The Blue-veiled: Melodramatic Subtlety

"Bani-Etemad is far too much of a visual realist to engage in the mise-en-scéne flourishes of Hollywood melodrama, opting for more subtle but just as symbolic production design."

Click here to read my review at Not Coming to a Theater Near You

Fat Pig: The Body Politic

On the heels of directing a pair of Hollywood thrillers of dubious quality (The Wicker Man, Lakeview Terrace), prolific playwright-cum-filmmaker Neil Labute returns to stage direction with the West End debut of Fat Pig, a dark comedy that continues his exploration of the dark recesses of the human psyche.

This production features a quartet of British actors, all of whom have found success on popular British television programming: Kris Marshall (My Family), Joanna Page (Gavin & Stacey), Ella Smith (Strictly Confidential) and Robert Webb (Peep Show). Here, Webb plays Tom, a straight-laced and straight-bodied office worker who falls in love with an overweight librarian named Helen (Smith). When news of his budding relationship gets out to the office, his co-workers Carter (Marshall) and Jeannie (Page) become fixated on Helen’s body-size. Tom tries to ignore their scurrilous commentary and continues his courtship of Helen and seems to be truly falling in love with her.

But as this is a Labute play, there is of course a sting in the tail, and here it’s Tom’s increasing embarrassment about being seen with Helen in public that eventually forms an impasse. This quality prevents the play from taking on a fairy tale quality and becoming an unabashed call for acceptance and promotion of positive body image – the kind of paean found in Hairspray. The play isn’t malicious in its presentation of people of plus-sized waist lines but it’s not interested in sugar-coated happy endings either. Tom isn’t presented as a saintly modern day prophet who rejects societal conventions – as say Linc in Hairpsray is presented – but rather as a fallible servant to the status quo who ultimately realizes his own yearning to be accepted by society’s understandings of normalcy will make the undoing of his relationship.

Labute never goes for the easy answers, instead favoring harsh realities – occasionally so harsh they seem more painful than reality. Labute relishes the opportunity to look deep into the human psyche and extract truths that are generally rendered unspeakable. The lesson usually learned by a character in a Labute play is: You’re not as good a person as you think you are.

The production he’s staged at the Trafalgar Studios stage is a largely successful one that benefits from a strong cast – Page’s shrill attempt at an American accent being the only weak link in the ensemble (her anachronistic approach sounds like Katherine Hepburn by way of Minnie Mouse). Webb, whose accent is the most convincing, is given the juiciest role and is well equipped to deliver the uncanny blend of empathy and revulsion Tom seems designed to evoke.

A revolving stage provides opportunity to swiftly switch between sets, one half designated for Tom’s office (replete with desk, chair, leather sofa and iMac) and a variety of external locations (achieved with limited set design but good lighting and imaginative performance) that include an Asian restaurant, a bustling café and a beachside picnic. In between set changes, music by The White Stripes blares over the speakers matches the sonic energy of the verbal back-and-forths while projected scene titles instill a sense of structure that downplays the temporal ambiguity of Tom and Helen’s relationship. The White Stripes music (tracks from White Blood Cells and their self-titled album) is well suited to the material, the harshness of Jack White’s electric guitar strums and coarse vocals punctuate the sequences with their ferocity and recall the savagery of Elvis Costello’s drumbeats in The Shape of Things.

Labute’s only major misstep is breaking up the play’s approximate 1 hour 40 minute running time with a 15-minute interval. The play’s climax is a powerful admission by Tom but its incisiveness is ameliorated by the relatively short second act that makes the ending feel abrupt rather than the product of a carefully stirred slow boil. A few years ago I saw Labute’s Some Girls at the Gielgud Theatre presented sans interval and the ending’s effectivity was considerably greatened from the non-stop accumulation of events. The same approach would have benefitted Fat Pig – but then theatres still need to sell drinks and ice cream I suppose.

Jumper: Stop the World - I Want to Get Off

And here my love affair with Doug Liman’s films comes to a crashing halt. I still respect his rebelliousness and refusal to churn out a by-the-numbers action flick and suspect that Mr. and Mrs. Smith will come to be held in high regard in 20 years time but his latest output, Jumper, is a seriously boneheaded film.

