2012 - ** (2009)

Three things promptly come to mind when watching Roland Emmerich’s latest disaster blockbuster: 1) theories behind 2012 being the year of a potential planetary cataclysm strike me as flimsy and desperate attempts to further promote fear-mongering in an already fearful society plagued by ongoing human tragedies; 2) special effects have indeed come so far and reach so extensively that, in the case of a moviemaker with a lot to prove, it can easily just be a crutch; and 3) no one has obviously been brave enough to tell this movie’s director, a obvious destruction enthusiast, that just because you decide to blow up every known corner of your planet for lavish production purposes doesn’t give you the option to neglect any of the ordinary things that most competent filmmakers utilize. His is a movie that plays more like a preview reel than its own actual end result. It is all about elaborate show rather than a substantive purpose. And the sad thing is that he probably already knows that, and just doesn’t mind.

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell - 1/2* (2009)

The beer-guzzling imbecile that hogs the spotlight of “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell” is the most unpleasant 20-year old I have seen in a comedy in recent years, soulless and disparaging and so excessive in those qualities that they seem to have no beginning or ending point. A more skilled comedy would have been obligated to reduce him to background distraction after two minutes; unfortunately, based on new traditions, he is allowed to infect celluloid for the full running time and drives the story into rather dubious territory. Often we find ourselves sitting back in total speechlessness, particularly when he degrades women, speaks in vulgar and pompous analogies, indulges in irresponsible behavior, and allows himself to not be bothered by noticing any of the discomfort that he brings to the lives of his own close friends. That he achieves all of this with either a smirk or a chuckle in conjunction with a crude line of dialogue is a convenient narrative cop-out, one meant to imply that the mean-spiritedness of the material is really just tongue-in-cheek. Too bad it isn’t in the least bit funny.

Poltergeist - ***1/2 (1982)

The ghost story was a fairly straightforward endeavor shackled by underlying menace in Hollywood’s golden days, but “Poltergeist” was perhaps one of the first movies to sensationalize it, to turn the idea in on itself and expose its more elaborate potential. Before it, few even knew the difference between poltergeists and hauntings, or if there was even a purpose to differentiate them; in a day when the cinema was about the growing presence of slasher films, the idea of a horror movie dealing in any part with the afterlife was superfluous. To our benefit, Steven Spielberg saw differently, and a crucial ingredient in achieving that realization may have come from his choice of Tobe Hopper as the director, whose own experience making “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” gave him perhaps the right tools as a showman to cause the stage surrounding this straightforward premise to erupt with lavish fanfare. And yet the movie is more than just a story of strange ghostly phenomenon that is upstaged by special effects or grandiose plot twists; it portrays the material realistically, uses both mind and heart in the delivery, and is played by actors who seem to have a more genuine stake in the outcome than studio execs eager to plan sequels.

THE VIEWING LIST (03/19/10)

Ever get the feeling that some movies just do not change, no matter how many times you view them? That’s the gist that links the core group of pictures that were in my focus during the past week. It’s always been a pleasant surprise to reassess something and realize that you might have been wrong about it the first time, but a movie that stands up – that retains its energy, its purpose, and warrants the same response time after time – those are often the films I appreciate more. We often find ourselves disgusted with the condition of the products clogging up mainstream movie theaters, and sometimes the only thing that keeps us from losing sight of the prize is revisiting a film that you know will still have the same impact on you that it did from day one. Dependability, indeed, is the passage to endurance in times of doubt.

Aguirre, The Wrath of God - **** (1972)

Werner Herzog’s “Aguirre: The Wrath of God” begins and ends with like-minded shots – the first being that of a troupe of explorers scaling down a soaring cliff side in the Andes Mountains, and the last being that of a raft tugging steadily down a river as its inhabitants are picked off one by one from sailing arrows in the distance. Both moments are a symbol of a greater puzzle destined to unfold in brooding and hypnotic passages, yet isolated they underline a greater implication, an idea that allows viewers to observe and react on the basis of behavior and subtlety above any semblance of movie structure. This is the kind of endeavor that persists in the mind not because it implores the idea of effective payoff, but rather with the thought that payoffs are irrelevant. It seeks something deeper, something more haunting and more thought-provoking than just basic core values; it knows far more about what gets under our skin than it should.

