DVD Clip: Fat City

John Huston's "Fat City" from 1972 stars Stacy Keach and a young Jeff Bridges.

I’ve seen all of John Huston’s better-known movies, but I’d never heard of “Fat City” (1972), a boxing genre film comparable to “Requiem for a Heavyweight,” “The Set-Up” and “The Hustler.” Not as mythic as Scorsese’s “Raging Bull,” Huston’s film is a gritty tale of two amateur boxers, a has-been (Stacy Keach) and a youngster (Jeff Bridges, right after he made “The Last Picture Show”) who Keach’s character says “has ‘it’” after a chance meeting in a gym. Maybe he meant that he has the potential to turn into a washed-up bum. I’ve never seen a more depressing movie about failure, even during the decade that specialized in them, including “The Day of the Locust” and “Midnight Cowboy.” When not training his camera on his thwarted leads, Huston casually observes the run-down neighborhoods, dive bars and floozies of the era, decaying places eerily familiar to American cities of any age. Difficult to watch, but, as a few critics have noted, you won’t see subject matter of the kind found in “Fat City” in many movies made today. Bridges’ “Crazy Heart,” currently making its way around the country, is admirable but not even close.

Movie Review: The Book of Eli

The Book of Eli: Denzel Washington, Mila Kunis pray for their movie's salvation.

A Fistful of Bible

Denzel Washington plays a butt-kicking mystery messiah in “The Book of Eli.”
by Wayne Melton

According to “The Book of Eli,” the meek shall not inherit the Earth, not even if the Bible is the key to the Earth’s salvation. In this post-apocalyptic tale by brothers Albert and Allen Hughes (“From Hell”), Denzel Washington plays the titular Eli, a wandering prophet toting a rare Bible on a mission from God and crushing anyone who gets in his way. As ill-considered as it is violent, the film’s premise appears to be the conviction that contemporary movie audiences are guaranteed to spend money on a holy trinity of religious conspiracy, hot actors and explosions.

Best Movies of the Decade

Cameron Bright and Nicole Kidman in Jonathan Glazer's "Birth."

Time to update! This has been online for a couple weeks now…

you can find the entire list here.

Here’s the top 20:

20. “The Departed” (2006, Martin Scorsese) With the help of an outstanding ensemble cast, Scorsese delivers the undisputed top cop movie of the decade, a worthy complement to his earlier masterpiece “Goodfellas.”

19. “You Can Count on Me” (2000, Kenneth Lonergan) The Rosetta Stone for the hope-affirming indie dramas that proliferated in the 2000s. Its stars, Mark Ruffalo and Laura Linney (opposite a young Rory Culkin), would repeat similar roles in similar movies throughout the decade, but never quite this effectively. The imitators are legion.

18. “Atonement” (2007, Joe Wright) Contemporary filmmaking is so boundless, creating whole worlds and creatures out of thin air, we sometimes take the current industry’s more earthbound accomplishments for granted. Wright’s thwarted lovers (James McAvoy and Kiera Knightly) create an emblem for the wasteful destruction wrought by war, but the movie is also simply, strikingly gorgeous.

17. “Broken Flowers” (2005, Jim Jarmusch) Who guessed when Bill Murray was creating over-the-top goofballs for movies like “Caddyshack” and “Stripes” that 20 years later he’d distill his comic persona into the bitterly laconic Don Johnston, begrudgingly “checking in” on five former girlfriends while in search of a secret son? Jarmusch might not have been the first to bring out this side of the actor, but his own austere style works it into an unforgettable pressure-cooker of middle-aged ennui.

16. “The Road” (2009, John Hillcoat) Too often even supposedly true stories in the movies arrive with a polish of wishful thinking. Not true of this admirably spare adaptation, which imagines what people would really resort to if left to their own devices by global catastrophe.

15. “The Dreamers” (2003, Bernardo Bertolucci) Unrepentantly pretentious, but for a good cause: Bertolucci’s film, about an American abroad (Michael Pitt) who meets a beguiling brother and sister (Eva Green and Louis Garrel), is a celebration of cinema, including Garbo, Bardot, Groucho and Godard, its backdrop the artistic, social and political upheaval of ’60s Paris.

14. “The Squid and the Whale” (2005, Noah Baumbach) Baumbach’s comic look at a family going through divorce feels more refined the more you watch it, each character a memorable individual rather than a type. The filmmaker’s “Margot at the Wedding” is equal as a dysfunctional-family routine, just not as endlessly watchable.

13. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (2004, Michel Gondry) The nature of memory and desire is revealed through brilliant nonlinear storytelling and fanciful movie magic. 

Blu-ray Review: Howard’s End

"Howard's End": The days when you had to wear special clothing to ride in a car. For real.

Yesterday I received my Criterion Collection Blu-ray edition of Merchant and Ivory’s “Howard’s End.” Great film, but, alas, this is an instance that did not merit an upgrade. I already own the Columbia/Tri-Star/Sony Pictures Classics version, “Deluxe Widescreen Presentation,” from 1998, which was ahead of its time with a widescreen format bearing the necessary “Enhanced for Widescreen TVs” — unusual in DVDs released before 2000.

The old version is at least two editions old. Since then the movie has been released in a Merchant Ivory Collection edition as well as the standard Criterion edition. And yet surprisingly the two versions were nearly identical when it came to image quality. Several back-to-back scene comparisons failed to reveal the kind of difference I’ve seen in other movie transfers. I realize that there’s an overall effect that a higher resolution format can offer, but I own other examples where that effect is much more noteworthy. It’s difficult to say whether the results have more to do with the quality of the Columbia release or the lack thereof of the Criterion edition.

Movie Review: Youth in Revolt

Rebirth of Nick: Michael Cera literally steps outside his own persona for "Youth in Revolt."