The plot involves a snotty kid named David (Star Wars’ Hayden Christensen) who at age 16 developed the supernatural power to teleport himself from place to place as a way of escaping a schoolyard bully and his alcoholic father. The majority of the film takes place 8 years later, where David has grown up to be a bank robber with a plush NYC bachelor’s pad and the ability to sit atop the Great Pyramids and surf the Maldives all before breakfast. His life of hedonistic excess is put into jeopardy when a mysterious group of global watchdogs called Paladins catches on to his spatial transgressions. Led by the white-haired Roland (Samuel L. Jackson), the Paladins have been hunting down and killing jumpers since the middle ages, at least that’s what we’re told by Griffin (Jamie Bell), another stunted adolescent who shares David's teleporting ability and unpleasant personality.

Aside from the general illogical behavior and young adult fiction vibe (both of which I admittedly kind of enjoy) what shocked me about this film is its utter irresponsibility and teen-targeted nihilism. It’s one thing when Jason Bourne leaves a trail of destroyed cars and presumably injured or deceased civilians in the wake of exposing government corruption; it’s quite another when a pair of spoiled, immature, 20-year-old mischief makers traipse around the globe causing death and destruction with their every move. The mayhem begins with the wrongful incarceration of a childhood bully – slightly understandable – but the ill-treatment of innocent bystanders escalates at an alarming rate. It’s as if the filmmakers are trying to up the ante of reckless behavior without any sort of conscience. Most disgusting are instances of Griffin purposefully driving at high speed toward a woman with a stroller before ‘jumping’ to a different street, scaring a little boy by making eye contact and yelling ‘boo’ before ‘jumping’ and the most egregious example in which Griffin ‘jumps’ with a bewildered truck driver into an Iraq war-like setting with live ammunition and proceeds to casually walk away from the battlefield while a tank drives by in the background, crushing the truck and presumably the innocent driver inside.

SPOILERS AHEAD

There is an opportunity for the film to redeem itself in the third act but despite a few hints at a third act shift in audience identification, it fails to capitalize on its prospect. In the last thirty minutes or so, it becomes increasingly obvious that the film’s purported villains – The Paladins – are in fact the heroes, methodically hunting down and trying to stop these bank robbers and trespassers from wreaking havoc upon the unsuspecting world. And yet the film keeps asking us to identify with the snotty brats instead.

There is an unrealized irony about the ending in which David transports a ‘villain’ to a deserted plateau far out of reach from civilization and before deserting him says, “I could have left you with the sharks” as if to say, hey, I am a nice guy after all. What the film doesn’t seem to realize it is saying here is that the ‘hero’ is essentially telling the villain that instead of killing him swiftly he has decided to leave him to face a much more drawn out death that likely ends in starvation, dehydration or heat exhaustion.

Their unbridled lawlessness and general disregard for humanity would be acceptable if there was some buried allegory about the detrimental effects of absent parents on their children and the repercussions that effect the world on a global size. But other than a couple of comments that suggest the imperative of nurture for children aged five, any such commentary has been excised during the script rewrites or studio-imposed editing. I don’t want to blame Doug Liman completely for the disaster that is this film and if Fox allows him to release a two-hour director’s cut, I’ll happily rent it. I agree with London Student film critic Nick Jones who states, “Liman’s direction retains the energy and excitement of previous films, but fails to anchor the story in any reality or consistency.” Given Liman’s notorious track record for infuriating studio brass and having his films go through multiple permutations as he and the studio struggle to reach an agreement (Steve Fishman recently wrote a fantastic profile on Liman for New York Magazine), I hold out hope that Liman had at one point hoped to cast scorn on the Jumpers and reposition the reception of the Paladins in a remarkable third act twist.

I keep the hope alive because there are a still few murmurs of the awareness of the film’s disregard for humanity lurking around the edges of the film. For starters, there’s the definition of the word paladin. According to dictionary.com, Paladin can be defined as: 1. any one of the 12 legendary peers or knightly champions in attendance on Charlemagne 2. any knightly or heroic champion or 3. any determined advocate or defender of a noble cause. Given this understanding, the moniker Paladin is actually quite revelatory about the film’s moral positioning although the movie never spells it out as such and I confess I had never encountered the word before but still it does provide an indexical trace of filmic conscience. There’s also a scene early on in which David watches a news report about hurricane victims and the reporter pleas “there looks to be no way anyone can get here in time.” Fans of Superman might expect this to lead to David ‘jumping’ to the disaster zone and saving the day. But in Jumper we instead have David shrug, turn off the television and ‘jump’ to London so that he can go bar hopping and pick up girls. This scene could be usefully positioned as the setup for an interesting social commentary but from there on out the film seems to relish and even endorse David's increasingly solipsistic behavior.