THE VIEWING LIST (03/12/10)

NOTE: “The Viewing List” is a new weekly column that recaps the films that have been viewed outside of the movie theater over the course of the prior seven days: films that are being absorbed for the first time, movies that are being revisited or reassessed, whatever might come the way of home theater. Additionally, because much was missed over the course of four years (when this site’s review publishing pattern was sparse at best), the necessity to backtrack is relevant. This does not suggest that movies featured in this section are being punished from full-length review treatment, however. What it is meant to do is serve as a personal and public record of what is being seen, and hopefully inspire readers to suggest additional material for viewing as well. The more we learn about cinema, the more we realize how little we actually know.

Alice in Wonderland - *** (2010)

An outlandish world plagues the dreams of young Alice Kingsley during the early scenes of “Alice in Wonderland,” in which she finds herself thrust down a giant hole and into a realm where rabbits wear waist-coats and carry pocket watches, smiling cats can evaporate into thin air, and social gatherings involve tea parties in which guests recite bizarre riddles like, “Why is a Raven like a writing desk?” Poor Alice doesn’t know what to think of the ideas that take root in her subconscious, often awkwardly exploding into nonsensical rhetoric when her elders attempt to keep her focused on reality and customs. “Have I gone mad?”, she asks her concerned father during an opening scene. “I’m afraid so. You’re entirely bonkers,” he chimes in. “But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are.” 

Downfall - **** (2002)

Of all emotions that are experienced during “Downfall,” the one that we can never anticipate feeling is empathy. No, not empathy for people or for the circumstances that place them in such ominous situations; here is a movie where it is clear from all angles that those involved have made their bed, and are deservingly lying in it. Yet as the dream around them crumbles into heaps of rubble and their followers become corpses in crowded alleys, we watch the hope and strength fade from their faces and, in a brief moment, reveal some small traces of common human dignity as they prepare to accept their fate. Like the characters of the best of Shakespeare’s tragedies, the men in women of Oliver Hirschbiegel’s magnificent opus occupy the narrative like shattered mirrors of themselves, retreating to the safety of their self-delusions and often reflecting on the reasons for their impending doom with great emphasis, as if to quietly confess their evil and seek some semblance of respect before the end comes.

The times are-a-changin’

The new decade sees a sunrise over a still enigmatic horizon, and sometimes the ones who seek shade are resolved to standing out in the rays of light. For twelve years I was both the writer and the webmaster of Cinemaphile.org, a personal hub of movie-related articles, essays and editorials, and loved every minute of it. But the time also came where things were no longer fun, and passions became chores in an age when new passages were being explored. In a moment of reflection, I realized it was not the writing itself that felt labored, it was implementing the material into repetitive static HTML pages on a web design program I had been using since the early 00s. The evolution of web design meant that things could get easier, but I no longer cared about exploring those avenues. It was the written word I cared about, not the canvas it would be presented on.

Orphan - zero stars (2009)

A moment of distress sets in during the early stages of Jaume Collet-Serra’s “Orphan,” in a dream sequence that features a mother-to-be strapped to an operating table as her newborn, said to have died in the womb, is savagely vacuumed out of her uterus and half of its remains are handed to her in a blanket. This sequence, we learn, is an offense of repetitive nature, to be replicated at several sequential periods of the movie when characters indulge in arson, threatening the lives of others, animal abuse, the murder of nuns, sabotaging marriages, throwing school bullies off playground equipment, suffocating kids who have spinal injuries and countless other questionable acts. For 123 minutes, we find ourselves at the mercy of a story that treats all of this to not just crude and shocking proportions, but also to points that showcase obvious lapses in moral judgment and taste. Such qualities seem to be mere technicalities in an age of horror when boundaries no longer are in view, and here is a movie that makes full use of its ability to strategize the harshest, most macabre manifestations seen in any recent film plot.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - ***1/2 (2009)

The Harry Potter of yesteryear is but a distant memory. Gone are the light-hearted dining conversations between young witches and wizards and magic lessons from ambitious Hogwarts professors, and in their place exists the foreboding, fateful realization that nothing stays the same and things can only get bleaker before they are resolved. Directed by David Yates, the talented Brit who gave J.K. Rowling’s heroes and villains a sense of cinematic importance in the series’ last installment, here is a movie beyond the concept of being in awe of its special effects or weighed by its plot twists; what he has done is stripped this franchise of all its prerequisites and devised something more meditative, more dramatic and more touching one might anticipate. This is a movie that steps far outside of the comfort zone and becomes an enthralling and fully-realized gothic fantasy.

