Fourth Row Center

A Cast Reunion

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:41:00 +0000

Recently there was a cast reunion worth mentioning.

No, I am not writing about the Seinfeld reunion that is the subject of this season's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" on HBO.

Think more David O. Selzenick and less Larry David.

To honor the 70th anniversary of Gone With the Wind, surviving cast members gathered at a tribute event outside Atlanta recently. With Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh being off-planet, the cast reunion comprised actors who played children and babies and Beau Wilkes at various childhood ages in the classic 1939 film.

I don't suppose there was much reminiscing going on at this reunion. But for those surviving performers in attendance , it must be marvelous to know that each was a part of such a remarkable feat of cinematic grandeur the likes of which are long gone in American motion pictures.

I think I'll add Gone With the Wind to my Netflix queue. It's been a while for me, too.

Oh, and George is divorced and is trying to get back with this ex-wife, in case you were wondering.

[*REC]

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 01:40:00 +0000

To follow up on Jay’s post, I have two films that follow the vein of The Blair Witch Project, but, does it right.

The films are Quarantine and [*REC], but we only need to talk about the later as the former is an American remake of the later Spanish Film.

Both are excellent, but, I have to admit to liking [*REC] better.

Both stories follow a female reporter who host the show “While you were sleeping” and follows a group of fire fighters who are called to a tenement building to help with an old lady who has fallen.

That’s when the film goes to hell. Literally.

What makes both films great is that it does not start as a horror film. It lulls you into a false sense of security. The second thing is that the actors in the film feel like normal people who have gotten stuck inside the building.

I prefer [*REC] because the main character is absolutely convincing and ending is…well…creepy. It has more in common with Aliens than Blair Witch, and makes for a pretty scary Halloween movie.

Is it Real, or is it Crap?

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:38:00 +0000

Two films have been released this autumn that fall in the vein of The Blair Witch Project: feature motion pictures produced from purported actual archival video capturing elements of the unexplained.

The newly released The Fourth Kind, starring Milla Jovovich, is one of those “let’s pretend this is real using actual video footage” movies, like Paranormal Activity, except here the filmmakers augment the archival “footage” with “dramatic reenactments.” The premise involves a close encounter of the fourth kind, abduction, and the aliens here are not the happy ET’s of Spielberg’s movies. These are bad beings with a grudge.

The set up is intriguing: a psychologist in Nome, Alaska (Jovovich), has patients who seem to all have abduction accounts when placed under hypnosis. And so, too, as it turns out, does our heroine. But the result is uneven, and the climax never really wraps anything up, except to suggest that these bizarre nocturnal owl sightings are really alien abductions, which the audience knows from the get-go. So going in, the audience already knows “the big secret,” so the filmmakers have the responsibility not only to tell a compelling story, but to bring us to a climax that pays off somehow. They fail at both.

The flip side of the coin is Paranormal Activity, which emerged on the festival circuit two years ago but received a wide U.S. release in October. Its premise is very simple and effective: a young couple experience unusual noises and happenings in their San Diego home, and set up a video camera in order to not only record their every waking (and sleeping) move, but to hopefully capture whatever it is that may be haunting them. The film that audiences see is supposedly culled from video tapes released by the San Diego police department.

Director Oren Peli shot this film, which has grossed more than $80 million thus far, at home, in seven days, for $15,000, and delivers a tense and spooky film wherein what the audience doesn’t see is often scarier than what it does. It’s been a while since off-camera audio and mere sound effects have provided such a powerful emotional impact on audiences. And a few of the sequences, shot during the night, in time lapse, are rough and grainy and as spooky as anything I've seen in a movie in a long time. Shot simply in a cinema verite style, this film succeeds where The Fourth Kind comes across as merely a bad two hours of “UFO Stories” on the History Channel.

Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 06:03:00 +0000

Cirque du Freak is something for teens, a modern Fright Night, as far as I’m concerned, and it’s a good, clean vampire fun. Two best friends become vampires after visiting a peculiar little freak show run by Mr. Tall (Ken Watanabe) and come down on opposite sides of a vampire conflict: one sides with the good vampires (they do not kill humans) and the other sides with the evil vampires who kill humans and want a war with the good vampires.

Silly, of course, but this kind of goofy cinematic fun is sometimes what movies are all about. Director Paul Weitz (In Good Company, About a Boy) keeps the action moving in this simple but entertaining good versus evil story. The decent performances by John C. Reilly, Selma Hayek and a terrific turn by Willem Dafoe as one of the "good" vampires provide the flick with a little street cred, as does a screenplay co-written by one of my favorite screen scribes Brian Helgeland (Payback, Mystic River, L.A. Confiedential).