The failed potential of this prospect comes back full force in the film’s final scene. How can one not be excited about the perversity of ending a big budget studio action flick that with the reunion between a mother and son that concludes not with an embrace but with the mother putting forth a legitimate death threat to her son. It’s just a shame the film gives off the impression it’s far too dumb to realize the subversive potential of this moment and is more interested in the glossy stereotype of having David embrace his love interest and 'jump' off into the sunset.

London's 8th International Disability Film Festival

London's 8th International Disability Film Festival took place at the BFI last weekend and posts of my coverage of a few of the events can be found at the following [with]tv blog links...

Event Background
Special People review
The Silent Twins review
Shorts Programme 3 report

The Fifty Best Movies

I have contributed a list of the fifty best movies of all time to a website called thefiftybest.com Of course, whittling down a list of fifty narrative films from over a century’s worth of cinematic output is no exercise in absoluteness but here it is anyway. Feel free to berate me for any choices or omissions. I tried to avoid films that have been deemed important but are relatively ordinary in cinematic terms in favor of films that have had a considerable effect on the medium itself, are distinct and perhaps most important – are entertaining!

Click here to read my list of The Fifty Best Movies

Teeth: She Can Cut You Like a Knife

"Yes, the film is essentially a one-trick vagina, but it’s an unforgettable one — even if it requires virtually every male character to be an amoral horndog."

Click here to read my review in The L Magazine

This Movie Sucks: Juno What I Mean?

Alright, so that’s overly hostile. Juno is okay and I concede that by the end, it’s difficult not to get wrapped up in things, but this movie is infuriatingly overrated. The angry rant that follows is a response to the near universal praise – both critical and popular – and the impending Oscar nomination for Best Picture that will be announced on January 22nd.

The only form of commiseration for my distaste for Juno I have so far been able to find comes in the writings of New York Magazine’s ever-reliable David Edelstein, L Magazine’s film editor Mark Asch and the Chicago Sun-Times’ pop music critic Jim DeRogatis. In hope of finding more people with my feelings I figured I’d store my dissatisfaction with the film electronically.

My biggest bone of contention is the dialogue by screenwriter Diablo Cody. It’s all so overwritten and so painfully yearning to be hip. Admittedly, I have enjoyed films in which the dialogue is just as blatantly overcooked – Woody Allen, the occasional Wes Anderson film – but the characters in Juno talk in a code indiscernible to the viewer. Just like those smug cats in the Ocean’s sequels, Juno (Ellen Page) and her ilk talk in purposefully mystifying mumbo jumbo that reeks of “I’m cooler than you are, mere moviegoer.” Edelstein voices similar exasperation nicely, “The relentlessly jokey banter of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is taken to a screechy new level. Every character’s wisecracks come from the same place, like in bad Neil Simon.”

What separates Juno from the work of Woody Allen or Wes Anderson is that the characters in their films all exist within a confined universe in which everyone talks that way. Juno, on the other hand, offers a maddeningly inconsistent universe. During the first twenty minutes – twenty of the most unbearable minutes of 2007, I honestly contemplated walking out of my screening to find refuge in No Country for Old Men – we are bombarded with the same sort of rapid-fire banter from every single character. If the film had continued that way, I would have indeed hated it but at least it would have been true to its universe. Instead, it introduces us to the adoptive parent characters, Mark (Jason Bateman) and Vanessa (Jennifer Garner), who are complex and intriguing characters who actually talk like – gasp – human beings.

