Quick clips for Thursday December 18
Not that you care or anything (which hurts...it really hurts) but, because of deadlines and whatnot (especially the whatnot, damn that whatnot), I'm trying to avoid posting a lot of movie tidbits here. See, I'm saving them for the print version and the regular Cutting Room column on the site (speaking of which, unless the mythical site upgrade comes within the next 13 days, I get to add another year to the total time I've been waiting for a new layout...we're trying to wait out the Internet, but the damn thing just keeps chugging along). This means yet another off-the-cuff blogging session!
Instead of giving you more of me riffing off the top of my head, I thought I would count down for you the best non-me movie reviews of the year at The Reader. I could include my own, but I'm not "that guy," well, I am sometimes but not today. Oh, and when I say the best of the year, I mean since June, because our awesome site doesn't archive beyond that. Yippee, another year of whining under my belt!
5.) Movie: Changeling, Reviewer: Patricia Sindelar
I really liked that Patricia didn't bow down to the power of the Eastwood, pointing out the hackneyed machine he's become. Plus, killer titles always get me, and this one was just great.
The Times are a Changeling
Eastwood's new flick is epically long
Patricia Sindelar
As a director, Clint Eastwood never learned the art of succinct story telling. Only two of the 16 movies he’s made in the last 20 years run less than two hours — both by just 10 minutes. So when I drew the short straw and had to review his newest film, Changeling (based on the 1928 Wineville Chicken Coop Murders), I was prepared for an epic snoozer.
Although the biggest problem with the movie is its length (clocking in at a bladder-bursting 141 minutes), content and acting are surprisingly pleasing. Angelina Jolie stars as Christine Collins, a single mother living in Los Angeles. Her son mysteriously disappears one Saturday; after months of anguish, he is returned. Only the boy the LAPD bring back as Walter Collins is not really Walter Collins, and Christine begins a heroic battle against the corrupt police department.
True, Jolie overacts about 80 percent of the time, probably to distract from her clown-like lips, which the makeup department painted fire-engine red. But her Christine Collins evokes sympathy and support, at times even pride. John Malkovich is the knight-in-shining-armor Reverend Gustav Briegleb, a pastor and radio host committed to exposing political corruption. He champions Christine’s cause in grand fashion, and his character highlights one of the best parts of the film: The good guys are really good and the bad guys are really, really bad. Police Captain J.J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan) is so overtly heinous, he’s practically hateable from his first scene.
Sadly, even the powerful story and above-average acting can’t mask the fact that what should be told in 90 minutes takes nearly two and one-half hours. The normal procedure for a film like this is to tell the plight of the main character, then wrap up loose ends with a few words at the end. For example, the tried-and-true formula of “So-and-so served X number of years in prison and so-and-so never stopped fighting for X.” Eastwood, however, includes minute details, and pads it with unnecessary scenes and flashbacks, warping it so far from actual events that the words “a true story” which appear at the beginning are just a damned lie.
Changeling is worth seeing, but as a DVD rental and a fictional tale, not as a theater release intended to be “true.”
GRADE: C
4.) Movie: The Edge of Heaven, Reviewer: Ben Coffman
Seriously, this one gets in on title alone...although it also gave me one of my favorite ongoing references ("Yes, the Nurgul Yesilcay").
Turkey Sad-Wich
Heaven highlights lost Turks lacking love
Ben Coffman
Germans of Turkish descent are an underrepresented and somewhat unknown group, especially in the United States. A post–World War II diaspora created a population of millions of Turks living in Germany, the country’s largest ethnic minority. Several generations of ethnic Turks have grown up in Germany. The most famous of them include soccer player Mehmet Scholl, rapper Savas Yurderi (aka Kool Savas) and writer/director Fatih Akin, whose newest effort, The Edge of Heaven, highlights Turkish-German characters.