Bright Star

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 23:05:00 +0000

Directed by Jane Campion, “Bright Star” is not only a poem by John Keats but the person for whom the poem was written, a young Englishwomen by the name of Fanny Brawne, who falls in love with the young Keats despite the fact that the struggling poet has no income to support a wife. Their romance is not an easy one, lacking the approval of both Keats’ best friend and Fanny’s traditional family, and the three year romance is ultimately cut short by Keats’ tragic death at age 25, a failed poet, broke and alone in Italy recovering from an illness. A great romance flick for those who love poets and poetry.

Another Summer Movie Round Up

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:11:00 +0000

DISTRICT 9
Produced by Peter Jackson. This sci-fi lesson about racism has some nice ideas—unwanted aliens stranded on earth and kept in camps, growing inter-species mistrust, a plan to return the aliens to their planet gone awry. But the follow-through is lacking, the performances second-rate and the film withers pathetically on the vine.

G-FORCE
Animated, from Disney. Talking CG guinea pigs are secret agents. Why, Disney, why?

HANNAH MONTANTA
Starring Miley Cyrus and Billy Ray Cyrus. After so many bad films, Disney takes a kids’ Disney Channel sitcom and stretches it out to an hour and a half motion picture, and what do you have? A pretty watchable film, actually, and much to my surprise. Although the first part of the picture (set in Hollywood) is pretty much business as usual for the “Hannah Montana” show, the rest of it takes on some meaning as Robbie Ray takes his daughter Miley (who is actually superstar Hannah Montana) back to the family farm in Tennessee, much against Miley’s wishes, where she learns lessons about the importance of family, integrity and closeness, lessons her big time life in Hollywood never taught her. This movie is actually about something, has some interesting characters and there is character development, juvenile as it may be. There are also decent performances from the supporting cast, some humor, and a story you can hang a hat on.

INGLORIOUS BASTERDS
Starring Brad Pitt; written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino is back with a violent, talky and exceptionally crafted motion picture about a squad of Jewish American soldiers (led by a Tennessee-accented Pitt) dropped behind enemy lines in occupied France in order to kill and scalp as many Nazis as they can get their hands on. A second storyline, involving a young Jewish woman living as a Parisian Gentile in order to escape the Nazis who murdered her family, intersects with the first in a Paris cinema where dual plots to assassinate Hitler and his cadre of Nazi killers are hatched.

STAR TREK
Starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Leonard Nimoy, Bruce Greenwood; directed by J.J. Abrams. Director Abrams got it right, and Star Trek is retooled for the 21st century. The story is clever and manages to preserve the canon while introducing a new cast and new elements to the classic Star Trek universe.

ORPHAN
Peter Sarsgaard is rarely bad in anything he does, though he is not above appearing in a bad film. Like this one. Clumsy and predictable, the film should have been abandoned on a doorstep and not distributed to theaters nationwide. Someone might have adopted it. Sarsgaard, maybe?

PUBLIC ENEMIES
Starring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale; produced, co-written and directed by Michael Mann. I expected much more from writer/director Michael Mann (Collateral, Heat), but Public Enemies failed to deliver much of anything. Johnny Depp as John Dillinger dialed in a performance unworthy of the great actor, but I give him a pass given that the story was confusing and uninspired, and the dialogue uninteresting. The cinematography was too “TV drama,” and did not service the needs of a period piece like this one. The final scene seemed shot on DV. This film just did not look good, and it did not help that the set design and art direction were bland and uninspired. The only thing I really enjoyed here was Christian Bale as Melvin Purvis, but it was not enough to render the experience the least bit entertaining or enjoyable.

TERMINATOR SALVATION
Starring Christian Bale; directed by McG. The time-bending Terminator back story can be mind-bending as well, and McG and company make the most of it and deliver a film that looks good, and incorporates a welcome cameo by Arnold Schwarzenegger, but on the whole is soulless and unremarkable.

TAKING OF PELHAM 123, THE
Starring John Travolta, Denzel Washington, John Turturro and James Gandolfini; screenplay by Brian Helgeland; directed by Tony Scott. Unnecessary remake of the 1974 film with Robert Shaw and Walter Matthau manages to stay tense and entertaining throughout despite a mediocre performance by Travolta as a baddie who hijacks a New York subway train. Washington is terrific as the dispatch operator who finds himself the conduit between Travolta and the New York police. John Turturro as a police negotiator and James Gandolfini as New York’s mayor are well cast.

