Now You See Me / *** (2013)

Stage magic is the plot device of a thousand outcomes. The utter chutzpah of showmen whose elaborate tricks become the crux of a movie screenplay routinely come with the same predicament as magic shows themselves, which is that the overreaching effect can easily be offset by implausibility if the material on display lacks focus, or fails to exploit any possible sense of wonderment. The “magic” on display, too, must inspire us to think about their mechanics and execution; because tricks are designed as momentary thrills, they only resonate if the audience is bathed in their intrigue. When the ingredients come together successfully, you get films like “The Prestige” or “The Illusionist” – endeavors that work well from the narrative context while at the same being thought-provoking entertainment. On the flip side of the coin, you can get something as ludicrous as “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone,” which cares nothing about the craft and uses it as a cheap tool to propel much less interesting ideas and laughs.

The Quandary with Star Ratings

Due to a recent reappearance of movie-related articles and ramblings at Cinemaphile.org, an acquaintance posed a question that is cause for something reflective: “Dave, isn’t it time to retired that four star rating system and advance to the five-star scale that everyone else is using?” My initial knee-jerk response was “no,” because the scale I use has been my system for 16 years, and as the old adage suggests, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

But then the thought festered somewhat, exposing certain insecurities into a standard that really wasn’t so secure in the first place. Why, indeed, did I use the four-star scale as opposed to the five? Certainly, a more compact rating system was more restrictive, especially for the kinds of movies that perform elaborate balancing acts in various grey areas that make it difficult to pinpoint them on such a narrow measure of quality. Five stars offer a freedom that is less crowded, allowing us to distinguish endeavors from one another on a hierarchy that allows for broader considerations.

Drag Me to Hell / *1/2 (2009)

The title “Drag Me to Hell” offers both literal and ironic inklings to those associated with the movie’s payoff, including the audience. A young woman aspiring for big professional opportunities at a bank makes a grievous error with a mysterious woman who arrives at her desk pleading for help, resulting in a horrific curse that anchors the crosshairs of torment onto her soul for a resulting 100 minutes of loud and foreboding celluloid. Her house thumps with the thundering sounds of something monstrous, and then a shadowy form tosses her around like a torn rag doll. She is attacked in her office garage. Animals hiss and growl as she walks by. She is assailed by visions of a malevolent being who makes clear his purpose of pulling her into an afterlife of endless torture and suffering. And then the movie demands the panic-stricken victim to sacrifice a kitten in a vain attempt to ward off the evil presence… and in that moment, a deplorable line is crossed.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader / ***1/2 (2010)

The difficult road ahead of the Narnia series in the book-to-screen transition is teeming with eobstacles that would call for the demise of countless less ambitious endeavors. To varying degrees, in fact, such fates have already befallen would-be film franchises like the Inheritance series (“Eragon”) and the His Dark Materials Trilogy (“The Golden Compass”), both of which nosedived into oblivion after just one cinematic outing. The dilemma faced by new attempts at capturing the serialized luster of the “Harry Potter” or “Lord of the Rings” films falls primarily on a universal Hollywood standard: are the films capable of making money? And if so, how consistent can that be? In the cases of those earlier examples, a first attempt was enough to warrant a thumbs down from studio heads. In the example of a series like this, however, the future dodders back and forth between a menagerie of factors, not the least of which is the constant nagging question as to whether the financial payout can cross the threshold that would warrant continued offerings.

Event Horizon / * (1997)

I can’t imagine what intentions the filmmakers behind “Event Horizon” had in making this endeavor, but I suspect their minds exist in a parallel universe where structural rules and logic are cheerfully abandoned concepts. Here they are possessed not by desire or purpose to say something astounding or even entertaining in accordance with their genre of choice, but by a bewildering notion to throw as many scenes of shock and awe at us as possible without the benefit of setup. Most of the scenes are gratuitous in nature, and seem plucked from superior visual sources before being mutated beyond recognition. If I were a psychologist hired to analyze the people who made this, I would conclude that everyone involved needed to take their inner child out back and shoot it.