Set in Bremen, Germany, and Instanbul, Turkey, the movie begins with Ali Aksu (Tuncel Kurtiz), a rotund retiree and widower who’s been looking for love (or at least some sexy companionship) in all the wrong places — namely, the local Bremen brothels. There, he finds working girl Yeter (Nursel Köse), a fellow Turk. Yeter is looking to exit the oldest profession and Ali offers her a deal — move into his place and doink him full-time, and he will compensate her well. She agrees.
Once installed as Ali’s resident mattress, Yeter meets Ali’s son Nejat (Baki Davrak), a professor at the local university. Not long after, Ali suffers a heart attack, and son and former whore are left to take care of Ali. Nejat then learns of Yeter’s lost daughter Ayten (Nurgül Yesilçay, yes, the Nurgül Yesilçay), and after a couple of quick plot twists that are better left untold, Nejat feels that finding Ayten is his duty in life. Meanwhile, Ayten has fled Turkey, picked up her German lover Lotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska) and has been fruitlessly searching for her mother.
Written and directed by Akin, The Edge of Heaven is a thematically rich tale that benefits from well-written characters and dialogue and an interesting point of view. However, as you might imagine after reading the above plot synopsis, it takes quite a juggler to keep these characters and plots aloft and in motion. Conveniently, the story is split into three acts, each bearing its own subtitle, the first two directly telling the audience that a character will die. Despite its great characterization, however, Akin liberally plays with the viewer’s expectations, to the point where the story no longer feels as if it’s unfolding organically — instead, we sense the writer’s hand guiding his pawns to a specific, predetermined endpoint.
GRADE: C+
3.) Movie: Religulous, Reviewer: Justin Senkbile
I love the "open letter" approach to writing a review. Plus, it was so refreshing to hear someone who is in the target audience for the movie hating on it.
Dear Bill
Religulous has some explaining to do
Justin Senkbile
Dear Mr. Maher,
I’m writing to let you know that I’m very troubled by your new movie Religulous. I am an agnostic, and pretty overwhelmingly liberal. That said, I can’t remember the last time that I’ve wanted to walk out of a movie. Rarely have I been so disgusted.
You begin by leading us to believe that we’re about to see an investigation into the basis of faith and religion in the world. It sounds interesting and innocent enough ... until we see you in action. Scene after scene you parade around like a rich, arrogant child, doling out insults and mockery while leaving out investigation, even simple curiosity.
Clearly, you had your mind made up on these issues long before making Religulous, which gave you plenty of time to think of witty one-liners and comebacks for every possible argument. Everyone you meet is just another ignorant fool ... unless, of course, they’re as cynical as you, or you think the audience might have a soft spot for them, like the Vatican astronomer you interview, or the dyspeptic priest outside.
I wonder, in your search for “answers” (and you’re constantly playing innocent, claiming “I’m looking for answers!”), why you’d want to constantly interrupt and insult the very people you’re consulting? And why let director Larry Charles chop it up in the editing room like some VH1 pop culture hour, adding cute little subtitles to the conversations, and even falsely overdub a man’s words in English? To get laughs and sell tickets at the expense of your message? Pretty cheap, Bill.
I am in no way a political or religious expert. And let’s be clear, my problem is not with your religious stance but with your methods and your phony posturing, the way you and Mr. Charles have deceitfully presented your film as anything more valuable than reality television. And to think that some people view Michael Moore as manipulative ...
You seem to be happiest not when you’re insulting the religious right, but when your pomposity turns towards your own audience, the ones who bought the tickets, the ones you directly address in your fire-and-brimstone closing monologue. If Religulous succeeds on any level, it’s during that scene, where you triumphantly bully together that eager-to-please breed of liberal that takes the issues in your movie more seriously than you do.
What a sham.
Disappointedly,
Justin
GRADE: F
2.) Movie: The Secret Life of Bees, Reviewer: Justin Senkbile
Justin really hit it out of the park on this one. In fact, the phrase "a nice movie for nice people who want to feel nice" may be one of the best lines in any review I've read all year anywhere.