WHATEVER WORKS
Starring Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood, Patricia Clarkson, Ed Begley, Jr., and Michael McKean; written and directed by Woody Allen. Larry David, co-creator of "Seinfeld" and creator and star of HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” is a perfect Woody Allen New York curmudgeon in this comedy about a bitter genius whose life is transformed when he takes in a runaway from the deep South (Wood). The supporting cast is terrific and the story, although a little tired and recycled, works thanks to David’s energy and amusing performance.

Summer Movie Round Up

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck) — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 13:11:00 +0000

I went to see what will most likely be my last summer movie today, and it got me thinking: I haven’t posted a single thought about it on 4RC. Shame on me.

Wolverine *
I really liked the first two X-Men films, but the third was completely lost on me. Wolverine started off with one of the best opening montage sequence since The Watchmen. After that, it jumped around, and by the time film ended, I just didn’t care anymore.

Star Trek ****
I have mixed feelings about this film. TOS has a particularly special place in my inner geek, and part of me was sad to see that they made a TOS film that was better than five of the other TOS movies. I approached this movie fully expecting to kinda like it, but not love it. But J.J. breathed life into my childhood heroes and proves one of my friends favorite sayings: “it’s all about the story.”

Terminator Salvation ***
I think that after Seth Rogan, Christian Bale must be the hardest working man in Hollywood. I went into this film with a chip on my shoulder: the Sarah Conner Chronicles had just been canceled. Maybe that was why the film seemed to take forever to hook me. In the end, I didn’t really like John Conner – I don’t think he was meant to be liked. He had this weird destiny to play: he had to protect Kyle Reese long enough to send him back in time. Throw into the mix a new Good Guy Terminator and the appearance of the 80’s Arnold Terminator made for a big finale.

Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian **
I took one of daughters on a date to see this movie. It was so puny that I laughed all the way through. Not very deep, but was a laugh a minute. The humor was corny, which was a relief – so many kid movies today are simply 90 minutes of Fart and Booger jokes.

Pixar’s Up ****
Does this movie REALLY have the company’s name as part of the title? I did not like Wally or Ratatouille. But Up caught me by surprise at is a very tender film about an old man fulfilling a dream that he shared with his departed wife. I wasn’t expecting to cry in this film. Excellent all around.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
The film that made me mad at marketing. A solid PG-13, this film’s marketing targeted kids. With “ghetto” robots, a mom strung out on hash brownies, the main character being seduced by a hottie Decepticon. I could go on, but I have already let it go. The film was ok otherwise.

Bruno *
When Bhorat came out, it was so over the top that I could not believe that they got away with what they did. I was hoping Bruno would be the same, but it did not feel as authentic as the first film. It was very offensive, but, that’s kind of the point. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that funny (which was the point).

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince *
It had to happen: a Harry Potter film that I did not like. But, this could have been because of the baby that was crying behind me. Either way, they made it a much somber film to reflect the darkening tone of the books. But, I think what was lacking for me was the absence of fun. The book also had a somber mood, but, it was still a fun visit to the Potter Verse. Some things felt like they should have had a bigger punch (e.g. Malfoy and Snape and Dumbledore) that just did not pay off.

District 9 ****
This was a special movie for me. It was low budget film, a leading star that I had never heard of, a director I had never heard of, and the creative backing of Peter Jackson and Company. It reminded me of films from the 80s that only I really liked (e.g. Buckaroo Banzai) – but this film was really smart. It plays like a pseudo documentary, but more in the style of The Office than the “found footage” gimmicks of Blair Witch or Cloverfield. And like the office, they break the rules for the supposed documentary crew and you hardly question it (seriously, they were filming that?). For a science fiction film, this was refreshing.

Inglorious Basterds ***
The truth about QT is that I can either take or leave his movies. Generally, I enjoy them while at the theater, but quickly forget them. But, the thing that makes a QT flick is how psychopathic everyone tends to be. Usually, the psychosis is masked in dialog, but, the entire time, you have this knowing in the back of your mind that this will end very, very badly. For IG, I point to the meeting in the Bar Basement. Unfortunately, the last two chapters started to feel rushed, and I felt like that I was missing something.