Not surprisingly, this is around when I started warming to the film; when I realized not everyone in the film talked like Juno. I was relieved that I found a few characters to invest interest in but I was also frustrated because it meant the first twenty minutes were so incredibly disingenuous. If we are to later find out that sane people also inhabit this universe, why initially surround Juno only by characters just as irritatingly verbose as her: the cheerleader best friend (Olivia Thirlby), step-mom (Allison Janney), the abortion clinic receptionist, the anti-abortion protestor and most egregiously, the convenience store employee (Rainn Wilson)? A.O. Scott does make an eloquent case for excusing the film’s horrible beginning: “like Juno herself, the film outgrows its own mannerisms and defenses, evolving from a coy, knowing farce into a heartfelt, serious comedy.”But even if I were to accept Scott’s words or any of the other ways the film’s proponents choose to forgive the lousy opening, my reservations extend throughout the entirety of the film and beyond my base hatred for the irritating Juno as a character.

One of Mark Asch's many well-argued frustration is over the film's endemic striving to be hip quality, attacking the film for being just as hung up about being cool as the characters are depicted to be: “Get ready for shoehorned-in name-drops of Sonic Youth, the Melvins, the Runaways, Suspiria, etc.” Out of those, the ones that pissed me off the most were the Sonic Youth and Suspiria scenes because they’re written and presented with such pretentiousness. In the Sonic Youth scene, Mark puts on a record and tells Juno that she’ll have never heard anything like this and the camera lets it play out with great revelation, even though it’s the same Carpenter’s cover that was used 12 years ago and less crassly in Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners. Even more frustrating is when Mark forces Juno to watch Hershell Gordon Lewis’ The Wizard of Gore after she proclaims Dario Argento to be the best blood and guts horror director. While the two watch the film, Juno gasps in wonderment, “Wow, this is even better than Suspiria. The sticking point here is that anyone who has seen more than one Argento film would never compare the supernatural and less bloody (at least in terms of Argento and Lewis) Suspiria to The Wizard of Gore. Yes, my disgust for these two scenes is an example of nit picking to a considerable degree but it gets under my skin because the film is so clearly proud of their “offbeat” references. To these scenes I respond with DeRogatis’ opening statement, “Get real, 'Juno': You're a phony.”

I don’t want to get too wrapped up in the film’s stance (or lack of stance) on abortion (DeRogatis and Asch already do a sterling job dissecting the matter) but I will say that the rosy-colored everything’s fine ending does make me a little uneasy about the positive portrayal of teen pregnancy that is presented. Maybe the scenes of the eight-month pregnant Juno strutting through the halls of her high school without concern or her step-mother defending her honor during an ultrasound can offer beacons of hope for any real-life girls in similar situations but the detriment of the film’s decision to omit the full effects of the social stigma that would have ensued outweigh any illusory scenes of empowerment. That we don’t see active menace through scorn, ridicule or even violence from her classmates or neighbors or that her schoolwork is in no way impacted by a nine month pregnancy is enough of a problem. But what really gets me is the unbelievable aspect of Juno’s cheerleader friend sticking by her side throughout the pregnancy. It extends well beyond my realm of suspension of disbelief to buy that a cheerleader, no matter how quirky, would still be seen conversing with a pregnant sixteen-year-old girl in the super-judgmental world of high school, let alone continuing to eat with her at lunch time (sitting inside some sort of school trophy case for that matter, but that’s another issue…).

So, there are some positives in the film: Bateman’s performance, it’s got me listening to Mott the Hoople’s “All the Young Dudes” again, some very successful lines (“Paulie Bleeker? I didn’t think he had it in him.”) and perhaps most importantly, as pointed out by A.O. Scott, “[the film] respects the idiosyncrasies of its characters rather than exaggerating them or holding them up for ridicule.” It’s this last point that makes the film tolerable and what distinguishes itself from the wretched Napoleon Dynamite, a film it inevitably evokes in style, which – surprise, surprise – is also a film that Cody cites as an influence on her script in a recent interview with Matt Hoey in Written By.

Yes, I admit my distaste for Juno is impacted by the near-universal love for the film and had it not caught on like wildfire, I would be fine to let it fade away into the recesses of other 2007 films that irked me in such a way. But it’s Edelstein’s chilling premonitory words that scare me into adding my two bits on the matter: “Prepare yourself for the Juno generation.”

