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KPBS Film Club airs this morning

August 6th, 2008 by Scott Marks

Penelope Cruz in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona

The odds are stacked against me as I enter today’s Film Club batting 1 for 5. The lethargic includes Pineapple Express, Man on Wire, The Last Mistress. Baghead and Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Unfortunately, the timing wasn’t right for Frozen River and Bottle Shock, two films worthy of discussion. Sparks will undoubtedly fly as my esteemed co-host is bound to have good things to say about the latest uninspired gift from the Apatow factory.

Join guest host Alan Ray, Beth Accamondo and the man who hates (almost) everything this morning at 10 on KPBS Radio, 89.5 FM. Where’s Fudge, you ask? Why, ’round the corner!

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Review: SIN CITY / Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez (2005)

July 30th, 2008 by Scott Marks

Sin City (2005)
Directed by: Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez and “Guest Director” Quentin Tarantino
Written by: Frank Miller & Robert Rodriguez
Starring: Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Clive Owen, Jessica Alba, Josh Hartnett, Rosario Dawson, Benicio Del Toro, etc.
Running Time: 126 min.

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

Once again a Hollywood adaptation of a comic book looks great and goes nowhere. The long-awaited big screen version of Frank Miller’s Sin City presents a visually dazzling flipbook netherworld that should please only a comic book mentality.

Miller was soured on Hollywood after his experience writing the two RoboCop sequels and refused to relinquish the rights to any of his comic books. Rodriguez, a big fan of Miller’s work, filmed an “audition” scene between Josh Hartnett and Marley Shelton, later used in the finished product. He presented Miller with the footage and told him, “If you like this, this will be the opening to the movie. If not, you’ll have your own short film to show your friends.”

Rodriguez deemed the comic book’s visual style so influential he insisted Miller receive a co-director credit. The Director’s Guild of America refused and Rodriguez politely ceased to belong saying, “It was easier for me to quietly resign before shooting because otherwise I’d be forced to make compromises I was unwilling to make or set a precedent that might hurt the guild later on.” This brave move cost Rodriguez a gig on Paramount’s upcoming John Carter of Mars.

Why a ‘Guest Director’ credit? In addition to pointlessly referencing episodic seventies television credits, Tarantino expressed interest in experimenting with HD cameras, a Rodriguez pet. In exchange for one dollar, Rodriguez agreed to compose the soundtrack to Kill Bill Vol. 2. With another exchange of Washington’s, Tarantino returned the favor. Frankly, they both overpaid. Long a film-over-digital proponent, when asked about his experience, Tarantino merely replied, “Mission Accomplished.” (Tarantino directed the overlong Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia homage between Clive Owen and Benicio Del Toro.)

Continue reading Review: SIN CITY / Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez (2005)

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Review: HOUSE OF D / David Duchovny (2004)

July 28th, 2008 by Scott Marks

The House of D (2004)
Written and Directed by David Duchovny
Starring: David Duchovny, Robin Williams, Anton Yelchin, Tea Leoni and Erykah Badu
Running Time: 97 min.
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Rating: ★★★★☆ for unintentional laughs

Having never watched an episode of The X-Files, I steered clear of the screening. Instead I offer up a review of a David Duchovny film that I can wholeheartedly endorse!

For the duration of the opening credits there was promise. We open on movement. Cut to: a sketchpad painting of a bicycle in front of the Eiffel tower that gracefully transitions to a shot of David Duchovny bringing the watercolor to life. All under the skilled eye of ace cinematographer Michael Chapman (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull). Promise soon gave way to satirical contemptuousness.

On the occasion of his son’s thirteenth birthday, an American in Paris (Duchovny) decides to finally unload his personal backstory on his wife and kid. Flashback to: 1973 Greenwich Village. Stepping up to play the young Duchovny is thirteen-year-old Anton Yelchin, As Tommy Warshaw, Yelchin is an untrained child actor hampered by a droning nasal delivery better suited for commercial voiceovers.

