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‘Bernie’ review: Richard Linklater’s light and lighthearted Texas true-crime story

May 17, 2012 /

The unlikely comic trio of Shirley MacLaine, Jack Black and Matthew McConaughey brings a sordid little tale to sparkling life.

Bernie.jpgShirley MacLaine and Jack Black in "Bernie"
Based on a true story, filled with real people, and deftly mixing comedy, pathos and the macabre, “Bernie” is a delightful and compact confection from director Richard Linklater (“Dazed and Confused,” “Waking Life,” “Before Sunrise,” “Before Sunset”), who’s just as good with a pair of unlikely costars as he is with the ordinary Texas townsfolk who populate the film.

The film tells the story of Bernie Tiede, an East Texas mortician beloved in his community for his charitable works, his cheerful spirit and his attentiveness to widows.  After the death of one of the town’s richest men, Bernie befriended the fellow’s irascible -- nay, mean -- wife, Marjorie, and became her unlikely best friend, to the point that the suspicious and sharp old gal gave him control of her fortune.  It was eyebrow-raising stuff, and then Marjorie stopped being seen around town and some folks got more suspicious than ever.

Working from a script he co-wrote with Skip Hollandsworth, who chronicled the story in a magazine article, Linklater intermixes the recollections of actual denizens of Carthage, Texas, where it all took place, with the dramatic telling of the story as acted by Jack Black as Bernie, Shirley MacLaine as Marjorie and Matthew McConaughey as a district attorney.

The three are marvelous.  Black espouses a mincy fussiness, uses his powerful singing voice beautifully, and stretches more than he ever has, even in Linklater’s “School of Rock.”  MacLaine, 57 years into a movie career that began when she was 21, plays her wicked role with just the right blend of comedy and villainy.  And McConaughey (whom Linklater discovered, recall) manages subtly to expose the dumb core of his prima donna prosecutor.

“Bernie” is slight but terrific.  The intertwining of the sharply tuned actors and the guileless (and often hilarious) townspeople is seamless, the tale is sometimes despairing but never heavy, and the blend of drama, comedy and music is brisk and fresh.  Linklater has many estimable qualities, but with this film he reminds us that he can craft a cinematic soufflé better than just about any director in America.
    
(104 min., PG-13, Fox Tower) Grade: A-minus


QDocs, "Plymptoons" and EFF Portland make for a busy week of film festivals

May 17, 2012 /

A diversity of film events turn up at once, making for a rich and hectic week.

Vito.jpgVito Russo from "Vito" at QDocs
The weather may be hollering, ‘get outside,’ but Portland filmlovers have ample reason to head for the great indoors in the coming week.

Two festivals of note and a barnstorming film tour highlight a truly eclectic crop of movie choices, and we’ve got the skinny on all three.


QDoc
(by Grant Butler)

Portland’s Queer Documentary Film Festival, kicked off at McMenamins Kennedy School on Thursday night with “Wish Me Away,” about country singer Chely Wright, followed by a big party at downtown’s new restaurant Corazon. But the festival kicks into high gear today, with screenings of 11 additional films being held Friday through Sunday. Here are five of the standouts:

“King of Comics”  German cartoonist Ralf König has been shocking and entertaining readers since the 1980s with his graphic and often hilarious comic books “Gay Comix.” His drawing style is reminiscent of R. Crumb, with a touch of delicious crude humor. This portrait of the artist shows him giving a hilarious reading of some of his best stories, intermixed with a melancholy look at his life, which has involved broken relationships and loneliness, showing there can be tears behind the laughter. This is a 21-and-over screening. (9 p.m. Friday; 80 minutes; Germany) B+

“Question One”  President Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage earlier this month is just the latest chapter in the ongoing debate over marriage equality, and this documentary offers an even-handed look at the emotions on both sides of the issue. In 2009, Maine’s state legislature approved same-sex marriage, prompting a constitutional ballot battle that ended with voters overturning the right to marry by a significant margin. Filmmakers Joe Fox and James Nubile follow both gay activists fighting the ballot measure, as well as Christian supporters and ministers who believe that marriage can only be defined as between a man and a woman. The film captures the complex thoughts and concerns of people on both sides of the referendum — no easy task. The filmmakers and one of their subjects, Darlene Huntress, will be in attendance. (6 p.m. Saturday; 113 minutes; United States) A

