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Archive for August, 2011

“THE DEBT”: Then and now

Posted in Popcorn movies, tagged , , , , , , , on August 31, 2011| 1 Comment »

Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington

“THE DEBT” My rating: C+ (Opening wide Aug. 31)

114 minutes | MPAA rating: R

It’s got star power out the wazoo, yet “The Debt” feels slight and perfunctory.

It certainly never achieves the depths it is so clearly aiming for; perhaps this remake of a hit Israeli thriller requires an Israeli audience to truly appreciate the morally conflicted situation it presents.

John Madden’s film takes place in two decades separated by 30 years. In the present (actually the mid-1990’s) we have the publication of a book about one of Mossad’s most celebrated operations: the 1966 capture and elimination of German war criminal Dieter Vogel, the notorious “Surgeon of Birkenau” who conducted fiendish “medical” experiments on Jewish prisoners.

The agents who undertook that mission — Rachel Singer (Helen Mirren), her husband Stephan Gold (Tom Wilkinson) and David Peretz (Ciaran Hinds) — long have been regarded as national heroes.

But the book’s publication opens old wounds, for these three know their story is based on a lie.

Okay, that’s a good premise.

(more…)

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“OUR IDIOT BROTHER”: Sibling ribaldry

Posted in Popcorn movies, tagged , , , , , , , on August 26, 2011| Leave a Comment »

“OUR IDIOT BROTHER” My rating: C- (Opening wide Aug. 26)

90 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The only person likely to win any awards for “Our Idiot Brother” is the anonymous editor who cut the trailer. This unsung hero took an aggressively unfunny comedy and so effectively manipulated bits and pieces as to evoke potential ticket buyers’ memories of other, much funnier Paul Rudd films like “I Love You Man.”

But make no mistake, this is bottom-drawer stuff that, by all rights, should have shuffled straight off to home video.

And what makes it even more discombobulating is that “Brother” wastes a slew of good comic actors.

Ned (Rudd) may not be precisely an idiot, but he’s slow enough on the uptake to be in perennial trouble. Also he cannot lie. When a cop in uniform asks him for some weed, Ned takes pity on the poor flatfoot and sells him some. Result: Prison.

Newly out, Ned is passed back and forth among his three sisters. His childlike pechant for honesty gets him in one scrape after another.

Sister Liz (Emily Mortimer) doesn’t appreciate it when Ned reveals that her filmmaker husband (Steve Coogan in typical supercilious mode) is having an affair with the ballerina who is the subject of his latest documentary.

Sister Miranda (Elizabeth Banks), a magazine journalist, tries to use a source’s off-the-record comments in her latest piece. Ned calls her on it.

And Sister Natalie (Zooey Deschanel), in a relationship with another woman (Rashida Jones), doesn’t appreciate Ned letting it slip that she’s pregnant by an artist friend.

The best that can be said for this film from director Jesse Peretz and writers David Schisgall and Evgenia Peretz is that the hirsute Rudd (he looks like a very happy Jesus) exudes a sweetness that helps make up (though not nearly enough) for the script’s lack of cleverness and wit.

I mean, didn’t anybody read the screenplay?

| Robert W. Butler


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“THE DEVIL’S DOUBLE”: Taking a bullet for the House of Hussein

Posted in Art house fare, tagged , , , , on August 26, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Dominic Cooper as Uday Hussein...

“THE DEVIL’S DOUBLE” My rating: B (Opening wide on Sept. 26)

109 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The right role can turn a journeyman actor into an overnight star.

Take, for instance, Dominic Cooper’s performance in “The Devil’s Double.”

Up to now the British Cooper has been recognized mostly for playing the groom in the movie version of “Mamma Mia!” But here he tackles not one role but two, and in the process pretty much burns up the screen.

Based on real incidents, “Devil…” is the story of Latif Yahia, an officer in the Iraqi army who in the 1980s was tapped to serve as the official double of Uday Hussein, Saddam Hussein’s notoriously spoiled and violent oldest son.

(more…)

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“THE WHISTLEBLOWER”: Bucking the system

Posted in Art house fare, tagged , , , , , , on August 26, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Rachel Weisz

“THE WHISTLEBLOWER” My rating: B (Opening Aug. 26 at the Rio)

112 minutes | MPAA rating: R

For a first feature, Larysa Kondracki’s “The Whistleblower” is a more than competent thriller carrying a considerable emotional punch.

Based on the real experiences of Kathryn Bolkovac, a Nebraska cop who in the late ‘90s signed up for a United Nations peacekeeping force in the former Yugoslavia, this suspenser carries a big dose of moral outrage.

Kathryn (Rachel Weisz) is a member of the Lincoln PD who already has lost primary custody of her kids and now faces losing them entirely, since her ex is relocating to another state.

Strapped with debt and unable to find a law enforcement job near the children, she answers an ad for a high-paying job as a U.N. Peacekeeper. Her idea is to return after a year with enough money to start over.

(more…)

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“TERI”: Big heart. Big weirdness.

Posted in Art house fare, tagged , on August 25, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Jacob Wysocki, John C.Reilly

“TERRI” My rating: C+ (Opening Aug. 26 at the Tivoli)

105 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Taking a cue from its Baby Huey-ish title character, “Terri” has a big heart.

But you’ve got to wade through a lot of weirdness to get a glimpse of it.

The nominal hero of director Azazel Jacobs’ film is an obese bundle of lethargy. Not that Terri (Jacob Wysocki) has a whole lot to get excited about.

Abandoned by his parents, the teen lives in a sort of bric-a-brac-littered fairy tale cottage in the middle of the woods with his Uncle James (Creed Bratton), who is battling dementia.