G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra ***
I debated about seeing this film on screen. I played with the Vietnam error G.I. Joes when they were twelve inch figures, but gave them up around 3rd grade (I believe that Bullet Man was the last one I had). The 80’s Joes became considerably smaller, but had a cartoon that meant a lot to kids growing up in those days. So, all that to say, I had no investment in the 80’s Joes, so I had no expectations to live up to. Honestly, after Transformers, I wanted to pass on this. And, I am glad I did not. The difference between Transformers and G.I. Joe was that the latter embraced what it was – a cartoon brought to life. The action was big, the equipment looked like toys brought to life, the characters two dimensional, and the fun was amped up to 11 (although they only sustained about a five throughout).

Inju, The Beast in Shadow

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 08:44:00 +0000

Inju: the Beast in Shadow follows French mystery novelist Alex Fayard as he arrives in Japan for a publicity tour and receives a cryptic warning from his Japanese rival, Shundei Oe, a wildly popular but reclusive author who has never been seen or photographed, known only by a gruesome self portrait on his book jackets.

Alex meets a dancer in a tea house who thinks she knows who Oe really is, a brutal and insane former lover who may be capable of harming Alex.

Director Barbet Schroeder (Reversal of Fortune, Single White Female) seems at ease with both the material and the odd French/Japanese hybrid style of the film, which blends mystical Asian themes with elements of a taut European thriller. The plot unfolds like a flower, petal by petal; and as the plot unravels myriad twists and misdirection are revealed, the end result is a watchable and satisfying cinematic experience.

Hachiko: A Dog's Story

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 06:52:00 +0000

First time screenwriter Stephen Lindsay, who hails from Greer, SC, not far from my old stomping grounds, says he was thrilled to be involved with Hachiko: A Dog’s Story, to which actor Richard Gere attached himself early on and provided a great deal of creative input toward the final script.

Gere stars as Parker, a New England man whose life is changed when an Akita pup finds him late one night at the train station. The station master, played by Jason Alexander, can only turn him over to the pound, so Parker elects to take the pup home until the owner is located. It’s not an easy transition for Parker’s wife, but Hachi and Parker bond, becoming an inseparable pair. And, as any dog movie worth its salt would have it, the pup’s owner never comes forward.

Hachi becomes not only Parker’s best friend but a staple in the community where they live. Parker commutes to work by train, and like clockwork Hachi is waiting on his master every day outside the train station at five o’clock, rain or shine. Hachiko is based true events that occurred in Japan in the early part of the twentieth century. At its heart it's a story of friendship and undying loyalty, and manages to achieve the right balance of drama and sentimentality without going overboard. A word of warning, however – when the screening ended there was not a dry eye in the house.

Director Lasse Hollstrom (My Life as a Dog, The Cider House Rules) has a graceful and elegant visual style, which brings an intimacy to this simple yet poignant story which is appropriate for families and general audiences.

Wonderful World

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 14:48:00 +0000

Matthew Broderick stars as Ben Singer, a an embittered civil servant whose marriage has failed, who is estranged from his only daughter, whose career is at a dead end and who blames corporate greed on the part of The Man (an amusing performance by Philip Baker Hall) as the origin of both his and all society's ills. Then his roommate (and only friend) enters a diabetic coma and Ben is forced to take stock of his life.

He's helped along by his roommate's sister, Khadi, who travels from Dakar to wait by her brother's bedside, and by a coworker who discovers that Ben was previously a very successful recording artist of children's songs until being put down by The Man.

Thankfully, Wonderful World is not as heavy-handed as it might have been, and Broderick brings a soft, sympathetic touch to Ben’s pessimistic nature. Writer-directer Joshua Goldin (who wrote Out on a Limb with Broderick and 1990’s Darkman) crafts a movie that blends comedy into a hopeful story about a man in search of the good things that life has to offer.

La Forteresse

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 07:59:00 +0000

The Fortress is a Swiss documentary about a weigh station for foreign refugees seeking asylum in Switzerland, and it manages not only to paint a clear picture of what a refugee has to go through to obtain Swiss residency, but it paints portraits of a few hopeful souls and the dramatic and often painful journeys their lives have taken to arrive at the Swiss border petitioning for refuge.

This is the only documentary I have seen at this year's festival, and I arrived thinking I was about to see a movie called Cold Souls with Paul Giamatti. I did see Giamatti standing outside of the Harvard Exit theater, signing a few autographs, but he did not appear in the Swiss documentary I screened.

There was no narration nor were there any interviews. The Fortress was shot entirely in the refugee center, and the filmmakers did a terrific job editing the film in such a way that the lives of the workers and refugees there were vivid and fully realized. The movie is fascinating and flows nicely. It was amusing that the couple behind me seemed to be unaware that The Fortress was a documentary. The man’s comment after the screening was, “There didn’t seem to be much of a plot.”