Tommy’s home life is on pause. His recently widowed mother (Tea Leoni) is a disillusioned, chain-smoking emotional wreck. His school life is more painstakingly nuanced than a VH1 I Love the Seventies special. It’s all clacker-balls, loose-leaf Origami fortune tellers and a stick shift, banana seat Schwinn Apple-Crate bicycle (renamed “The Green Goddess”). Why fuss with character development and structural layering when it’s easier to hire a design team with good memories?

The film is not without moments of inspired perversity. While Tommy is showering, mom enters to take use of the toilet. She punctuates her ablutions by dropping a lit cigarette between her legs. Later, Tommy pissbombs his mom’s floating butts with a yellow downpour, drenching the four filter-tipped rafts. Pretty bold stuff for the X-Files ex. It should have stopped there. We do not need to revisit the porcelain ashtray another six or seven times before mom goes brain dead, leaving Tommy to wistfully scoop cigs out of the water and lovingly preserves them in Charmin.

Continue reading Review: HOUSE OF D / David Duchovny (2004)

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Review: PALINDROMES / Todd Solondz (2004)

July 27th, 2008 by Scott Marks

Palindromes (2004)
Written and Directed by Todd Solondz
Starring: Matthew Faber, Angela Pietropinto, Bill Buell, Ellen Barkin & Richard Masur
Running Time: 100 minutes
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

How can I dislike a film that features real life retardates given a chance to show off their acting skills, Christian-bashing, fat girls in belly shirts and a plate filled with homemade “Jesus’ tears” cookies? With Todd Solondz, it simply a matter of course.

The film opens with a memorial card for Dawn Weiner, the lead character in Welcome to the Dollhouse, Solondz’s ode to suburban teenage angst. Yearning to create an “inner-dialogue” for his minions, Solondz feels it necessary to establish Dawn’s death in order to squelch any parallels between her character and that of Aviva, the lead in Paliundromes. Here’s an idea - if you fear drawing similarities DON’T DEDICATE A FILM TO HER! In truth, the director begged actress Heather Matarazzo to reprise ‘Weinerdog,’ the role that put her on the map, but the actress wisely refused. She must have read the script.

There is nothing more frustrating than sitting through a comedy and not knowing when or where to laugh. If ever a film had a shot at sick-f–k masterwork it’s this one, but Solondz couldn’t resist ‘arting’ it up. Not through visuals, but alleged narrative complexity. For no good reason other than he liked the idea, at least a half-dozen actresses play the role of Aviva, a pregnant thirteen-year-old desperate to keep her baby. (One incantation named Huckleberry inexplicably makes two brief appearances mid-film and at the end.) Her sensible parents (Ellen Barkin and Richard Masur) insist on an abortion after which Aviva runs away from home. She winds up in the care of Mama Sunshine and her surrogate band of medical anomalies and curiosities.

Continue reading Review: PALINDROMES / Todd Solondz (2004)

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Review: TELL NO ONE / Guillaume Canet (2006)

July 23rd, 2008 by Scott Marks

Tell No One (2006)
Directed by: Guillaume Canet
Written by: Guillaume Canet & Philippe Lefebvre from a novel by Harlan Coben
Starring: François Cluzet, Marie-Josée Croze, Kristin Scott Thomas, André Dussollier, François Berléand, Nathalie Baye, Marina Hands, Gilles Lellouche & Jean Rochefort
Running Time: 125 min.
Aspect Ratio:

Rating: ★★★★☆

WARNING: This is not a review that you want to read in you ever have any intention of seeing this movie.

With The Dark Knight selling out round the clock screenings, it’s a shame that all of the spillover went to Mama Mia! and not Tell No One, but what are the chances a smart French thriller would be playing the same shopping malls as Batman and flat-Pierce?