One day Uncle James seems alert and erudite; the next he’s a drowsy zombie.

It’s hard to tell who’s taking care of whom.

(more…)

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DVD REVIEW: Cameras vs. guns

Posted in New on DVD, tagged , , , , , , , on August 24, 2011| Leave a Comment »

“THE BANG-BANG CLUB” (Now available)

The movies love war correspondents.

For one thing, it’s an inherently dramatic profession. And then there’s the compelling ambivalence of civil wars without clear-cut rules of combat, of conflicts where it’s hard to differentiate between soldier and civilian.

Two classics of the genre are “Under Fire” (1983) with Nick Nolte and Gene Hackman and Oliver Stone’s “Salvador” (1986).

More recently the upheaval in the Balkans has generated several memorable combat correspondent flicks, like “Welcome to Sarajevo” (1997) and “The Hunting Party” (2007).

These movies always pivot on questions of ethics and mortality.

First, should a journalist (writer, photographer, broadcaster) ever take sides, even if genocide is involved? Second, what are the chances of said journalist getting his/her head blown off?

The latest entry to the genre is “The Bang-Bang Club,” a mostly factual recreation of life in South Africa in the early 1990s (more…)

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“ONE DAY”: When Dexter met Emma

Posted in Art house fare, Popcorn movies, tagged , , , on August 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »

“ONE DAY” My rating: B+ (Opening wide on Aug. 19)

108 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

My cynical side is scolding me for enjoying “One Day” so much.

Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess in "One Day"

My poetic/amorous side is telling my cynical side to take a flying leap.

This is a chick flick with a Ph.D. — funny, sad, insightful and swooningly romantic, perfectly acted by Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess and evoking universal emotions about love and friendship.

Moreover, it was directed by Lone Sherfig, creator of one of my favorite films of recent years — “Italian for Beginners” — as well as the Oscar-nominated “An Education.”

Yeah, it’s predicated on a gimmick. Every episode in this Brit saga — there are 20 of them — takes place on July 15 in successive years. (David Nicholls adapted his own novel for the screen.)

We meet Emma (Hathaway) and Dexter (Sturgess) on July 15, 1988 as they celebrate their college graduation by partying all night with mutual friends. As dawn breaks they end up in her apartment…but all they do is talk (at least I think that’s all they do).

They’re an odd couple. Dex is a mediocre student but a wildly successful social animal. He’s a garrulous charmer, shallow but irresistible.

Emma is the dorky brain. Clearly she’s never enjoyed Dexter’s party life. Her look — shapeless dresses, Doc Marten boots and huge glasses — and her self-deprecating humor suggest a graceless young woman with little confidence in the romance department.

And yet over the next two decades their lives will be entwined in ways both swooning and heartbreaking.

(more…)

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“SARAH’S KEY”: Little girl lost

Posted in Art house fare, tagged , , , on August 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Kristen Scott Thomas

“SARAH’S KEY” My rating: B (Opening wide on Aug. 19)

111 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

“Sarah’s Key” is actually two movies, one set in World War II and the other in the present.

The first is a devastating look at the horrors of the Holocaust as witnessed by a child.

The latter is a not-terribly-compelling detective story.

In the end they dovetail to make a more-or-less complete whole.

Julia Jarmond (Kristin Scott Thomas), an American-born writer for a Paris magazine, is researching a story on one of the darkest blots on French history — the July 1942 roundup of 13,000 Jews, not by the occupying Germans but by the French police.

The prisoners were herded into a covered sports stadium without food, water or sanitation facilities. Those who survived several days in this hellhole (one character compares it to the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina, only 10 times worse) were then shipped off to labor or death camps.

(more…)

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“IF A TREE FALLS”: Friends of the Earth, enemies of the people

Posted in Art house fare, Documentaries, tagged , on August 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »

“IF A TREE FALLS”  My rating: B+ (Opens Aug. 19 at the Screenland Crossroads)

85 minutes | No MPAA rating

Watching “If a Tree Falls,” Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman’s excellent documentary about the lumberyard-burning, development-hating Earth Liberation Front, I was reminded of the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s “My Back Pages”:

“Good and bad, I define these terms, quite clear, no doubt, somehow…”

This film isn’t just a terrifically informative and insightful history of a radical movement that over several years committed acts of domestic terrorism (at least that’s what the government argued) to limit what its members regarded as the systematic rape of the Earth.

It’s also a meditation on youth, idealism, the political process and the very essence of human nature, especially our impulses for self preservation.

Above all else, this film asks unanswerable questions about right and wrong, good and bad, and leaves its audience both incensed and sad.

(more…)

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“TABLOID”: Torn from the headlines

Posted in Art house fare, Documentaries, tagged , , on August 19, 2011| 1 Comment »

Tabloid girl Joyce McKinney back in the scandalous '70s...

“TABLOID”  My rating: B (Opening Aug. 19 at the Tivoli and Glenwood at Red Bridge)

87 minutes | No MPAA rating

“Tabloid” finds heavy duty documentarist Errol Morris happily slumming. And boy, is he having fun.

The maker of such noteworthy non-fiction films as “Gates of Heaven” (pet cemeteries), “Mr. Death” (a Holocaust denier), “The Thin Blue Line” (prosecutorial malfeasance in Texas) and the Oscar-winning “The Fog of War” (Robert McNamara), Morris tends to gravitate toward weighty subject matter.

But with “Tabloid” he delves into a torn-from-the-headlines scandal to reveal the face of a true American eccentric.

Morris’ subject is Joyce McKinney, a former beauty queen from North Carolina who in 1977 set off a media feeding frenzy when she and several confederates traveled to England and kidnapped her former boyfriend, a young Morman doing missionary work.

(more…)

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