Just a good screen shot from a bad movie.
“Law Abiding Citizen” contains a premise so high-concept it hurts.
by Wayne Melton
If you like wacky plots, you’ll love “Law Abiding Citizen.” A man (Gerard Butler) whose family is killed in a home invasion goes insane with revenge after the prosecuting lawyer (Jamie Foxx) botches the case against the killers. The twist: Unlucky for the prosecutor and the rest of law enforcement, the guy turns out to be a tactical genius who used to work for American intelligence agencies. Yet he couldn’t prevent a home invasion! So — of course — he blames the government. Read the rest of this entry »
Faux documentary records things going bump in the faux night.
by Wayne Melton
To those who don’t believe in the supernatural, people like the suburban couple in “Paranormal Activity,” who think their house is haunted, can seem like the most narcissistic humans on the planet. Why would a demon or ghost want to hang around an ordinary San Diego townhouse? The nice weather? Doesn’t an interdimensional being have better things to do than fiddle with light fixtures in the middle of the night? Read the rest of this entry »
Your childhood memories get the post-ironic treatment in “Where the Wild Things Are.”
by Wayne Melton
In “Where the Wild Things Are,” an energetic kid (Max Records) tries to create a monumental work of imagination that turns out to be a mess. Was he also in charge of the movie?
If not, director Spike Jonze (“Adaptation”) and writer Dave Eggers (“A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius”) have some explaining to do. Collaborating on this adaptation of the 1963 award-winning children’s book by Maurice Sendak, they’ve jettisoned everything interesting about the original to create a kids’ movie that turns out to be far too weird for its own good. Ignoring the question of whether it’s advisable or even possible to transform Sendak’s highly ambiguous picture poem into a mainstream Hollywood production, the result is a work that somehow manages to alternate between original and trite, insightful and psychotic. Read the rest of this entry »
“The Boys Are Back” is a sentimental mess.
by Wayne Melton
A catharsis is supposed to be a release. It should not be sprinkled through a movie like character treats, and, for goodness’ sake, you cannot open with one.
Such a beginning is especially foreboding in a movie like “The Boys Are Back,” a sentimental drama about a recently widowed man (Clive Owen), learning to raise a young son (Nicholas McAnulty) by himself while trying to reconnect with another (George MacKay) by a different marriage.
When we first meet Joe (Owen) he’s driving along an Australian beach, where people are hollering at him because he’s got little mop-headed Artie (McAnulty) riding on the hood, whooping as they splash through the surf. From there the movie takes a detour into the recent past, where it details Joe’s wife’s (Laura Fraser) brief and losing battle with cancer, then careens back to the present, where Joe struggles to handle his career, child care and the growing drifts of dust and dishes back at the homestead. Read the rest of this entry »
Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut rolls over its modest charms with some sloppy story telling.
by Wayne Melton
The new roller derby movie “Whip It” should be approached with the same caution as the event itself: Pay your entry fee with the understanding that what you are about to witness is not a completely professional endeavor.
The movie stars Ellen Page (“Juno”) as Bliss, a high school kid stifled in a small Texas town who discovers roller derby in bustling nearby Austin as a way to find a life more suitable to her own tastes.
Roller derby’s contemporary circumstances — underground and quirky — suit the movie, fashioned, like roller derby teams and their colorful costumes and names, with a casual, offbeat personality. The difference is Drew Barrymore, in her directorial debut, bringing considerable connections and fame to an adaptation of a humble book by real roller derby girl Bliss Cavendar. The result is a nationally-released film that probably would have been a scrappy underdog on the festival circuit without Barrymore behind it. Read the rest of this entry »
“Our generation is the worst since the Protestant Reformation” - Chris Eigeman, right, admonishes Edward Clements in Whit Stillman’s delightful comic-drama, “Metropolitan.”
The sort-of yuppie version of Wes Anderson, Whit Stillman has made just three pictures: “Metropolitan” (1990), “Barcelona” (1994) and “The Last Days of Disco” (1998), which, until it was re-released by Criterion yesterday, was out of print and available on DVD for upwards of $300. With my copy due to arrive in the mail any day, I will spend the next few days talking about Stillman and each movie in his trilogy, starting with “Metropolitan,” about a group of Manhattan rich kids, Upper East Siders experiencing their own fin de siecle, the traditional deb season and its balls, gowns, tuxedos, after-parties and smart conversation. Read the rest of this entry »
“District 9” is no shrimpy alien flick, it’s just a little tasteless.
by Wayne Melton
“District 9” opens with what can only be called an otherworldly pairing. There’s a giant alien spacecraft, hovering in midair over a teeming Johannesburg, South Africa like a sooty, upside-down mountain. And there’s Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley), an entirely unprepossessing petty official hovering in front of the camera, describing what the thing is, what it’s doing there, and why an idiot like him is sort of in charge of it.
Other talking heads chime in during a quickly-edited montage, filmed in the mode of a television news special, a style stretched to the breaking point by the movie. But Wikus, rather surprisingly, turns out to be as central to the story as the aliens that issued from the bowels of the spacecraft: a sorry lot of bug-like creatures derogatorily called prawns — after the krill-like appearance of their snouts and carapaces.
I felt two things as a result of this setup, an emotional conflict that lasted throughout the movie. The first was intense curiosity at the intriguing sci-fi concept — what prawn really amounted to once they were properly investigated — and the other was impatience. This is how humanity handles its first close encounter? Like Barney Fife making an arrest? Wikus is our representative? Read the rest of this entry »
Personality Crisis
“Adam” looks at neurological disorder through a pleasant love story.
by Wayne Melton
In the spectrum of movies about people with behavioral disorders, “Adam,” about a young man (Hugh Dancy) with a type of high-functioning autism, is on the glamorized, entertainment-oriented end, kind of like an indie “Rain Man.”
Adam (Dancy) suffers from Asperger syndrome, which makes it difficult for him to modulate his behavior or understand the subtle behavior of others. He’s also intense about science, especially astronomy (people with AS tend to focus on specialized interests), but not so much that he doesn’t notice the fetching young Beth (Rose Byrne) when he bumps into his new neighbor in their apartment building’s laundry room.
As they get to know each other, Adam immediately explains what’s different about himself — partly because he can’t help it and partly because he doesn’t want to scare her off. Best to go ahead and blurt out why he blurts things out and be done with it. Read the rest of this entry »
Global Warning
“O’Horten” demonstrates the dangers of cultural comedy exchange.
by Wayne Melton
When it comes to movies, most genres cross borders relatively unscathed. But as societies, are we supposed to watch each other’s comedies?
The question nagged me during a recent viewing of “O’Horten,” a Norwegian film about the misadventures of a locomotive engineer, Odd Horten (Baard Owe), created by a guy named Bent Hamer. Is it a coincidence that both names would seem so, well, odd, to English-speaking ears? I can’t say for sure, except that this is a movie about odd coincidences. Horten can’t seem to turn a corner without running into trouble. Read the rest of this entry »