World's Greatest Dad

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 08:21:00 +0000

Many of the films shown at Seattle's film festival were made here, the majority of them independents. Such is the case with World’s Greatest Dad.

Robin Williams plays Lance Clayton, a high school poetry teacher and failed writer. And he is hardly the world’s greatest dad. His teenage son, Kyle, who is crude and cruel and virtually friendless, seems to have no moral or ethical compass and runs roughshod over his weak-willed single parent. Williams is terribly sympathetic in his failure to discipline his son, and his rebuffed efforts to bond with the teen – dinner, movies, anything – are heartbreaking.

But this is a black comedy, one of the darkest American comedies I've seen, and when Kyle dies in an accidental and undignified manner, his grieving father pens a suicide note leading all to believe that Kyle was a friendless genius who has taken the easy way out. Having redefined his worthless son, Lance finds that his life takes a remarkable turn for the better, as others (who previously despised Kyle) see him as something of a martyr.

Director Bobcat Goldthwait steers the film on a fine line between pathos and farce and manages to succeed. But World's Greatest Dad is not for everyone. It’s a comedy derived from a lone teenager's inability to fit in and subsequent death, and had Kyle been portrayed as the least bit sympathetic the film would not have worked.

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 08:01:00 +0000

So Long at the Fair is one of those rare treats offered at film festivals, an old British film not available in the states but well worth the look on the big screen.

Fair is a 1950 suspense thriller said to be a favorite of Hitchcock's. It incorporates an old legend about a disappearing room. Directed by Terence Fisher, who went on to direct most of the classic Hammer horror films of the 1960's and 70's, Fair stars Jean Simmons as Vicky Barton, a woman attending the 1889 Paris exhibition with her brother when inexplicably he disappears. Upon making inquiries as to his whereabouts she is told by the hotel staff that not only did she arrive in Paris alone, but that her brother's room, number 19, does not exist. Indeed, there is no room 19 and Vicky is unable to find anyone in Paris who has any memory of him.

So Long at the Fair is a solid thriller, and holds up fairly well. While it lacks the flair of a Hitchcock film, it benefits from numerous unexpected turns of plot and a truly creepy hotel owner who may know more than she's letting on.

Like Dandelion Dust

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 07:56:00 +0000

Jack and Molly Campbell are the well-to-do parents of six-year-old Joey who are informed, out of the blue, that their infant adoption was not legal. To make matters worse, Joey's biological father, until recently wholly unaware of the boy's existence, wants his child returned now that he's completed his seven year prison sentence for domestic abuse. A judge orders the child removed from his adoptive parents in Florida and flown to Ohio to live with his biological mother and father.

That is Like Dandelion Dust, a movie chronicling the lives of two sets of parents intent on raising young Joey and of the confused child caught in between. It goes without saying that to a point both sets of parents are sympathetic. Rip (a terrific Barry Pepper) has reformed and his desire for fatherhood fuels his efforts to rebuild his life. His wife, played to near perfection by Mira Sorvino, desires a simpler life, a life with a family, and her desire to be a mother to the child she gave up six years before is moving. But in the end both families are ripped apart, all for the love of a single, vulnerable child.

Like Dandelion Dust is a tearjerker, yes, and an audience pleaser. The script is very good and the editing and direction, in the capable hands of Jon Gunn, are fine. But it’s the performances and characterizations that stand out here, and they are strong enough to move most anyone, particularly one who knows firsthand the love of a child.

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Sun, 31 May 2009 09:21:00 +0000

When the director of the indie The Merry Gentleman suffered a ruptured appendix, actor Michael Keaton stepped up and delivered a beautiful, quiet and contemplative film about two souls looking for redemption and release from the horrors of their pasts while struggling with issues of trust and acceptance as they face painful and uncertain futures.

Set in Chicago, Keaton plays a loner who struggles with the horrible things he does for a living, and is about to end it all when a woman (Kelly MacDonald) running from her past as the wife of an abusive husband interrupts his attempt and ultimately saves his life.

This one moment draws the characters together into a complex relationship that has dangerous – and perhaps deadly – consequences. But these characters, drawn with light stokes of the director’s brush, manage to embed themselves into the psyche of the viewer, resonating with a power that is both puzzling and refreshing.

The Merry Gentleman is not an easy film to sum up without giving too much away. It’s also one of those films that inspired a lengthy, speculative conversation afterward. The performances are first rate, understated, as is everything about this film. MacDonald’s character speaks a great deal but says little; Keaton plays a man who says very little but speaks volumes. In the end, much is left to the interpretation of the viewer, perhaps a little too much. But ultimately the movie proves to be a cinematic experience with characters who are so well rendered they remained with me for days.