The lovely opening, open air dinner scene sets up its audience for a light romantic comedy. Friends and family gather around the table celebrating Alexandre’s (François Cluzet) graduation from med school while the camera pays close attention to two of the revelers. Long before a flashback to a pair young lovers carving their initials in a tree, the slow camera moves and succinct cuts establish the long-standing love affair between Alexandre (François Cluzet) and his wife Margot (Marie-Josée Croze).

The following day opens with a sunny drive to an afternoon round of skinny dipping, but the plot doesn’t kick into gear until later that dark night when the naked couple quarrel on a barge in the middle of the lake. Alex is angry because his sister Anne (Marina Hands) refuses to either take care of the family stable or sell it. No sooner does Margot swim back to shore, she vanishes into the blackness. Before Alex can answer her single scream for help, an unseen assailant clubs the man leaving him to drown.

Eight years pass to find Alex a successful pediatrician and Margot’s death credited to a notorious serial killer. Certain sectors inside the police force still believe Alex to be the murderer. After all, how did his unconscious body manage to swim back to shore?

Continue reading Review: TELL NO ONE / Guillaume Canet (2006)

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Review: MAMA MIA! / Phyllida Lloyd (2008)

July 17th, 2008 by Scott Marks

Cinema or an aerobics class at Curves?

Mama Mia! (2008)
Directed by Phyllida Lloyd
Written by Catherine Johnson
Starring : Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Amanda Seyfried, Colin Firth & Stellan Skarsgård
Running Time 108 min.
Aspect Ratio:

Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

Normally I am a firm believer that cinema should show no gender. Whether PR types, eager to brand their product, push them as chick flicks or dick flicks, there is no reason a woman can’t be blown away by Deliverance or a man Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

And then there’s Mama Mia! Oy vey is there Mama Mia!.

Like being breast-fed impalpable cheer for two hours, Mama Mia! is little more than a colorful travelogue with a bunch of sweeping shots of old broads doing calisthenics in the name of creative dance.

Amanda Seyfried is getting married and wants her father to give her away. The trouble is, the 20-year old is unsure which one of her mama’s past suitors spawned her so she invites the three likeliest sperm donors to her wedding in Greece.

From long before Three Loan Wolves right up to last year’s Definitely, Maybe (a much better film than Mia!), the “which one” premise has been played to death and if the only new wrinkle is the addition of ABBA tunes, blow out the pilot light!

I never thought I’d see the day when the words “You know, Shirley Valentine was better” would come out of my mouth.

While not a singer by any stretch of the imagination, at least Streep has the hubris to put across a song. The same is not true of Pierce Brosnan who managed to bring a momentary curl in my otherwise down-turned grin. Sadly, it was at his expense. Poor guy can’t carry a note in a proverbial bucket and there are a few heartfelt close-ups of him trying his best to sell a tune that will leave you howling.

Pierce Brosnan was allegedly so excited about sharing a screen with Meryl Streep and Julie Walters that he failed to ask producers how much money he would be paid.

This marks British theater and opera director Phyllida Lloyd’s first stab at movie-making. If she ever dispatched one of her operas with the same glib abandon she does cinema, elitists would call for her decapitation. As is, her camera cuts off more than its fair share of feet during the dance numbers.

Ms. Lloyd has no conception of how to make a movie musical. Numbers are adjoined two, sometimes three at a time. She positions the camera in as many different places as possible and for no apparent reason other than to stir up fresh cliches designed to showcase her paper-thin characters.

And talk about unbearable, am I the only one that wants to grab Julie Walters by the ankles and fling her through a plate glass window? Walters’ hyper performance as one of Streep’s childhood pals is the worst bit of acting I’ve seen this year. Her broad mugging and cloying asides seem to drag on for reels without once even bordering on wit or sophistication. She is now what she has always been - a two bit knock off of the equally insufferable Tracey Ullman.

Judging by the two block long line that packed the big Gaslamp Theatre for Tuesday night’s screening, audiences are going to swallow this whole. At least those in attendance weren’t out any cash. The winner takes it all and the losers are those who stand in line and pay top dollar to see this garbage.

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