“This Is What Love In Action Looks Like” Gay-conversion therapy is one of the most-controversial practices by some churches today. It prompted a national firestorm in 2005 when a Tennessee program called Love In Action became the focal-point of protests after a 16-year-old gay boy was forced into the program by his parents against his wishes. Memphis bloggers and activists began protesting outside the treatment facility, eventually getting the attention of national TV news, leading to the eventual dissolution of the program. This film asks questions about the intersection of Christian faith and free will, and whether any gay-conversion programs have any merit — not just those directed at teens. Director Morgan Jon Fox will be in attendance. (11:30 a.m. Sunday; 70 minutes; United States) B+

“Love Free or Die”  Gene Robinson made international news when he was made a bishop of the Episcopal Church in New Hampshire in 2003, prompting the Anglican Church to ban him from its 10-year conference of bishops five years later. But Robinson went to England anyway, shadowing the conference with speeches at a handful of churches that dared to invite him to preach. The portrait shows how Robinson’s efforts to get the Episcopal Church to recognize same-sex marriage and the role that gays and lesbians have in the clergy is fleshed out with snapshots of his homelife, including his own marriage to his longtime partner when it became legal in New Hampshire. Director Macky Alston will be in attendance. (4 p.m. Sunday; 82 minutes; United States) A-

“Vito”  Gay film historian Vito Russo helped show the dismal way that Hollywood has treated gays and lesbians on film with his landmark book “The Celluloid Closet” and his live presentations in the 1980s that showed hundreds of examples of homophobia on film. But Russo was more than a scholar, becoming an outspoken activist in the early years of the AIDS crisis, before the disease cut his own life short. Interviews with family, friends, and archival interviews with Russo create a full portrait of someone who loved cinema, and wanted to see gays and lesbians depicted fairly in the medium. Director Jeffrey Schwarz will be in attendance. (7 p.m. Sunday; 93 minutes; United States) A

Full ticket and program information


Adventures in Plymptoons.jpgView full size
The Great Northwest Film Tour
(by Shawn Levy)

The Oscar-nominated cartoonist Bill Plympton is, of course, a native son of Oregon, so it’s only right and proper that he bring a film about his life and art to his home state.  And by that you can take it to mean the whole state -- or as much of it as hosts a McMenamins brewpub movie theater.

“Adventures in Plymptoons,” directed by Alexia Anastasio and featuring interviews with a great many of Plympton’s peers and chums, both local and national, will play at no fewer eight of the McMenamin brothers’ theaters in a span of nine days.  And Plympton and Anastasio will be on hand throughout the event to discuss their project.  

The tour, which has been mounted by the Oregon Media Production Association trade group, begins on Saturday at the Mission Theater in Portland, followed by screenings at the Old St. Francis School in Bend (Sunday), the Kennedy School in Portland (Tuesday), the Grand Lodge in Forest Grove (Wednesday), the Olympic Club in Centralia, Washington (Thursday), the Edgefield Powerstation in Troutdale (Friday, May 25), the Bagdad Theater in Portland (Saturday, May 26) and the St. Johns Theater in Portland (Sunday, May 27).

Saturday’s event is being billed as an “Industry Premiere,” with many of Portland’s famed animators and filmmakers expected to attend.  And the next-to-last show, on May 26, is a gala fundraiser for the OMPA, with musical performer Weird Al Yankovic  adding to the festivities.

Full ticket and schedule information


EFF Portland.jpgView full size
Experimental Film Festival Portland
(by Shawn Levy)

It’s been a few years since Peripheral Produce has held one of its seminal PDX Film Fests, and that hasn’t been because there’s been a lack of new experimental film projects created in this most creative of towns.  Rather, PDX Fest honcho Matt McCormick has been working busily films of his own and simply hasn’t been up to the heavy task.

With the thought that it would take a whole collective of people to replace McCormick and his team, the filmmakers in the group called Grand Detour have combined their talents to mount a new festival dedicated to film on the margins.  Experimental Film Festival Portland (or, cheekily, EFF Portland) will run from Tuesday, May 22 through Sunday, May 27, with premieres of new works from, among many others, Portlanders Vanessa Renwick, Pam Minty, and Karl Lind.

The several programs, comprising dozens of films in all, bear names like “Eruption,” “Mycology” and “Magma Flow” and screen at various locations around town.  It all climaxes on May 27 with the Dill Pickle Club history group hosting a symposium on experimental film at the Clinton Street Theater,featuring new work from McCormick, Brooke Jacobson and Jim Blashfield, and, later in the day, the premiere of Renwick’s new film, “Charismatic Megafauna,” presented at the Hollywood Theatre with live musical score.

