaw’s trail. From its preachy killer to the fluorescent greens and tawdry reds of David A. Armstrong’s grimy cinematography, Wan’s debut is devoutly modeled after David Fincher’s Seven, and such derivation would be dismissible if the film provided more scares. Unfortunately, Saw’s overly elaborate, sporadically effective do-or-die games ultimately don’t make the cut.

Primer (2004): C-

Eager to hit the entrepreneurial jackpot, two ambitious yuppie engineers (Shane Carruth and David Sullivan) accidentally create a functional time travel machine – and numerous time-space paradoxes – in Shane Carruth’s wearisome Primer. Substituting the giddy fantasy of Back to the Future for grave technological authenticity, the film (written and directed by star Carruth) has its one-dimensional characters spout endless streams of high-tech gibberish as a means of convincing us that the fantastic device was born not of make-believe magic, but rather from practical scientific ingenuity. Shot in grainy DV meant to highlight the action’s realism, the film – as one Slant magazine colleague correctly opined – resembles a stylishly empty television commercial, though the script’s mind-numbing blather is usually about stuff only a studious engineer could comprehend. Unrelentingly boring and bereft of any sense of wonder, Primer envisions time travel as a complicated process that necessitates (among other things) hiding in hotel rooms with the phones unplugged, hanging out in rectangular crates for long periods of time, and acting as if you’re constantly constipated. Me, I’ll take a flying DeLorean and a crazy white-haired scientist any day of the week.