Top 10 of 2007

1. Zodiac

2. Knocked Up

3. The Bourne Ultimatum

4. In the Shadow of the Moon

5. No Country For Old Men

6. Rescue Dawn

7. Rocket Science

8. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

9. Into the Wild

10. The Lookout

Honorable Mentions: 1408, Atonement, Breach, Michael Clayton, Ratatouille

Click here to read my list with commentary at TheCinemaSource.com

Michael Clayton: Mr. Fix-It

Issues of the personal and the professional overlap, intersect, fold in on themselves and get all around muddled – as does the plot – in Michael Clayton, a somber legal thriller written and directed by Tony Gilroy of the Bourne franchise. George Clooney stars in the titular role as the employee of a powerful law firm whose broad job description is a “fixer.” It’s a performance of immense understatement, both in terms of emotion and charisma. Even more so than in his underwritten albeit Oscar-winning role in Syriana, this is Clooney at his most world-weary and downbeat.

Michael Clayton’s strongest attribute is the attention it pays to character’s lives outside of the workplace. Unlike many other corporate conspiracy tales, the diminishing home lives and personal time of the central characters is made into a focal point. In addition to dealing with an enormous case involving a fertilizer company and a chemically unbalanced senior attorney named Arthur (Tom Wilkinson), Michael is scrambling to resolve the debt incurred by a risky financial investment with his deadbeat brother. His tracts get increasingly jumbled as details of both sides intersect and impede him from resolving either dilemma swiftly.

Gilroy’s world of corporate law is depicted much like the world of the mafia in The Godfather. At the heart of the story are two men – Michael and Arthur – both trying to escape the morass of immorality that has engulfed them. Whenever it seems like either one has an opportunity to break out, the system pulls them back in (to paraphrase Al Pacino in The Godfather Part III). In a brilliantly telling violation of the 180 degree rule early in the film, the camera cuts between Michael and Arthur from opposite sides of the room, reversing their positions on screen and effectively entwining their conditions – although not necessarily their fates.

The characters in the film are artfully drawn and so is the plot; although the presentation of the plot is not as skillful and falls into the trap of obfuscation rather than intrigue. Early scenes go into illuminating detail about litigator Karen Crowder’s (Tilda Swinton) preparation for a press conference but considering the film subsequently streamlines her for the majority of the second and third acts, the early scenes serve little effect other than disorientation. However, if you can make it through the first forty minutes of byzantine plot structure, you’ll uncover a gripping human drama very much worth hanging around for.

***1/2

Run, Fat Boy, Run

Run, Fat Boy, Run – a romantic comedy about a dopey loser who vows to run a marathon in order to win back his ex-wife – will one day make a remarkable case for reception studies based on the differences of its release and perception in the UK and US. It’s not due out until mid March in the US, at which point it will likely be dumped in a limited release (1500 screens absolute max) and see middling box office returns. Too low brow to receive critical support and not funny enough to generate feverish word of mouth, the film stands little chance to make any mark in the states other than to be seen as David Schwimmer’s failed feature directorial debut. However, in its native Britain, Run, Fat Boy, Run has already garnered some modestly supportive reviews and generated solid box office including a three-week-and-counting run at number one thanks to its prim London locales and lead performance by British comedy superstar Simon Pegg.

Being a sucker for romantic comedies, British urban idylls and all things Schwimmer (I proudly proclaim him to be my favorite Friend and to have seen him on stage twice), I headed off to the cinema to make a judgment on the film before the nasty US marks start pouring in. The verdict? A mild, inoffensive comedy that’s not as crass as its title but still revels in a few too many crotch shots and the gross-out effect of a mammoth blister erupting in a poor bloke’s face. Fortunately it’s all done with pretty locations, inspired casting and a thematic interest in mending family ties. In short, if you’re a fan of one of the three qualities I professed a love for, you’ll probably be entertained.

In the first few minutes of the film, during Dennis’ (Pegg) fevered decision to run out on his fiancé Libby (Thandie Newtwon), Schwimmer loads on all the skewed angles and temporal and aural discontinuities of a first-time filmmaker eager to prove his knowledge of an editing room.

Fortunately, as the film progresses he relaxes and actually proves himself quite adept. He handles a number of key sequences with assuredness and one particular scene with expertise. When Libby’s new boyfriend Whit (perfectly played by Hank Azaria) dings a glass at a crowded party to make an announcement, the entire audience knows that what is to follow is a proposal, but for a change, so does the heretofore witless lead character. Instead of trying to build the tension (because there would be none to build) by holding on Whit’s speech giving, he cuts to a close-up of Dennis realizing what’s about to happen so that Pegg is able to convey the agonizing torture of awaiting the inevitable instead of playing it for a shocked double take after the announcement has been made. Schwimmer’s ten years in the sitcom world have helped him to spot a cliché, know how to adhere to it and most importantly, how to tweak it just enough to make it work.