Burning Beds and Dancefloors; Remembering the lives of two generation-defining entertainers

I was amazed at how deeply struck and saddened I felt on Thursday when news of the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson hit the mass media. Here were two people that could be no different, set against opposite ends of the entertainment spectrum, who had accomplished something lasting and then faded away from the limelight either by personal choice or lack of motivation. Indeed, when it came to acknowledging their bodies of work, our minds had often been elsewhere because they seemed so far in the past. Yet in their own ways, they lived very public tragedies in recent times that warranted a deeper insight from those of us on the outside, she with her brave years-long battle with cancer and he with a decades-long decent into depression, legal troubles and mental instability.

The Hangover - **1/2 (2009)

A stroke of irony fills the air in one of the parting shots of Todd Phillips’s “The Hangover,” when a character uncovers a digital camera containing evidence of a night of exploits and hands it over to Doug Billings (Justin Bartha), who suggests that he and his friends view the photos “only once” and then delete all of them from the memory card. What this scene ultimately accomplishes is two-fold: 1) it is beneficial in tying up various loose ends purposely left open throughout several integral moments of the plot; and 2) it gives certain audience members like me an outline in attempting to reach a coherent assessment of the picture as a whole. For two hours we are cheerfully pummeled into visual and verbal submission by incredibly direct dialogue, embarrassing character situations, impossibly convoluted scenarios and ridiculous plot twists. We laugh at most of them, and sometimes even laugh at the fact that we’re being so entertained by such showy nonsense. But it is nonsense purely for the moment, because once those theater lights lift and we return to reality, we are content in the notion that the experience, no matter how amusing, is over. Here is the kind of movie that rightly disposes of itself at the moment it realizes that mindless fun is only funny for a brief time, and never in multiple doses.

Up - ***1/2 (2009)

What a delightful, ambitious, sweet and good-natured undertaking this is! Pixar’s “Up,” the studio’s tenth feature-length endeavor and first to be filmed in 3D, opens on a note of human subtlety that goes beyond what we expect of a cartoon and grows into what may very well be the most touching human drama of the year. We are used to seeing many things from the minds of this high-functioning production company, ranging from charming shorts to brilliant fully-realized feature films, but as always you can never really know what is hidden in that big hat of tricks. Ten films later, and after great achievements like “Wall-E,” “Finding Nemo” and “The Incredibles,” we now realize that we are not simply dealing with animators but visionaries, who treat their craft with all the care and precision of a director straight out of Hollywood’s golden age.

Terminator: Salvation - *** (2009)

The ominous fashion in which “Terminator Salvation” begins its existence on screen does little to calm the nerves of franchise devotees worried about a film that is missing a quintessential action hero, but it does offer new challenges. Instead of being faced with bleak setups or recaps of prior finales, the movie instead opts to open in a jail cell in 2003, where a death row inmate (played by Sam Worthington) is visited by a mysterious figure known as Dr. Kogan (Helena Bonham Carter). She is there in a last-ditch attempt to get him to sign over the rights of his cadaver for scientific study, specifically for purposes of cancer research (as suggested by her ghostly, balding appearance). A little persuasion works in her favor, and mere hours before one Marcus Wright faces his lethal injection, the company which Dr. Kogan represents becomes the legal owner of what will remain of this prisoner. Flash forward 15 years: judgment day has happened, Earth’s surviving humans are in isolated pockets across the globe waiting to rise against the machines, and Marcus appears seemingly out of thin air, alive and breathing, with no memory of his whereabouts since that fateful day of his execution.