Full ticket and schedule information


‘Mansome’ review: a lighthearted look at the culture of male grooming

May 17, 2012 /

The director of "Super Size Me" takes a look at men (like himself) who take care with their appearance.

Mansome.jpgJason Bateman (l.) and Morgan Spurlock in "Mansome"
In “Mansome,” the intrepid, self-revealing documentarian Morgan Spurlock turns his whimsical eye toward contemporary male attitudes about personal grooming.  With the aide of celebrity talking heads (including Will Arnett and Jason Bateman, who co-produced and carry on a film-long conversation during a visit to a day spa), and specialists in such fields as beard-growing, hairpiece manufacture, and body-shaving, it’s a breezy, fleeting film that offers more ‘who knew’ moments than epiphanies.

Spurlock, who risked his health with a fast-food diet in “Super Size Me” and sports a signature handlebar moustache, reveals the stories of a champion beardsman whose life is built around healthy beard growth, a New York businessman who obsessively tweaks his appearance with cosmetic treatments, a professional wrestler who shaves his impressively hairy body every working day, and the manufacturer of a deodorant designed for men to wear in, um, their pants.  These are peppered with cameos by a clutch of famous faces, ranging from Paul Rudd and John Waters, who raise sharp points, to Zach Galifianakis, who adds randomness, to Adam Carolla, whose patter any 12-year-old could predict and write without seeing the film at all.

As I say, there’s not a lot of meat on the bones of “Mansome” -- certainly not compared to, say, the steroid expose “Bigger, Stronger, Faster*.”  Nor is there the sort of zest that infused Spurlock’s last film, “Comic-con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope”  (which appeared in April, bless his busy heart).  But there are a few chuckles, a few head-scratches and, thankfully, very few missteps. It charms.

(82 min., PG-13, Fox Tower) Grade: B


‘Mansome’ review: a lighthearted look at the culture of male grooming

May 17, 2012 /

The director of "Super Size Me" takes a look at men (like himself) who take care with their appearance.

Mansome.jpgJason Bateman (l.) and Morgan Spurlock in "Mansome"
In “Mansome,” the intrepid, self-revealing documentarian Morgan Spurlock turns his whimsical eye toward contemporary male attitudes about personal grooming.  With the aide of celebrity talking heads (including Will Arnett and Jason Bateman, who co-produced and carry on a film-long conversation during a visit to a day spa), and specialists in such fields as beard-growing, hairpiece manufacture, and body-shaving, it’s a breezy, fleeting film that offers more ‘who knew’ moments than epiphanies.

Spurlock, who risked his health with a fast-food diet in “Super Size Me” and sports a signature handlebar moustache, reveals the stories of a champion beardsman whose life is built around healthy beard growth, a New York businessman who obsessively tweaks his appearance with cosmetic treatments, a professional wrestler who shaves his impressively hairy body every working day, and the manufacturer of a deodorant designed for men to wear in, um, their pants.  These are peppered with cameos by a clutch of famous faces, ranging from Paul Rudd and John Waters, who raise sharp points, to Zach Galifianakis, who adds randomness, to Adam Carolla, whose patter any 12-year-old could predict and write without seeing the film at all.

As I say, there’s not a lot of meat on the bones of “Mansome” -- certainly not compared to, say, the steroid expose “Bigger, Stronger, Faster*.”  Nor is there the sort of zest that infused Spurlock’s last film, “Comic-con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope”  (which appeared in April, bless his busy heart).  But there are a few chuckles, a few head-scratches and, thankfully, very few missteps. It charms.

(82 min., PG-13, Fox Tower) Grade: B


‘God Bless America’ review: killing off pop culture, one reality star at a time

May 16, 2012 /

A screed against the worst aspects of the culture goes off the rails, but not without raising some real issues.

God Bless America.jpgJoel Murry and Tara Lynne Barr in "God Bless America"
Genetically akin to “Falling Down” and “Natural Born Killers,” with a twist out of “The Professional,” “God Bless America” is what’s known in Yiddish as a geschrei or in French a (ital) cri de couer: (ital) an impassioned outburst, a shout to the heavens, a cry from the heart.