Prometheus / **** (2012)

There is an air of ambiguity circling the story of Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus” that by most standards would lose the patience of hardcore science fiction viewers. Consistent with questions but scarce on answers, clouds of uncertainty whirl to and fro as if traps to intensify potential intrigue, forcing us to view most of the movie through eyes of suspicion even when things appear crystal clear. When characters engage in a trade of information about what they discover, is it truly all that they have discovered? Do the glances they exchange carry hidden purpose, or divulge some deeper meaning into the complexity of their situation? And just when you think a key player in the game has revealed his or her hand, is someone standing behind the shadows waiting to reveal something greater than aforementioned? Here lies a story that revels in the enigmatic almost as much as it thrives on a fostered sense of tension, and the outcome has the potential to be derailing to those whose minds are not willing to dedicate added concentration.

Doomsday / *1/2 (2008)

Neil Marshall’s “Doomsday” is a Whitman’s sampler of bizarre story ideas and visual gimmicks, congealing around a premise that is so straightforward that it affords them no groundwork for stability or realization. And that’s a sad reality, because the director’s prior professional outing, “The Descent,” snuck up on unsuspecting moviegoers and emerged as one of the most effective horror movies of the past ten years. In that film, characters that are oblivious to terror go cave exploring and are forced to endure survival at the hands of natural dangers while potential supernatural forces reveal themselves. Here, the perspective of the screenplay is not so different… except you get the sense that everyone involved never bothered reading through an initial script treatment, and instead placed their faith on a man who has shown he is capable of genuine entertainment at the movie theater, but apparently lacks the judgment skill to be consistent in that conviction.

Roger Ebert: A legacy of honesty, courage, and revolving thumbs

Living and maturing through the years with a theater screen as a guiding force, I never imagined the day would come when we would have to trek our way through these experiences without Roger Ebert being along for the ride. His presence became obligatory in every feasible way when it came to the movies, much like pop music required Michael Jackson to be around, or television comedy demanded Lucille Ball. They too left us without their audiences ever truly being ready for it, and here I stand, still in shock, at the prospect that I now will continue to see, experience and write about film, and the man who was more passionate than any of us about this industry, is no longer here. The pain is immeasurable, and the grief is persistent. Perhaps more than I expected it to be.

District 9 / ** (2009)

Sometimes it amazes me just how discouraging an isolated movie experience has the potential to be. “District 9” is driven by a downright heartless outlook that requires its characters, human or otherwise, to either be killing machines or props in an elaborate outdoor slaughterhouse that pounds away at you like visual torture. This is hardly a miscalculation on part of the filmmakers, who are distinct in their purpose of building a story that is funneled by dread and injustice for two constant hours. But ghee whiz, how abusive can you get with a movie camera? Here is an ambitious effort that has several important points to make, but little of it is delivered with human element, and eventually the poignancy of the arguments start to get lost behind a painful imbalance of droll emotions designed to leave audiences with an inclination to get in contact with a qualified psychiatrist.

Anatomy of a scene: "The Shining"

How's this for scrapbooking? In 2002 I participated in a film class at a local community college that focused on prominent movie directors, including Hitchcock, Fellini, the Coens, and notably, Stanley Kubrick. One of the class assignments was to deconstruct a sequence from one of the movies of said directors, and interpret it down to the finest technical details. Ever so dedicated to the intrigue of the Kubrick persona, I chose a sequence out of his masterpiece "The Shining" to dissect, but not a conventional one. The following writing is taken from April of 2002, and is verbatim to the submission that was made in the course. I have no idea how the original document ever survived so many computer crashes and file shuffles, but lo and behold it endures. I am grateful that it does for two reasons: 1) because it reminds me of where I have been and how far I have come, and 2) it recalls just how gifted a filmmaker Kubrick was, even when he was manipulating his audience into the false mindset that his film is mainstream when it is so clearly out of step with that ideology.