More on Moon

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Wed, 27 May 2009 15:28:00 +0000

Moon is one of those festival films that manages to surprise and delight, as it far exceeded my expectations. Often, "independent" and "sci-fi" add up to a nice effort and only that, with two much effort expended in trying to make "cool sci-fi" while leaving story and character back on Earth. Not so, Moon.

English director Duncan Jones said his influences were the original Alien, Silent Running and Outland, and he's crafted a story about a simple blue collar working man who's finishing up a three year contract mining helium on the moon and wants nothing more than to return to his wife and child back on Earth. But with two weeks to go before returning to Earth, Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell, in a role written with him in mind) begins to suspect that he is not alone on the moon.

To continue with the synopsis would include a spoiler on which the entire plot of Moon turns, so I will say only that Sam is tested physically and psychologically to his limits as a human being, and things on the lunar surface (and perhaps everything else) are not what they have seemed.

Rockwell, who appeared recently in Frost/Nixon and also The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, manages a performance which was truly remarkable. I have never doubted that Rockwell was a decent actor, but did not realize he had such chops. He alone carries the movie, a remarkable feat on its own but even more remarkable since the only other actor he truly interacts with is Kevin Spacey.

In an homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey, the moon base is run by a computer called GERTY, voiced by Spacey, and Jones uses our shared cultural familiarity with the HAL-9000 to project a sense of dread and doom on Sam's mission. It's no accident that we soon discover that GERTY knows more about what's going on than it lets on, and that ramps up the tension and suspense a few more notches.

Moon is one of those independents that deserve wide distribution, which I hope it finds. If you enjoy a twisting "Twilight Zone" storyline with great acting and a sci-fi bent to it, seek this one out.

Waiting on Moon

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Wed, 27 May 2009 01:57:00 +0000

I am sitting in the Egyptian theater waiting on Moon to start. It's been a good festival thus far, as I've seen films ranging from a Romeo and Juliet-inspired tale of teen angst and forbidden love to a few of the great classics classics of American cinema. Tonight I am here to see a cabin fever flick set on the moon starring Sam Rockwell as an astronaut who has spent three years alone overseeing a mining operation and, with two weeks to go before he is to return to earth discovers that he may not be alone.

The Egyptian is one of those huge, grand old city cinemas with lush velvet curtains everywhere and colorful ornamentation (in this case, the theme is, well, Egyptian). They feature typical art house fare - independents, foreign films, classics and great weekend midnights like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Bladerunner and The Princess Bride.

Tonight's feature is sold out, and the place is packed. Fourth row center feels like the middle of a sardine can. But the cinematic experiences I have had here over the past 11 years have been memorable. I took Tarantino's B-movie tutorial here, listened to Ben Kingsley talk about his craft, enjoyed two weeks of Hitchcock and have enjoyed dozens of film festival screenings in this very auditorium.

The Egyptian remains one of my two favorite movie houses in Seattle,and I am always pleased that it continues to play a role as one of SIFF's primary venues. But enough for now. The lights are beginning to dim and director Duncan Jones is stepping up to speak.

More from the Festival

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:10:00 +0000

In The Answer Man Jeff Daniels plays the author of a bestselling book on spirituality who is himself still searching for answers to life's most painful questions. He lives in fear of being discovered as a fraud and his solitary life is invaded by a few fearful and searching souls who believe he holds the answers they've been seeking.

At its core The Answer Man is about fear -- fear of being alone, of not knowing where our lives are headed, of losing those close to us, of not finding the answers to the questions that plague our lives.

Daniels is immensely likable as the bitter sage who gleans answers to his own questions through the act of helping others. He is supported by a capable cast that includes Lauren Graham as the love interest.

The Answer Man is not a perfect film, but neither are its characters.

I Love Old Movies

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Sun, 24 May 2009 00:11:00 +0000

Among the many programs featured each year at the film festival it is perhaps the archival program that I enjoy the most. I have screened many great films from years past, both well known and obscure, in large venues packed with movie lovers.

This year's archival screenings are introduced by Robert Osborne, that knowledgeable, film-savvy host from Turner Classic Movies. He's like a professor: he knows everything about every movie ever made. And he is also much like a favorite uncle who knows all the family gossip, but in Osborne's case they are stories from Hollywood's Golden Age. Watching him introduce a movie is like having him in your living room, rummaging through you DVD collection and offering observations like,"Once Hitchcock completed filming the classic shower scene he realized he could never use Janet Leigh in a movie again because viewers would forever associate her with Psycho."