Sentimental Swarm
Bees safely treads the middle of the road
Justin Senkbile
A little sentimentality goes a long way, as The Secret Life of Bees proves, adding just a dash of emotional weight to what is essentially a nice movie for nice people who want to feel nice. It might actually be the definition of a “good” movie: It offends no one and takes no chances, placing itself somewhere comfortably between greatness and trash. Which isn't a bad thing because it remains an undeniably pleasing picture.
You'd want to run away too if, like Lily (Dakota Fanning), you'd accidentally murdered your mother at age four and were currently being abused by a father named T. Ray (Paul Bettany). She does just that, and takes the recently brutalized maid Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson) with her, not sure where exactly they're headed.
By chance, and some crafty storytelling on Lily's part, they become guests in the home of a successful honey maker named August Boatwright (Queen Latifah) and her sisters, May (Sophie Okonedo) and June (Alicia Keys). The Boatwright house is like nothing they've seen, a luxurious, warm, cultured world ruled by three empowered and fiercely independent black women. That Latifah, Okenodo and Keys kept those characters from becoming caricatures is amazing.
The movie is set in the south in 1964, and although the scenes of racial strife are violent and jarring enough, director Gina Prince-Bythewood never gets in over her head with politics. She stays focused on the little world inside Miss August's house, one that operates more or less outside of the era's oppressive social climate. Focusing on the Boatwright universe isn't a cop-out, just an uncommon priority and the only honest option in regards to the story. And that story can be a little thin.
Thankfully, Latifah, Okonedo and Keys take charge of their characters and bring them fully and vividly onto the screen. Without them, The Secret Life of Bees easily could have turned into just another nice, inexpensive way for white people to have black friends for a few hours.
Even besides those three, the performances are generally good. Fanning has some excellent moments, although she often teeters on becoming another shameless Hollywood sob-thief. While the movie's probable Oscar potential is unwarranted, it's a fine example of light entertainment that knows where it stands. A melodrama of the heart-warming variety, The Secret Life of Bees is a well-crafted piece of mediocrity, nothing more and nothing less.
Grade: C
And finally...drumroll please, the top spot goes to:
1.) Movie: My Winnipeg, Reviewer: Ben Coffman
From the invention of the term "crockumentary" to the pitch-perfect invocation of Slim Goodbody, this is the review I reread most often this year. Nicely played.
Oh, Canada?
Maddin rewrites history, puts Winnipeg on the map
Ben Coffman
If we are to believe director Guy Maddin, Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba, is the stuff of surreal, haunting nightmares. It is a city inhabited by somnambulant zombie-citizens, below which a confluence of rivers create some kind of magnetic, mystical field, always pulling its denizens back whenever they attempt to escape. All of these bizarre allegations (and many more) are enough to send most logical viewers scrambling to Wikipedia for verification.
Of course, these details are, most likely, from Maddin’s vibrant imagination, and My Winnipeg is no more a documentary than James Frey’s much-vilified A Million Little Pieces was a memoir. In Maddin’s words, all of this hyperbole-fueled narration and whimsy is “docutasia,” a close cinematic relative to magical realism, Canada-style. But, if you don’t mind, I’d like to call it a crockumentary.
The movie begins with the director himself delivering the highly repetitive, pseudo-sinister narration while reels of happy, old-school stock footage of Winnipeg spin away. Maddin’s prose quickly becomes so maddeningly repetitive that if we were to string up the director and skin him alive — removing one square inch of flesh for every time he uttered the word “Winnipeg” — Maddin would resemble Slim Goodbody by the film’s tenth minute.
But all this repetition (and the sleep-themed narrative) works like a hypnotist’s soothing voice and spinning pocket watch. Twelve minutes in, when Maddin believes the tone of the movie to be properly set, we get to the good stuff — ridiculous and hilarious tall tales of Maddin’s fantasy hometown, populated with historical characters that seemed to have stepped right out of Fire Walk With Me. Blend in some metacinema, as the narrator, who plays a character named Guy, attempts to recreate scenes from his childhood using his mother (Ann Savage) and a small group of extras as his brothers and sister, and you have utter, hilarious weirdness, all shown to us via old stock footage, 30-year-old home videos and newly shot, black and white scenes.