"Stage Beauty" revisited; an underrated masterpiece

What follows is part of my original review of "Stage Beauty" from 2006, but with a completely different introduction and altered first half. The original article had been reworked into an essay for purpose of publication in a book for the Online Film Critics Society, which never materialized. This "newer" version of the original analysis is from 2008, and closes the gap on unpublished material from those writing sessions. My opinion of the film has not changed in seven years, and because of such, I am justified in continuing to classify this as a "revisited" piece rather than a full-fledged review. Not all of it is new, but enough has changed to make it distinct from the original assessment.

Original completion date: November 15, 2008

Big Business / **1/2 (1988)

Deep from within the doldrums of mediocre 80s comedies, “Big Business” endures as a curiosity on the credits list of several fine actors. You can practically reach out and touch the promise offered by the big names it houses: Bette Midler, Lily Tomlin, Edward Herman and Fred Ward, all of whom were recognizable entities of their heyday, and combined seem to contradict the very notion that any film starring them could be so deeply flawed. But here they are, slogging their way through material so clearly beneath their craft, barely holding composure against various plot inclinations that will require them to react to situations that are both unrealistic and downright impossible. Never mind the fact that the moment anything seems to be amiss, not one character is observant enough to point out the bizarre behavior problems they encounter.

World War Z / *** (2013)

The Zombie Apocalypse that wreaks havoc in “World War Z” puts considerable distance between those other undead outbreaks we are used to in the movies. Forget the social commentary of George A. Romero’s endeavors, and abolish any notions you might have that this could be similar to the localized personal stories contained in “28 Days Later” or “Quarantine”; in Marc Forster’s new blockbuster, the scale of the attack is swift and unrelenting, and characters have almost no reaction time before they find themselves running for their lives down crowded city highways as they try to escape bloodthirsty masses. Any desire to catch your breath will be met with immediate dismay; here, little perseveres other than wall-to-wall chaos, and the small glimmer of hope that fuels the hero is of such miniscule proportions that you doubt any possibility for a tangible outcome.

The Cabin in the Woods / *** (2012)

It had to come to this eventually. After decades of blood spatters, machetes, screaming teenagers and heavy breathing killers wandering aimlessly through motion picture sets, someone behind the camera was going to inevitably ask, “Why haven’t we turned this formula on its head?” It’s really a wonder it took anyone this long. Horror films have been on a painful, exhausting downward spiral for more years than we care to remember, a slip made more disheartening when coiled by the realization that its origins promise so much more and even occasionally deliver something that is desired. That was certainly true with the “Scream” series – in which all victims watched horror movies and had self-awareness as a weapon – and even the recent “Behind the Mask,” which asked questions few movies of this nature had been willing to ask before, and do so with comical – and yet insightful – clarification. Now comes “Cabin in the Woods,” a horror film that not only has the nerve to upstage the convention, but also contemplates what all of it, past and present, may have meant in the grand bloody scheme of things. What it makes for is some of the most entertaining bloodshed I have seen in a movie of this type in ages. If there is finally a validation to the approach, it’s that these filmmakers dare to suspect their own intentions.

Auto Focus / *** (2002)

"A day without sex is a day wasted.” There’s a mantra that might have been the backbone to a college comedy, but here it becomes the ill-fated destiny shared between two unlikely friends in “Auto Focus,” a movie about the disintegration of actor Bob Crane and his conflicted friendship with a man who, for better or worse, probably was a conduit for many of the actor’s unhealthy off-screen obsessions. They exist not in Paul Schrader’s semi-biopic like life-long comrades but more as if mere acquaintances strung along through the same seedy life experiences for over a decade. They gaze at one another often and participate in what they feel is deep conversation. But they really never know one another, and are slaves to a lifestyle that requires only physical engagement, and only long enough to achieve climax.