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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.

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Review: THE WACKNESS / Jonathan Levine (2008)

July 13th, 2008 by Scott Marks

The Wackness (2008)
Written & Directed by Jonathan Levine
Starring: Josh Peck, Ben Kingsley, Olivia Thirlby, Famke Janssen, Jane Adams, Method Man and one of The Olsen Twins
Running Time: 95 min.
Aspect Ratio:

Rating: ★★★★½

Occasionally The Wackness will take a misstep and whack away at plausibility. Not for one nanosecond did I believe a street smart New York kid would peddle pot out of an ice cream wagon, particularly when he leaves his keef-filled cart chained to a tree while making house calls. Why not leave a “Help Yourself” sign propped on the handlebars?

Nor does The Wackness excel at waxing nostalgia. The film tries too hard to jam its precious period recreation down viewers’ throats. Set in 1994, the film’s titles and chapter breaks are spray painted across the screen, our hero Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) speaks fluent “wigger” and bus ads scream Forrest Gump.

There is so much Rudy Giuliani bashing going on you’d swear that during the creative process screenwriter/director Jonathan Levine was certain that his film would open to find the former Mayor of New York positioned as the Republican party’s presidential front runner. And for such a long, hot summer there is very little evidence of pit-stains and sweaty brows.

I can’t say in all good conscience that I am completely sold on the look of the film either. The Panavision frames are desaturated and mud-colored. It’s not exactly an endless flow of suffocating close-ups, but there are enough that it would have been better had Levine showed even more restraint by pulling the camera back.

In spite of everything I find myself thoroughly enchanted by these scummy characters and the honest, perceptive manner in which Levine writes dialogue. There’s none of the phony fast-talking, set-up/punch line/set-up patter that thrilled millions in Juno. In The Wackness, characters laugh, break, swoon and self-medicate just like normal people.

In the 80s, John Hughes made a fortune depicting precocious charmers that were wise beyond their years and infinitely smarter than their parents. When Luke learns that his parents are about to be evicted, he does more than just slap his palms against his cheeks. He’s already been slipping his mother money from his drug revenue and decides to increase his sales in order to bail his family out.

Luke’s best customer is also his shrink, Dr. Squires (Ben Kingsley), who gladly waves his fee in exchange for Glad sandwich bags filled with weed. His is the only office in New York that comes equipped with a bong. In one session, Luke talks about snorting Ritalin in the bathroom and hints at suicide. In a vain attempt to be both topical and hip, Squires questions whether or not Luke’s darkness may have been influence by Kurt Cobain. Luke confides that he’s a virgin that can’t get laid and the doc plies him with all the romantic tricks of the trade never once dreaming that Luke would use them on his stepdaughter Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby).

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Review: UP THE YANGTZE / Yung Chang (2007)

June 21st, 2008 by Scott Marks

The Yu family on the banks of the Yangtze

Up the Yangtze (2007)
Written and Directed by Yung Chang
Photographed by Shi Qing Wang
Starring: Cindy & Jerry
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Running Time: 93 min.
Rating: ★★★★☆

Warm jazz and those slow, smooth camera moves the Italians are best known for. Instead of taking a cruise on the Po, we’re about to chart a body of water that makes Italy’s longest river look like a tributary.

Known in China simply as “The River,” the mythic Yangtze is undergoing the largest engineering endeavor since the Great Wall. Luxury-liners packed with tourists take so-called Farewell Tours before the area is flooded by the Three Gorges Dam. “Imagine the Grand Canyon turned into a Great Lake,” documentarian Yung Chang posits in the film’s opening narration.

Officials follow the “what’s good for the dam is good for the nation” party line while Chang argues, “all serious studies show that mega-dams like the Three Gorges ultimately have greater negative effects than positive.” In 2002, Chang, his parents and grandfather booked passage on one of the farewell cruises. He got the idea of filming the tourists and ship’s crew on a surreal journey up the Yangtze via Gosford Park.

Godard wrote, “I have always tried to make what is called documentary and what is called fiction two aspects of a single movement, it is the relation between the two that produces the true movement.” Chang does a skillful job of finding the drama in the lives of his two leads. The narrative follows two teenagers, Yu Shui, daughter of a family of subsistence farmers who live along the river and Chen Bo Yu, a cocky middle class urbanite.