Writer-director Bobcat Goldthwait (the squealing, gnarly-haired comedian and, by now, auteur of a handful of cult films) vents his frustration with contemporary American culture, values and mores in the story of Frank, a middle-aged schlub who, divorced, friendless, jobless and diagnosed with cancer, goes on a spree to kill reality TV stars, parking space hoggers, movie theater talkers, and others who violate his code of simple human decency.  In the process, Frank accrues a co-conspirator, Roxy, a high school girl with just as many peeves and maybe even more anger at the world.

The pair are played by Joel Murray (Freddy Rumson from TV’s “Mad Men”) and relative newcomer Tara Lynne Barr. Murray isn’t exactly a deep performer, but he fits the role well, and Barr is quite game.  As the film progresses, though, their characters come to seem less like people than like mere vehicles for Goldthwait’s personal outrage.  And in that context, their anger (not to mention the murders they commit) seems disproportionate and contrived.  “God Bless America” offers a few laughs and a moment or two of drama, but it’s finally more of a conceit -- and a familiar one -- than a film.
    
(100 min., R, Hollywood Theatre) Grade: B-minus


This week’s last-chance movies: ‘Bully,’ ‘Damsels in Distress,’ ‘Marley,’ and more

May 16, 2012 /

Catch 'em while you can!

Bully.jpgfrom "Bully"
For some reason, we've got one of the busiest movie weeks of the year about to hit Portland:  almost 20 feature films and 8 new or continuing festivals or special events.  So it's no wonder that the local movie screens need to get out the broom and sweep clean.  Thing is, they're sweeping out some very good films in the process.  Wednesday and Thursday mark your last chances to see the well-worthwhile "Bully," "Damsels in Distress," "The Kid with a Bike," "Marley" and "The Salt of Life," as well as the locally-made indie "Blue Like Jazz" and the action film "Safe House."  Choose accordingly and get watching!

‘The Dictator’ review: in a tired fiction, Sacha Baron Cohen loses his comic bite

May 15, 2012 /

He's still crude and sometimes quite funny, but there's little electricity in the make-believe compared to his real-world exploits, and the result is Sandler-esque.

The Dictator.jpgSacha Baron Cohen in "The Dictator"
Sacha Baron Cohen occupies a unique space in the comedy world.  In three personae invented on TV and enlarged for movie screens -- Ali G, Borat and Bruno -- he ambushed celebrities, public figures and ordinary Britons and Americans, reveling in crude humor, trafficking in vile stereotypes, and, alarmingly often, getting his subject/victims to reveal their own prejudices and dark sides.

It was frequently sophomoric and often quite hilarious, but it was also a finite enterprise:  as the career of Michael Moore demonstrates, a fellow can only catch other folks by surprise for so long before the echo of his own fame precedes him and his access to unguarded sources dries up.

And so Cohen and his team -- director Larry Charles and a cohort of writers who worked on “Seinfeld” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” -- have invented a new character who shares some attributes with the comedian’s other false faces but who lives inside a fictional world, which rather blunts the satire.  “The Dictator,” the lumpy comedy in which this new fellow appears, feels not so much like a sibling of Cohen’s brilliant TV work or the stupefying “Borat” and “Bruno” movies as it does a cousin with only some of the genetic gifts its relatives enjoys.

Cohen plays Supreme Leader Aladeen, president-for-life of the fictional North African nation of Wadiya, which he rules with callous brutality.  When Aladeen addresses the United Nations on the subject of Wadiya’s nuclear weapons program, he is kidnapped and stripped of power by a scheming underling (Ben Kingsley) who plans to democratize the nation in order to exploit its oil reserves.  Aladeen survives the coup but is left to the mercies of modern New York, which is filled with the sorts of people whom he has mercilessly despised and belittled throughout his life.  

He’s taken in by Zoe (Anna Faris), the over-eager operator of a politically correct grocery, and has a chance encounter with Nuclear Nadal (Jason Mantzoukas), a Wadiyan scientist whom Aladeen had ordered to be executed years earlier (all of his victims, learns, actually had their lives spared by an executioner disloyal to the regime).  Together, the two exiles plan to scuttle the plans for regime change in Wadiya, restore Aladeen’s despotic monarchy, and get back to building nukes.