Osborne introduced The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn, a lively, colorful and action-packed yarn that has held up well in the 71 years since it was released. Today marked the first time I have seen it on the big screen, and it plays very well. Warner brothers sent along a short to accompany the screening called "Rabbit Hood," starring Bugs Bunny and Errol Flynn.

Osborne also introduced the 1950 Billy Wilder classic Sunset Boulevard, and told an amusing story about mogul Louis B. Mayer (who walked out of a screening of the picture) blasting Wilder for making a film that made Hollywood look bad. And so it does, but the film, starring William Holden in his break-through role, and Gloria Swanson, is considered the best movie about Hollywood ever made, and among the best films to ever come out of the studio system.

Seattle International Film Festival Opens

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Sat, 23 May 2009 07:55:00 +0000

The Seattle International Film Festival is back and again this year I am going to cram as many films as I can into the 25 days of non-stop screenings. SIFF boasts 268 features and 124 shorts this year, as well as the usual few surprises.

Today I screened a new film called Shrink, starring Kevin Spacey as Henry Carter, a successful Los Angeles “psychiatrist to the stars” who turns to drugs following the death of his wife. The movie deals with loss, suicide and drug addiction. But despite the heavy subject matter the superb cast delivers a good deal of humor and humanity along the way.

Shrink is also about movies – watching movies, loving movies and making movies. The lives of an obsessive-compulsive Hollywood power agent, a struggling screenwriter, two substance-abusing film actors and a distraught teenager who escapes her pain by cutting school and going to the cinema orbit and intersect with Carter as his life and career spiral out of control.

This is a film about broken people searching for answers, seeking redemption, and discovering that happiness may be fleeting but hope for acceptance is very real.

Pell James, Robert Loggia and Robin Williams are also in the cast.

Retro Review: George of the Jungle

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:56:00 +0000

In order to review George of the Jungle, it must be placed in proper context. This is a Jay Ward cartoon come to life. Jay Ward brought us George of the Jungle, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Cracked Fairy Tales, Dudley Do Right, and many others. The Narrator was a trademark of each tale.

George of the Jungle stars a very likeable Brendan Frasier as the main character, Leslie Mann as Ursula Stanhope, George’s true love, and Thomas Hayden Church as George’s competition for Ms. Stanhope’s heart. And, then you have John Cleese providing the voice of an Ape named Ape.

My family watched George of the Jungle and it was a big hit with everyone. The language is fairly clean, and most of the jokes are juvenile.

State of Play

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 17:21:00 +0000

It is best to remember that the twisted mystery in which Ben Affleck’s character, one Congressman Collins, entangles himself does not bear careful examination. It is convoluted and raises more questions that the film ultimately answers. The real power in director Kevin (The Last King of Scotland) Macdonald’s political thriller is in Russell Crowe’s star-powered performance as the reporter who manages to unravel it all.

It’s not an easy task, but Crowe, playing a methodical, tenacious old-school hard-news reporter makes it look easy. He inhabits the role with such rumpled grace that, as with many of his best roles, the character emerges and remains a dominate force in the film as a whole. The movie becomes less about the mystery itself and more about how Crowe’s Cal McAffrey goes about solving it all.

Much is being made of the issues confronting the film’s fictional Washington Globe, which is helmed by the always solid and compelling Helen Mirren as Cameron Lynne. McAffrey laments that the decline of the newspaper in America leaves the public with little but news blogs which are lacking in true content and often devoid of facts. McAffrey advocates instead the traditional solid, factual reporting on which the Fourth Estate has been built. It‘s a discussion the movie does address, albeit weakly, and a topical one in light of major newspaper failures in the U.S. (most recently Denver’s Rocky Mountain News and Seattle’s Post-Intelligencer). But in the end this film is a political thriller, a Russell Crowe movie (or a Ben Affleck movie, if you’re one of the many misguided moviegoers out there who think Casey's lesser-talented older brother can carry a film) and little more.

Though Crowe really goes a long way in carrying this film (or at least compensating for its story weaknesses and for the lackluster performance of his costar Affleck), credit must be given to the supporting cast: Rachel McAdams as Crowe’s rookie reporter partner who learns what real journalism is all about; Helen Mirren as the paper’s managing editor, torn between her responsibility as a newspaper editor and her charge to turn a profit for the paper’s owners; Robin Wright Penn as the beleaguered wife of Congressman Collins; and Jason Bateman, who delivers a small but brilliantly executed performance as a seedy marketing consultant on whom the plot turns in the film’s third act.