The Kid is Uptight

“Youth in Revolt” refines an actor’s formula.
by Wayne Melton

It’s fairly easy to describe the Michael Cera character to someone, no matter what movie he’s in, because he’s basically the same in every film.
Whether “Superbad,” “Juno” or “Nick & Nora’s Infinite Playlist,” he’s the tall, nervous, gangly guy struggling with love — even in the Bible comedy “Year One.” No surprise that he’s that guy again in “Youth and Revolt,” where he plays another Nick: Nick Twisp, a name as purposefully ungraceful as Cera’s composure.

What’s surprising is that the movie, based on a series of books by C.D. Payne, is, at least in terms of laughs, Cera’s best to date, a teen comedy that values sardonic wit over cheap gags and body humor. Cera might be completely recognizable in his geeky posture and ill-fitting vintage clothing, but the jokes are smaller and the supporting characters less broad, allowing the subtleties of his performance to stand out. This is an actor with gifts for pantomime and timing that get lost in his bigger movies.

Movie Review: Daybreakers

Ethan Hawke smokes some cigs and some undead in the stylish vampire movie "Daybreakers."

There Won’t Be Blood

“Daybreakers” is a vampire flick with philosophical bite.
by Wayne Melton

The figures moving in the darkened streets have pale skin, red eyes and nasty dispositions. Their delinquent children congregate in furtive groups, dressed all in black and smoking fiendishly. No, this isn’t Paris, 2010, but somewhere in a desperate Earth future, circa 2019, when an outbreak has turned the world upside down.

Vampires, living by night, have taken over the political and economic levers while what’s left of the human population lives in fear of being farmed for food. But the vampires’ supply is running out, a situation that turns the stylish and mordant “Daybreakers” into more than just another fanged-creature feature, making it, for at least its first half, one of the most interesting sci-fi films in recent years.

Movie Review: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

The otherworldly beauty of Lily Cole is the only sure thing in "Imaginarium."

Fantasy Island

Terry Gilliam’s latest is too much of a weird thing.
by Wayne Melton

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” concerns a magical portal that leads to a dreamlike fantasy world, which ends up not the best object for a director whose films are often just such devices. Creating a story around a mysterious and immortal sideshow performer named Parnassus (Christopher Plummer), Terry Gilliam (“The Brothers Grimm”) demonstrates why some filmmakers are best when working with material that contrasts with their interests.

It might surprise audiences that the most enjoyable moments in the film are outside Parnassus’ Imaginarium, on the dirty cobblestone streets and alleys of London, where Parnassus’ theater troupe winds its way between neighborhoods, trying to attract customers while being followed by a pesky devil named Nick (Tom Waits). Here we find everything best about a Gilliam film: the dry wit, the daring use of fantasy and the sense that the antiquarian and the weird lurk behind any corner. Inside the device, Gilliam cancels himself out, lavishly concocting an infinite realm of the imagination that is frequently unimpressive, stale and tedious.

Movie Review: The Lovely Bones

'They won't suspect a doll-house building guy in the shadows like me at all...': murderer Stanely Tucci in "The Lovely Bones."

Paradise Embossed

Peter Jackson views heaven as a special effects opportunity.
by Wayne Melton

Alice Sebold’s remarkably successful novel “The Lovely Bones” was already balanced precariously on the nether reaches of broad appeal. To hand the thing over to special effects king Peter Jackson, the guy behind the Lord of the Rings trilogy and a remake of “King Kong,” was a form of adaptation suicide.

Boundless ambition and ego befits 21st-century Tolkien and Kong, but buries this supernatural family story under a mountain of unnecessary visuals and ham-handed direction. The tale of a young girl explaining from heaven her own brutal murder and the effect on her family demanded a light, sensitive touch. Instead they gave it to the guy riding the filmmaking equivalent of a backhoe.

Movie Review: Sherlock Holmes

Robert Downey Jr. arrested for making "Sherlock Holmes."

Not a Clue

A Bohemian Sherlock Holmes proves you can create a franchise worse than “Transformers.”
by Wayne Melton

Sherlock Holmes, legendary sleuth of 19th-century literature, is famous for his superhuman powers of deduction. No way could he figure out “Sherlock Holmes” the movie, a crass commercial monstrosity that doesn’t make sense beyond its attempt to wring some holiday dollars out of bored families while merely pretending to be an update of the Arthur Conan Doyle character.

Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law take on the roles of Holmes and his faithful sidekick, Watson. Law walks away the less blemished of the two, turning in a brawny, somewhat brainy counterweight to Downey’s version of the great detective, with hair like an “American Idol” finalist and a conviction that talking really, really fast is an indication of extreme smarts.

Movie Review: Avatar

Zoe Saldana plays an extremely leggy Na'vi princess in James Cameron's 3-D blockbuster.

Pandora’s Fox

“Avatar” reinvents the blockbuster while sticking to its proven attractions.
by Wayne Melton

Although the movie industry is increasingly placing its bets on the home market, the makers of “Avatar” — notably, director James Cameron — have gone all-in on the theater experience in the three-dimensional version.

Attempting to recapture the wow factor of movies such as 1977’s “Star Wars” and Cameron’s own resume of technology-pushing blockbusters — which includes the record-breaking “Titanic” — Cameron and company have spent a ton of money to make this movie worth seeing at the movies, in all its Imax-screen, 3-D glory.

In terms of eye-popping visual grandeur it’s by far the most advanced of the recent wave of movies using a reinvented 3-D technology, creating an experience that’s truly new and not simply enhanced. The plot, however, is a comparatively mundane mix of recognizable action-movie tropes, centered on a surprisingly uninvolving love story. If you plan to see “Avatar,” see it in three dimensions. Otherwise you’ll miss the very thing that makes it worthwhile.