All of this is an excuse for one outrageous, grotesque, gratuitous joke after another.  Like Cohen’s other personae, Aladeen is a seething mass of biases and bigotries, and he continually hates on and debases women, minorities, celebrities, children, old folks, ordinary Americans, and, really, anyone who wanders through into his gaze.  Some of it is funny, and much of it is shocking, but little of it has the satiric impact or sense of danger that accompanied the antics of Cohen’s previous characters, who risked the chance of having political or cultural figures explode at them or ordinary folks -- often mobs of them -- beat them up.  Here, in a purely fictional context, it’s all make-believe, and the sparks that occasionally result from the cheek and the crudeness aren’t nearly so bright.  (And Charles, needless to remind anyone, is no one’s idea of a master comic filmmaker.)

For all its boundary-pushing, “The Dictator” only once makes you feel truly uncomfortable, very near the end, when Aladeen lists the qualities that make a nation a dictatorship and virtually anatomizes the contemporary American political, economic, journalistic and cultural milieu.  But that moment, a weird inversion of Charlie Chaplin’s famous paean to human rights at the end of “The Great Dictator,” doesn’t resonate amid the caustic frivolity of the rest.  “The Dictator” has a few laughs along its bumpy path, but not enough of them to indicate that Cohen has found a means to escape the shadows of his early career and forge a second act for himself.

(82 min., R, multiple locations) Grade: C-plus


Movies: Hot summer films, tepid ‘Shadows,’ an eerie ‘Voice’ and more

May 11, 2012 /

New releases in Portland-area theaters not reviewed in this week's A&E.

dark shadows 2.jpgJohnny Depp in "Dark Shadows"
In this week's paper, we weigh in on the eleventy-jillion movie releases due in Portland theaters between now and Labor Day in our annual Summer Movie Guide.  We've also got reviews of the films that open today, including the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp horror comedy "Dark Shadows," the Norwegian comic thriller "Headhunters," the multi-character British charmer "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," and "Sound of My Voice," a creepy film about life in a charismatic cult.  And those bad pennies:  "Also Opening," "Indie/Arthouse" and "Levy's High Five."

Cruel ‘Games,’ tireless ‘Searchers,’ several fests and more

May 11, 2012 /

New releases in Portland-area theaters not reviewed in this week's A&E.

The Searchers.jpgJohn Wayne in "The Searchers" (1956)
“Funny Games” Writer-director Michael Haneke’s terrifying 1997 film about a pointless and sadistic home invasion (he later remade it himself in Hollywood, to far lesser results).  (5th Avenue Cinema, Friday through Sunday only)  

“HDFEST” A selection of new films from around the world made for and projected in high-definition formats.   (Living Room Theaters, Tuesday through Thursday only)  

“Inter-Action: Animated Shorts” A collection of recent animated films by SEAT (the Seattle Experimental Animation Team), presented by Seattle animator Tess Martin.  (Northwest Film Center, Thursday only)  

“The Invisible War” Documentarian Kirby Dick (“This Film Is Not Yet Rated,” “Derrida”) looks into the under-reported phenomenon of sexual assault in the American military.  (Hollywood Theatre, Thursday only)  

“Jesus Henry Christ” A boy conceived in a laboratory seeks his biological father; stars include Toni Collette and Michael Sheen.  (Living Room Theaters)  

“Pacific University Senior Theses Films” A presentation of the work of soon-to-be graduates of Pacific University’s Media Arts Department.  (CLinton Street Theater, Thursday only)  

“Sprout Film Festival” A collection of films about the lives and accomplishments of people with learning disabilities.   (McMenamins Kennedy School, Saturday only)  

“The Searchers” John Wayne stars as the brutal, dogged, racist Ethan Edwards, who spends years seeking a neice who has been kidnapped by Native Americans, in John Ford’s 1956 classic.  (Laurelhurst Theater)  


Summer Movie Roundup: ‘Sumer is icumen in’ with a bang and lots of echoes

May 11, 2012 /

All the summer movie news you need for only-in-Portland film events, big global blockbusters and everything in between.

The Dark Knight Rises.jpgChristian Bale as Batman in "The Dark Knight Rises"
Today's paper includes my massive Summer Movie Preview, which may have appeared before you earlier this morning in a stream of blog posts, tweets and social media detritus.

As my small gesture toward decluttering your heads, I've (trendy verb alert) aggregated the whole shebang here.

To wit:

Mini-essay on Summer Movies 2012
May releases
June releases
July releases
August releases
Films with undetermined release dates
Photo slide show of dozens of images from the summer's releases and events

It's a lot, yes.  How nice of somebody (and I only take partial credit here) to break it all down and map it out.