The way Yu’s father barks for rice and bosses her around, she is pretty much a slave at home. Living in squalor, she might as well go to work and get paid for it. Wanting to get an education, but knowing her family needs quick money Yu is exploited by her uneducated parents and forced to set sail.

Chen Bo Yo comes from an upper middle-class single family household and his shipboard director looks down his snoot at only children, thinking them spoiled and lazy. Like a drill sergeant backed by an all you can eat buffet, the boss intends to whip his young employees into shape by offering each and every one of them a degree in his “University of Life.”

The first task is assigning new hires Westernized, passenger-friendly names. Yu translates to “Cindy” while Chen turns out to be Chinese for “Jerry.” Upper management instructs them never to talk politics with guests and if they must reference a person’s size, substitute “plump” for “fat.”

Jerry’s relative affluence lands him a spot on deck while Cindy is chained to a sink as a galley slave. Behind the bar, his good looks and ability to schmooze make him a natural performer. Down below the bewildered peasant girl is shown no mercy by her supervisor whose tough love motto is “If her family is poor she should work even harder.”

In the meantime, scads of plump American and European gawkers who paid good money to take a vacation amidst decay, line the decks to watch the flood level warning markers float past. While ruddy-faced Midwesterners dress up in authentic period attire, an old-timer parked at a piano croons, “It’s so easy, to speak Chinesey.” It will take you weeks to shake this bouncy ditty from your shower repertoire.

It’s not the definitive statement on ugly American tourists. That distinction goes to Les Blank’s deadpan documentary Innocents Abroad which follows forty average Joes on a whirlwind tour of Europe. It would make a fine companion piece with this film.

Jerry knows how to work the crowd: avoid the young and the old because they don’t tip. Even Cindy learns how to play the game. In an effort to get her to assimilate (and make he look more womanly) a colleague teaches Cindy how to dress up and wear makeup.

Cindy’s parent make a couple of trips to visit their daughter. One can sense a hint of resentment when the father compares Yu’s glitzy workplace to his own accommodations. This lessens with the second visit where both parents appear sporting new duds.

Chang approaches his subjects as if they were first time actors playing roles in a shipboard odyssey. Both characters’ stories are compelling, but it’s the way in which Chang sets them to pictures that makes the film so remarkable. Not since Gunner’s Palace has a documentary demonstrated such formal cunning.

We watch as two of the Yu’s homes are gradually swallowed by the mighty river. Upon leaving their second shack, a series of dissolves shows first the entrance and then the roof become engulfed. Eventually, all that’s left is a body of dirty water with a cruise ship drifting lazily in the background. It’s the most subtle and effective use of cinema I’ve seen all year.

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Movie Review: THE STRANGERS / Brian Bertino (2008)

May 30th, 2008 by Scott Marks

The Strangers (2008)
Written & Directed by Brian Bertino
Starring: Liv Tyler & Scott Speedman
Running Time: 90 mins.
Aspect Ratio:

Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

After attending a wedding, Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman plan on spending the night at his families’ remote vacation home. She didn’t foresee a marriage proposal, he didn’t anticipate her rejection and neither of them expected to be terrorized by Mr. Potato Sack Head from The Orphanage and two of Sugar and Spice’s masked cheerleaders.

The Strangers is no stranger to horror film clichés and first time director Brian Bertino doesn’t miss a one. Banality has long since become a trademark of Hollywood horror films, but what’s truly terrifying about The Strangers is its utter lack of originality.

The narrator’s emotionless reading of the opening “based on a true story” crawl showed promise. If only Bertino had his tongue firmly planted in his cheek when he decided to include it. There’s not one intentional laugh line in the entire picture.

After one of the strangers first bangs on their door in the middle of the night, Speedman still deems it safe enough to leave his bride-not-to-be alone in the desolate house as he drives to an all night convenience store to fetch her a pack of cigarettes. (The film earned its R rating: We get to see lovely Liv light up a couple of times.)

For 90 minutes Ms. Tyler is systematic brutalized and degraded at the hands of three masked assailants whose motivation is simply, “because you were home.”

What’s most distressing is watching Liv Tyler’s career trajectory. I adore her. She has an approachable beauty and her coltish behavior perfectly compliments her elongated pout. She smokes, has no tattoos and judging by her baby boy Milo, is good breeding stock. And she’s not just another pretty Hollywood horse-face. In her early films (Heavy, Stealing Beauty. even Empire Records), Liv displayed a tremendous amount of acting talent.

