Lessons of Darkness

Wanted...and Left Wanting

Lots of new reviews for this Saturday evening - most of them negative - including my thoughts on this weekend's big action film Wanted (which underutilizes a fierce Angelina Jolie), as well as the July 4th weekend tentpole release, Hancock (which only pretends to be unconventional).

Happy Independence Day, all.

Now Playing:
Wanted (Slant magazine)
The Last Mistress (Cinematical)
Full Grown Men (Slant magazine)

Coming Soon:
Hancock (Slant magazine)
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (Slant magazine)
Full Battle Rattle (Slant magazine)
August (Slant magazine)

Back on Track

No more NBA playoff-related excuses - it's time to get these blog posts up-and-running on time once again. For now, here's a belated link dump, full of new review goodness.

Now Playing:
Expired (Slant magazine)

Coming Soon:
Made in America (Slant magazine)
Elsa and Fred (Slant magazine)
Finding Amanda (Slant magazine)
Beautiful Losers (Slant magazine)

DVD:
The Free Will - DVD (Slant magazine)

Human Rights Watch International Film Festival 2008:
Behave (Slant magazine)
The Sari Soldiers (Slant magazine)
Traces of the Trade (Slant magazine)

Get Smart (2008): C

TV’s Get Smart was a trifle hardly worthy of big-screen treatment, but given that Warner Bros. greenlit the project, couldn’t someone have actually put some effort into making it mildly entertaining? Peter Segal’s comedy concerns CONTROL rookie agent Maxwell Smart’s maiden mission against evil terrorist outfit KAOS, though the particulars of his assignment – something to do with stolen nukes in Russia – are tertiary to the raft of stale one-liners and middling action sequences that distend this comedy to a whopping 111 minutes. Perfectly cast as the bumbling secret agent made famous by Don Adams, Steve Carell has both the verbal wit and physical dexterity necessary to make such material work, but Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember’s script is so lethargic and lazy – its jokes telegraphed from a country away and its crash-boom-bang set pieces concocted with an absolute minimum of thrilling creativity – that the star is embarrassingly hung out to dry. A similar fate befalls Anne Hathaway (as love interest Agent 99), Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (as super-suave Agent 23), and Alan Arkin (as the Chief), all of whom do their best to enliven what amounts to a succession of tepid gags tethered by a flimsy narrative. But there’s no saving Get Smart, a tepid mediocrity whose idea of a big, rousing climax involves heroic feats obviously performed by stuntmen and the limp appearance of Adams’ lame, signature shoe phone.

17 on the 17th!

Smashingly Meh

The Incredible Hulk isn't as good as Ang Lee's Hulk. And M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening isn't very good at all. What a weekend for summer movies!

Today:
The Incredible Hulk (Slant magazine)
The Happening (Slant magazine)
Chris & Don: A Love Story (Cinematical)

Human Rights Watch International Film Festival 2008:
A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman (Slant magazine)

Bad Sex

IFC News and Nerve.com have teamed up for another film list, this time determining the 50 Worst Sex Scenes in Cinema. Below is a link to the feature's main page - for my contributions, check out numbers 42, 34, 23 and 4.

50 Worst Sex Scenes in Cinema (IFC News)

Celts Again

A trip to the NBA Finals once again delayed this week's link dump, which is here, sans cute commentary.

In Theaters:
Kung Fu Panda (Slant magazine)
You Don't Mess with the Zohan (Slant magazine)
On the Rumba River (Cinematical)

Coming Soon:
Encounters at the End of the World (Slant magazine)

The Mother of Tears (2007): C

Dario Argento has been inadvertently parodying himself for years, and that trend unfortunately continues with The Mother of Tears, yet another of the horror maestro’s futile attempts to recapture the magic that made his seminal ‘70s giallos so bewitching. As with his contributions to Showtime’s Masters of Horror series, Argento’s latest feature functions as an anthology of familiar, egregious faux pas: horridly wooden acting, laughable soft-core nudity, graceless ADR, inexpert gore. Argento was never much of a writer – his clunky plotting and functional-at-best dialogue were always overshadowed by hypnotic, lush visuals laced with potent symbolism – but here, his story is awkward and ridiculous to the point of embarrassment. Working at Rome’s Museum of Ancient Sciences, Sarah Mandy (Asia Argento) foolishly opens an aged urn that houses the evil Third Mother (the other two were dealt with in Suspiria and Inferno), who it turns out is a silicon-enhanced stripper who exhorts her equally trashy goth-chic minions to create chaos from a catwalk-esque dungeon dais. Again starring for her father, Asia exhibits absolutely none of the unpredictable violence and deviant sexuality that have previously made her an interesting actress. Worse still, Argento is incapable of sustaining any sort of ominous apocalyptic mood, instead offering up narrative silliness like Sarah being aided by the ghost of her dead mother (who appears in Obi-One Kenobi fashion) and bumbling sights of shocking grisliness, highlighted by a crazed satanic skank chomping on an elongated Twizzler protruding from the rear end of a less-fortunate soul. Devoid of malevolent aesthetic splendor, and engaged in thoroughly unflattering thematic dialogue with its far-superior forbearers, The Mother of Tears is an ignominious mess, one that – for anyone who once prized Argento’s work – is apt to make one misty-eyed.

Blame Boston

I had planned to post a link round-up on Friday night. Then the Celtics won the Eastern Conference championship. And I forgot. So without further ado, here it is now, highlighted by Anvil! The Story of Anvil.

Out Now:
Stuck (Slant magazine)
Savage Grace (Cinematical)

Coming Soon:
Anvil! The Story of Anvil (Slant magazine)
When Did You Last See Your Father? (Slant magazine)
Love Comes Lately (Slant magazine)