Levy’s High Five, May 11 – 17

May 10, 2012 /

The five films playing in Portland-area theaters that I'd soonest see again.

The Deep Blue Sea window.jpgRachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston in "The Deep Blue Sea"
1) “The Deep Blue Sea” Terence Davies is the finest director you’ve likely never heard of, probably because his best films -- the quiet, devastating semi-autobiographical “Distant Voices, Still Lives” and “The Long Day Closes” -- were made more than two decades ago and he’s only had one film (“The House of Mirth,” an anomaly, really) get even a modest release since.  Here, adapting Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play about a passionate woman (Rachel Weisz), her stodgy husband (Simon Russell Beale) and her unreliable lover (Tom Hiddleston), his immense, inimitable gifts for image-making and, especially, turning film into something like music are in full power.  The effect is sometimes funny, sometimes dramatic, sometimes absolutely ravishing.  Davies is a master, and this is his most accessible film.  See it.  Living Room Theaters

2) “The Raid: Redemption” An ultra-violent, wildly kinetic martial arts film that virtually strips itself of the narrative conventions of plot, theme and characterization to create a white-knuckle thrill ride.  Writer-director Gareth Evans, a Welshman living in Indonesia, takes the simplest story -- a squad of cops attacks a Jakarta apartment house where a crime lord is ensconced -- and uses it to string together wild action sequences that leave the viewer as exhausted as if he or she had fought them.  His stars -- Iko Uwais as a baby-faced cop and Yayan Ruhian (who also choreographed) as a stringy-haired bad guy -- are dazzling.  The whole thing is pure cinema: the human body rendered as a machine capable of mayhem, daring, and, yes, grace. Academy, Laurelhurst

3) “Bully” An emotionally overwhelming documentary about threads of violence in our social fabric.  Focusing on five or children who’ve been tormented and abused by schoolmates, two so relentlessly that they took their own lives, documentarian Lee Hirsch advocates without the use of any talking heads, statistics or editorial posturing.  Rather, his film actually depicts everyday acts of bullying and -- worse -- the ineffective and even hurtful responses of school authorities.  At times, the pity, outrage and empathy the evokes threaten to drown you.  But there’s a hint of light, too.  At moments you might feel slightly manipulated.  But when you look into the eyes of two fathers whose sons killed themselves rather than continue to be bullied, quibbles about journalist practice vanish from your mind. Fox Tower

4) “Jiro Dreams of Sushi”  Jiro Ono is the owner of a Tokyo sushi bar with 10 seats and 3 Michelin stars, and David Gelb’s gorgeous and intimate documentary about the man and his obsession gives you an idea of how that can not only be so but be fitting.  Jiro and his two sons (bound to the chef’s apron strings, almost literally) devote untold hours of work and thought to the perfection of sushi-making, turning a sometimes makework form of cookery into indisputably high art.  At 85, the old master still works virtually every day, and the fruit of his focus is in servings of raw fish and warm rice photographed so lusciously that you can almost taste them.  A mouthwatering film:  literally.  Laurelhurst, Living Room Theaters

5) "The Cabin in the Woods" A slasher movie inside a horror movie of another sort inside yet another narrative, one which looks out and the audience and asks why they (that is, we) keep lining up to watch other people get slaughtered.  A group of college students head to the titular location for a weekend’s bacchanal, only to be preyed upon and killed in grisly fashion, as per the familiar genre rules.  At the same time, a group of bureaucrats/scientists in a control room manipulate the victims and their killers in the service of...something.  Director Drew Goddard and his co-writer Joss Whedon have fun in the vein of “Scream” and in the vein of “The Truman Show” -- and they come up with an intriguing theory to explain the allure of horror films as well as a (literal) hell of a climax. Bloody, funny, clever. multiple locations



‘Headhunters’ review: the tables turn terrifyingly on a yuppie art thief

May 10, 2012 /

An agreeable Norwegian comic thriller with touches of the Coen brothers.

Headhunters.jpgAksel Hennie in "Headhunters"
Like a Norwegian cousin of a Coen brothers film, “Headhunters” presents us with a dislikeable protagonist and then heaps so much woe and misfortune on him so gleefully that we come to feel a rising sympathy for the poor devil.  