More to the credit of Michael Ian Black’s original script and Simon Pegg’s rewrite is that the film manages to pull off the story’s silly conceit. Not for an instant could the weight of a legitimate romance hinge on something as inconsequential as running a marathon but the characters acknowledge this idiocy and by the end, the script manages to surprisingly pull out a viable situation in which it does. Even if it does depend on some late-in-the-game vilifying of Libby’s American suitor. It’s almost as if the filmmakers have anticipated the film’s predestined failure in the States.

Atonement

Not due out until Christmastime stateside but currently playing to a glowing reception in the United Kingdom is Atonement, director Joe Wright’s adaptation of Ian McEwen’s bestselling novel. It’s a love saga framed around WWII; the first half takes place during the onset and the second during Britain’s retreat from France in 1944. In essence, it’s a weepie about two lovers separated by the horrors of war. But it’s more than that; the relationships and the circumstances are quite complicated and best not to reveal too much about their myriad complexities.

Following his exquisite adaptation of Pride and Prejudice in 2005, Joe Wright’s direction may just be the most invigorating quality to be added to the period piece love story since colorization. Instead of succumbing to the standard period piece feeling of constantly keeping the viewer at arm’s length, his films are rendered accessible through their vitality and immediacy. With Pride and Prejudice, he incorporated fast moving but controlled camerawork that threw the viewer headfirst into the life and times of Jane Austen’s characters. But his skilled camerawork isn’t all, he also has a keen ear for musical score, a talent for casting and a graceful pacing that makes his films feel substantial while kept within reasonable running times.

In Atonement, he plays around with temporal continuity in a manner most uncommon to the period piece and more akin to the nonlinearity of Tarrantino. Key events are seen multiple times from differing vantage points but it’s not a gimmick, rather it’s a thematic accommodation. At times Atonement is a bit too stylish for its own good: it’s hard to feel the emotional impact of a field of murdered children while we’re marveling over the craftsmanship of a majestic tracking shot. However, there is a single extreme long take (of such considerable length and scope that it rivals the much heralded shot in Children of Men) that is one of the greatest shots of the year, awe-inspiring in terms of narrative attachment and formal impressiveness as it simultaneously conveying the bleak expansiveness of the British army soldiers awaiting a return home and baffling the viewer through the sheer patience and skill required to pull off such a shot.

The film’s ending is somewhat problematic. Emotionally stirring to be sure but it tries too hard to satisfy both viewer camps: the romantics and the realists. In a way the filmmakers are guilty of wanting to have their cake and eat it too. While I don’t think that I just saw the Best Picture winner at this year’s Oscar ceremony (as some pundits are already predicting it to be), I did see a film of remarkable character. A synthesis of devastating pain and immense entertainment; prestige filmmaking and populist cinema.

Helvetica: The Font is Mightier

"Ultimately little more than a curiosity piece, there is a certain fascination present in seeing some of the faces behind the Microsoft Office fonts we all know and love."

Click here to read my entire review in The L Magazine

In the Valley of Elah: The Patriot

"At its best, the film coolly mixes incisive political commentary with a case so engrossing it’s tempting to whip out a notepad and jot down clues..."

Click here to read my entire review in The L Magazine

Resurrecting the Champ: Down and Half-Way Out

"The screenwriters, Michael Bortman and Allison Burnett, demonstrate a keen ability to write complex lead characters but also a need for them to pay more attention to plotting."

Click here to read my entire review at the [with]tv blog

Shoot 'Em Up to Yuma

An onslaught of testosterone invades movie theaters this weekend with the grizzly western 3:10 to Yuma and the go-for-broke action flick Shoot ‘Em Up battling it out in wide release (and to a lesser extent the fertilization comedy The Brothers Solomon). I find it positively shocking that Lionsgate and New Line would release Yuma and Shoot in the same weekend. While Yuma is more likely to attract older movie goers thanks to its western nostalgia and Shoot will lure younger viewers with its hyperkinetic aesthetics, the main demographic remains the same for both films: Males 17-34.