My Winnipeg is so unusual and unique that it truly must be seen to be “believed.”
However, I placed that last word in quotations for a reason. My Winnipeg is the kind of movie that can make a fool of you. Please, please don’t recite some of the movie’s details as “facts” at your next cocktail party. Your friends who have not seen My Winnipeg will think you’re crazy.
GRADE: B
I'm sure there were some great reviews prior to June, but they have been devoured by a system that cares not for archiving. Tune in tomorrow to see my miserable box office predictions!
Instead of giving you more of me riffing off the top of my head, I thought I would count down for you the best non-me movie reviews of the year at The Reader. I could include my own, but I'm not "that guy," well, I am sometimes but not today. Oh, and when I say the best of the year, I mean since June, because our awesome site doesn't archive beyond that. Yippee, another year of whining under my belt!
5.) Movie: Changeling, Reviewer: Patricia Sindelar
I really liked that Patricia didn't bow down to the power of the Eastwood, pointing out the hackneyed machine he's become. Plus, killer titles always get me, and this one was just great.
The Times are a Changeling
Eastwood's new flick is epically long
Patricia Sindelar
As a director, Clint Eastwood never learned the art of succinct story telling. Only two of the 16 movies he’s made in the last 20 years run less than two hours — both by just 10 minutes. So when I drew the short straw and had to review his newest film, Changeling (based on the 1928 Wineville Chicken Coop Murders), I was prepared for an epic snoozer.
Although the biggest problem with the movie is its length (clocking in at a bladder-bursting 141 minutes), content and acting are surprisingly pleasing. Angelina Jolie stars as Christine Collins, a single mother living in Los Angeles. Her son mysteriously disappears one Saturday; after months of anguish, he is returned. Only the boy the LAPD bring back as Walter Collins is not really Walter Collins, and Christine begins a heroic battle against the corrupt police department.
True, Jolie overacts about 80 percent of the time, probably to distract from her clown-like lips, which the makeup department painted fire-engine red. But her Christine Collins evokes sympathy and support, at times even pride. John Malkovich is the knight-in-shining-armor Reverend Gustav Briegleb, a pastor and radio host committed to exposing political corruption. He champions Christine’s cause in grand fashion, and his character highlights one of the best parts of the film: The good guys are really good and the bad guys are really, really bad. Police Captain J.J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan) is so overtly heinous, he’s practically hateable from his first scene.
Sadly, even the powerful story and above-average acting can’t mask the fact that what should be told in 90 minutes takes nearly two and one-half hours. The normal procedure for a film like this is to tell the plight of the main character, then wrap up loose ends with a few words at the end. For example, the tried-and-true formula of “So-and-so served X number of years in prison and so-and-so never stopped fighting for X.” Eastwood, however, includes minute details, and pads it with unnecessary scenes and flashbacks, warping it so far from actual events that the words “a true story” which appear at the beginning are just a damned lie.
Changeling is worth seeing, but as a DVD rental and a fictional tale, not as a theater release intended to be “true.”
GRADE: C
4.) Movie: The Edge of Heaven, Reviewer: Ben Coffman
Seriously, this one gets in on title alone...although it also gave me one of my favorite ongoing references ("Yes, the Nurgul Yesilcay").
Turkey Sad-Wich
Heaven highlights lost Turks lacking love
Ben Coffman
Germans of Turkish descent are an underrepresented and somewhat unknown group, especially in the United States. A post–World War II diaspora created a population of millions of Turks living in Germany, the country’s largest ethnic minority. Several generations of ethnic Turks have grown up in Germany. The most famous of them include soccer player Mehmet Scholl, rapper Savas Yurderi (aka Kool Savas) and writer/director Fatih Akin, whose newest effort, The Edge of Heaven, highlights Turkish-German characters.