Aksel Hennie stars as Roger Brown, an obnoxious corporate headhunter who’s self-conscious about being married to a gorgeous (and taller) woman.  Feeling he must keep his missus happy, he augments his already sizeable income -- by stealing works of art from his business clients and replacing them with near-replicas.  In the process what ought to be the biggest score of this second ‘career,’ Roger discovers a secret which shatters him and then must flee for his life from a bloodthirsty mercenary (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau).

Director Morten Tyldum (“Fallen Angels”), working from a novel by Jo Nesbø, nicely balances slickness, terror, comedy and the grotesque, and Hennie is almost too perfect in the lead, particularly in his insufferable early stages.  

It’s a light entertainment -- provided you can be entertained by watching Roger suffer and quake as he does.  And, almost inevitably, it’s been identified for a potential Hollywood remake.  Do yourself a favor and see this one before some Yank director gets it all wrong.
    
(100 min., R, Cinema 21) Grade: B-plus


‘Dark Shadows’ review: a bloodless spoof with neither laughs nor chills

May 10, 2012 /

The eighth collaboration of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp is their most lifeless and least necessary yet.

Dark Shadows.jpgJohnny Depp in "Dark Shadows"
Tim Burton and Johnny Depp need some fresh air.

Their new film “Dark Shadows” marks their eighth collaboration in 22 years and fifth since 2005. In all those films, Depp has only once played an ordinary  human being in non-fantasy costume...and that was as the cross-dressing schlockmeister hero of the terrific “Ed Wood.”  

In all of their other work together -- “Edward Scissorhands,” “Sleepy Hollow,” “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “Corpse Bride,” “Sweeney Todd,” and “Alice in Wonderland” -- Depp has played deeply outré characters in flamboyant outfits, wigs and makeup, sometimes finding human emotion beneath the grotesquerie but more often, and more commonly as time has passed, wandering off into self-amusement and obscurity.

This can be fun, I grant you.  Nobody in movies has ever quite had Depp’s gift for disappearing into so many variations on the comic and the bizarre, and Burton is almost always audacious in mounting spectacles born of youthful fantasies and nightmares.  But the two have returned so often to a single brand of inspiration that they no longer spark a frisson -- in the audience or, one suspects, in each other.  There’s a dulling sameness to the characters, the themes, the tenor.  Oh, sometimes the comedy is in the depravity and sometimes vice versa, but it’s all been cut from the same cloth, and after all this time the cloth has worn so thin that it’s become transparent.

And so “Dark Shadows,” in which the pair attempt to sprinkle their fairy dust on the gothic daytime soap opera that became a national sensation in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, making an unlikely pop hero of the vampire Barnabas Collins whose family manor, Collinwood, was the setting for the show.  (Collins was played by Jonathan Frid, who died in April and has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him cameo as a party guest in this film.)

In the hands of Burton and at least three writers, much of the original tale remains in place: after two centuries of entombment, Barnabas is awoken to find that the year is 1972, the Collins family’s fortunes have crumbled, his old-time nemesis, the witch Angelique, runs the town of Collinsport, and his long-dead love, Josette, has been reincarnated, or seems to have been, as the governess Victoria Winters.

But, really, it’s more set-up than story:  the film grinds through a number of subplots that don’t resonate with one another and don’t add up to a narrative with any momentum or tension.  There’s some gore and some CGI tomfoolery, but mainly Burton plays it for laughs, making it all the more depressing that so little of it is funny:  Depp’s delivery and arcane argot can amuse, the conventions of soap opera craft are drily mocked, and there are one or two cheeky bits about Barnabas’ encounters with modernity, but that’s it.  For hours.  It’s a slog.

Depp, as I say, almost can’t help but hold your interest, but watching him work yet another variation on this mock-morbid trope most certainly neither surprises nor excites.  Chloë Grace Moretz charms a mite as a rebellious young Collins, and Helena Bonham Carter has some fun as a drunken psychiatrist.  But Eva Green as Barnabas’s foe, Bella Heathcote as his love interest, and Michelle Pfeiffer as the modern head of the Collins family are bloodless, no matter the energies they expend.

Indeed, ‘bloodless’ is the word for the whole enterprise.  Lord knows that Burton is an inventive fellow, and he’s capable of bringing all sorts of esoteric to pulsing life.  But it’s been a long time since he’s made a start-to-finish satisfying film -- and, perhaps coincidentally, nine years since he’s made one without Depp.  That walk in the fresh air that I suggested the two of them need?  I should add that it would be best if they took it in opposite directions....
    
(111 min., PG-13, multiple locations) Grade: C


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