It’s open season as to which film will claim stake at the box office this weekend; my instinct is Yuma but neither would surprise me. But why choose just one anyway? The two seem generated to fit perfectly into the parameters of a Grindhouse-style double feature. That’s the route my buddy and I took this afternoon and the long and short of it is that Yuma is a fairly solid choice under most circumstances, whereas Shoot ‘Em Up should be viewed as the second half of a double header or not at all.

While Yuma is branded the A picture somewhat by default (it could be the B in certain situations), it at least has enough substance to stand on its own two legs. Shoot ‘Em Up is the cinematic equivalent of fast food: momentarily satiating but ultimately unsatisfying and devoid of any nutritional value.

A 14-year-old videogame geek’s wet dream and an expecting parent’s nightmare, Shoot ‘Em Up is a hyperactive collection of extreme action set-pieces strung together by loud rock music, a gun fetish, an orphaned baby and a cooler than cool Clive Owen at his most rough and tumble. I laughed a few times and enjoyed the occasional self-referential mockery but shudder at the prospect of teenage boys trying to gouge out each other’s eyes with raw carrots after seeing the movie.

The only thing Shoot ‘Em Up takes seriously is guns. Not in the pro- or anti-gun control sense (the movie seems to endorse both sides of the argument) but in the sheer knowledge of the inner workings of artillery. The characters in the film are up to date with the latest in fingerprint technology and know that when a gun is fired, the nozzle becomes scalding hot and that if a gun is accidentally dropped in a toilet bowl, it will need to be properly dried before working again.

Toting bigger guns but firing more judiciously are the characters of 3:10 to Yuma. They also boast a much more consistent rate of bullet-to-body ratio than the incessant hail of gunfire swirling around the scenes of Shoot ‘Em Up. One of Yuma’s nicest qualities is the restraint in its depiction of brutality. Make no mistake, the grim lawlessness of the Wild West is in full effect and the film contains a couple of harrowing sequences but the violence never becomes excessive. In other words, I’d easily send my Mom to see it without any words of caution.

The most complex element in 3:10 to Yuma is the presentation of character psychology. Similar to the dilemma in last year’s The Prestige (another Christian Bale film), you’re not always entirely sure who you want to survive here: the Bale character or the Russell Crowe character. While Bale is unquestionably the picture’s hero and of course we want to see him succeed by default, we also become quite fond of Crowe’s charming rogue and thus have to grapple with the truth that either character’s survival is predicated upon the other’s demise. Unfortunately, character motivation becomes somewhat erratic in the film’s final scenes and it’s hard to shake the feeling that – as much fun as it is to watch the brilliant Bale act in any movie – he’s slightly miscast, always appearing too stoic to play the social whipping boy that is his character. Nevertheless, these are still three-dimensional characters and that makes all the difference when compared to the one-dimensional bots that populate the visual orgy of Shoot ‘Em Up.

Fierce People: On Deadly Ground

"Fierce People is nasty, unfunny and wildly incongruous."

Click here to read my entire review in The L Magazine

The Monastery: Mr. Vig & The Nun: Something's Afoot in Denmark

"...the buoyant musical score and the numerous close-up shots of dust particles dancing in the sunlight complement the vitality of the film’s creaky and wheezy but nonetheless determined protagonist."

Click here to read my review in The L Magazine

The Lookout: Keep Your Eyes Peeled

"The Lookout is one of the year’s most exciting films; a rousing, supremely entertaining crime thriller about a bank heist. But what the marketing doesn’t divulge is that it’s much more than just a genre picture. In fact, it’s an intense character study about a young man coming to terms with a self-induced disability."

Click here to read my entire review at the [with]tv blog

The Invasion: Insomniacs Wanted

"There may be enough unexpected startles to appease a Friday night crowd in this final, fragmented version but the unfulfilled mixture of camp and terror constantly reminds the audience of just how much the film is a shamble."

Click here to read my entire review at TheCinemaSource.com

Delirious: Bohemian Like You

"Delirious’s formalist schizophrenia leaves one uncertain if the film is intended to be farce or fairy tale, but Buscemi’s dynamite performance makes it worth seeing anyway."

Click here to read my entire review in The L Magazine