Normally, if I like an actor I’m in it for the long haul. (Hell, I saw S*P*Y*S, W.H.I.F.F.S. and Matilda in memory of Elliott Gould in The Long Goodbye!) Her terrible choice of projects made her a very wealthy movie star and actually kept me away from two-and-three-quarters of her films. (I walked out after two reels of Lord of the Rings and never ventured into either of the sequels.)

I don’t begrudge her work in a franchise picture, but when the cycle ends at least have the decency to turn to someone other than Kevin Smith or Adam Sandler! She hasn’t been in a good movie since Cookie’s Fortune.

That was ten years ago and the statute of limitation is quickly running out. Picking up Jamie Lee Curtis’ rejects is not the answer.

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KPBS Film Club reviews new INDIANA JONES, THE VISITOR, BEFORE THE RAINS & ROMAN DE GARE

May 21st, 2008 by Scott Marks

Indiana Jones, The Visitor, Before the Rains
This month I literally took out the film club to bash Steve and Indy’s skulls: Beth thought the film was “fun” and lucky Tom had to watch his kids when the screening took place.Before getting into it there’s a phoner with Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala. They are now in their 30s. But in 1982, when the first Raiders movie came out, they were kids. They both loved the Spielberg film, and they set out on what became be a multi-year adventure (don’t expect Killer of Sheep), doing a shot-by-shot remake of Raiders. Never saw it (never will), so I sat uncharacteristically mute. Spielberg is bad enough; imitation Spielberg untenable.

The rest of the proceedings ran smoothly. I ask that you pay particularly close attention to the phone call from listener Jessica. Best call-in ever! The woman obviously knows her stuff and speaks the truth!

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SPEED RACER / Andy Wachowski & Larry Wachowski (2008)

May 8th, 2008 by Scott Marks

An endless blur

Speed Racer (2008)
Written and Directed by Andy Wachowski & Larry Wachowski
Starring: Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci, Susan Sarandon, John Goodman, Matthew Fox & Richard Roundtree
Running Time: 135 min.
Aspect Ratio:
Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

Halfway through the film’s second big race, it felt as though things were coming to an end and the audience would soon be put out of its misery and allowed to go home.

No such luck.

Nothing about Speed Racer warrants a running time over a half-hour and when the film finally whizzes across the finish line at two-hours-and-fifteen-minutes you’ll make a mad dash for the exit, if you haven’t done so already.

Andy and Larry Wachowski, the masterminds behind The Matrix trilogy, have transformed the animated 1967 Japanese TV series Mahha GoGoGo, about a young boy built for speed, into a bloated, joyless and inordinately serious go-round.

No wonder Emile Hirsch got the call. Not even close in spirit to the original Speed, aside from The Girl Next Door, the emerging (and emergent) young actor has heretofore spent his time brooding and posing in such well-intentioned snoozers as The Secret Life of Altar Boys and Into the Wild.

Hirsch is perfectly cast as the Wachowskis’ idea of a cartoon hero, but a little fire and even an occasional laugh would have helped. As is, of the few humorous moments on display only two — Speed’s younger brother Spritle flipping the bird and a chimp flinging doody in the bad guy’s face — garnered big laughs at the screening I attended.

The opening scenes, depicting a young Speed daydreaming in class, recalled Chuck Jones’ equally fanciful woolgatherer Ralph Phillips. Initially the over-saturated look of the film and the Wachowskis’ technique are pleasing to the eye. Ten minutes in, after the filmmakers repeatedly hammer us with an endless string of depth inducing foreground closeups laterally maneuvered across the screen, it soon became apparent that the boys have shown their hand in the first reel.

The racing scenes, faster and more disorienting than anything in the Bourne films, are a blur. You won’t need to drop a tab of acid (although it would have helped) to feel as though you are hallucinating. The film’s hyper editing and breakneck camera work provide acid trails galore.

Only Christina Ricci’s big round eyes manage to capture the flavor of the Japanese character design. Susan Sarandon is wasted and John Goodman, who looks unable to so much as cross his legs, earned unintentional giggles during his action-packed fight scene.

It will probably have a sensational opening weekend, but after word of mouth gets out the grosses will crash and burn.

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