State of Play delivers solid performances and nearly two hours of genuine entertainment. Just don’t read too much into it otherwise. There is less written between those lines than you might think.

Dark Knight Ends

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 11:05:00 +0000

I found this article interesting. The Dark Knight finished its official run last on March 5th, the day before the Watchmen opened. It ran for 231 days and made $131, 364 in the final week on 54 screens. Officially, this put the movie in the top 50 money makers last week according to Box Office Mojo.

It amazes me that a movie released last July had those legs. I watched it once in the theater, and maybe twice on DVD (and the second time because my wife agreed to watch it). Did the film cross boundaries with people that most "comic book" movies don't? Like the Watchmen, I thought the film was over long, and started to dry up when Heath Ledger wasn't on the screen. Something about Christian Bale's growling Batman voice bugged me.

But kudos to the franchise for launching the most attended movie since The Phantom Menace.

Watchmen

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 23:22:00 +0000

I read the Watchmen back in 1989. At the time, I was going through a string of up and down relationships. To clear my head, I invited my bud, David, with me to go spend the weekend at Edisto Island. It was great. We hung out, drank some beer and he loaned me his copy of the Watchmen.

It did not grab me like it did others. In fact, I would have gone as far as to say I did not like it. Fast forward, last week, I bought the comic (sorry, graphic novel) and have been making my way through it. I think there was too much heartbreak, sand (and maybe beer) that I missed a lot of the story. I don't think I even read excerpts at the end of each issue.

It is in those narratives that flesh out the world of the Watchmen. What I missed the first time was that Alan Moore created another world that was really fleshed out.

How could they ever make this into a movie?

All of that back story just so that you understand how this movie hit me. It was like the reading back in 1989: it was good, but not great. Believe me, they did a fantastic job with the film, and I recommend it (but, look at the rating people, don't bring the kids to this one). They captured the look, the feel, but, it was still missing something.

Without spoiling too much, the Watchmen covers a span from the early 40's through the mid 80's. I really loved the use of music to convey the different periods. The opening sequence, set to Bob Dylan's "The Times they are a changing" was brilliant (along with the action poses of each of the original heroes - The Silhouette's "outing" was brilliant). When we see the "Riots of 77," K.C. and the Sunshine Band's "Boogie Man" accompanies Nite Owl II and The Comedian putting down the crowd. It worked. The music they picked was spot on.

Even though I felt the film was overly long, you get your money's worth. I hope to catch it again on IMAX, if I can convince the wife to go along.

Academy Award Marathon

noreply@blogger.com (Chuck) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 01:22:00 +0000

Saturday was the third annual Best Picture Showcase, featuring the five movies nominated for this year's Best Picture Award. Sitting through five movies is very difficult, especially for the final film. Last year, they played No Country For Old Men, and I dozed off during a critical part and I was lost for the final twenty minutes of the film.

Not wanting to repeat the same thing this year, I packed up some "No-Doze" to help me make it through.

With the exception of Benjamin Buttons, I had very little idea of what the films were about. I posted the films that I liked the best on my Facebook page when I got home, and I wanted to address that here.

Milk - It was the first film of the day, and it was the one that I was looking forward to watching the least. It was the subject matter - an openly gay man running for office. What I found was a movie that was more about civil rights than homosexuality (however, there was plenty of men kissing men in the film, so be warned). It was good. And Bravo to Sean Penn.

The Reader - This started off weird...an older woman and a fifteen year old boy having an affair of sex and reading. It was obvious that she could neither read nor write. But her secret was much more than that. There was a scene early on where she was crying in a church. Was she crying because of the beautiful children singing, or was she remembering something else.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons - I liked the film. But, I found myself melancholy afterwards. The idea of two lovers passing each other in age saddened me. Excellent flick - beautifully filmed. Wonderful soundtrack.

Slumdog Millionaire - Excellent story telling convention. Possibly right up there with Momento - a bit of the story is unveiled a little bit at a time. I think I wanted to dance with them at the end.

Frost/Nixon - I won a poster for this movie for just showing up. I was worried about making it through this film, as it was the last one on the billet. Frank Langella was su-perb as Nixon. There was an audible gasp in the theater when Frost got Nixon to say "it was illegal." After the taping, Nixon is leaving out of the house, his vision all blurred until he focuses on a small dog. All the weight in the world rising off his shoulders.

I did not watch the Oscar's this year. I was very happy with the outcome, especially for Heath.