Set in Bremen, Germany, and Instanbul, Turkey, the movie begins with Ali Aksu (Tuncel Kurtiz), a rotund retiree and widower who’s been looking for love (or at least some sexy companionship) in all the wrong places — namely, the local Bremen brothels. There, he finds working girl Yeter (Nursel Köse), a fellow Turk. Yeter is looking to exit the oldest profession and Ali offers her a deal — move into his place and doink him full-time, and he will compensate her well. She agrees.
Once installed as Ali’s resident mattress, Yeter meets Ali’s son Nejat (Baki Davrak), a professor at the local university. Not long after, Ali suffers a heart attack, and son and former whore are left to take care of Ali. Nejat then learns of Yeter’s lost daughter Ayten (Nurgül Yesilçay, yes, the Nurgül Yesilçay), and after a couple of quick plot twists that are better left untold, Nejat feels that finding Ayten is his duty in life. Meanwhile, Ayten has fled Turkey, picked up her German lover Lotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska) and has been fruitlessly searching for her mother.
Written and directed by Akin, The Edge of Heaven is a thematically rich tale that benefits from well-written characters and dialogue and an interesting point of view. However, as you might imagine after reading the above plot synopsis, it takes quite a juggler to keep these characters and plots aloft and in motion. Conveniently, the story is split into three acts, each bearing its own subtitle, the first two directly telling the audience that a character will die. Despite its great characterization, however, Akin liberally plays with the viewer’s expectations, to the point where the story no longer feels as if it’s unfolding organically — instead, we sense the writer’s hand guiding his pawns to a specific, predetermined endpoint.
GRADE: C+
3.) Movie: Religulous, Reviewer: Justin Senkbile
I love the "open letter" approach to writing a review. Plus, it was so refreshing to hear someone who is in the target audience for the movie hating on it.
Dear Bill
Religulous has some explaining to do
Justin Senkbile
Dear Mr. Maher,
I’m writing to let you know that I’m very troubled by your new movie Religulous. I am an agnostic, and pretty overwhelmingly liberal. That said, I can’t remember the last time that I’ve wanted to walk out of a movie. Rarely have I been so disgusted.
You begin by leading us to believe that we’re about to see an investigation into the basis of faith and religion in the world. It sounds interesting and innocent enough ... until we see you in action. Scene after scene you parade around like a rich, arrogant child, doling out insults and mockery while leaving out investigation, even simple curiosity.
Clearly, you had your mind made up on these issues long before making Religulous, which gave you plenty of time to think of witty one-liners and comebacks for every possible argument. Everyone you meet is just another ignorant fool ... unless, of course, they’re as cynical as you, or you think the audience might have a soft spot for them, like the Vatican astronomer you interview, or the dyspeptic priest outside.
I wonder, in your search for “answers” (and you’re constantly playing innocent, claiming “I’m looking for answers!”), why you’d want to constantly interrupt and insult the very people you’re consulting? And why let director Larry Charles chop it up in the editing room like some VH1 pop culture hour, adding cute little subtitles to the conversations, and even falsely overdub a man’s words in English? To get laughs and sell tickets at the expense of your message? Pretty cheap, Bill.
I am in no way a political or religious expert. And let’s be clear, my problem is not with your religious stance but with your methods and your phony posturing, the way you and Mr. Charles have deceitfully presented your film as anything more valuable than reality television. And to think that some people view Michael Moore as manipulative ...
You seem to be happiest not when you’re insulting the religious right, but when your pomposity turns towards your own audience, the ones who bought the tickets, the ones you directly address in your fire-and-brimstone closing monologue. If Religulous succeeds on any level, it’s during that scene, where you triumphantly bully together that eager-to-please breed of liberal that takes the issues in your movie more seriously than you do.
What a sham.
Disappointedly,
Justin
GRADE: F
2.) Movie: The Secret Life of Bees, Reviewer: Justin Senkbile
Justin really hit it out of the park on this one. In fact, the phrase "a nice movie for nice people who want to feel nice" may be one of the best lines in any review I've read all year anywhere.
Sentimental Swarm
Bees safely treads the middle of the road
Justin Senkbile
A little sentimentality goes a long way, as The Secret Life of Bees proves, adding just a dash of emotional weight to what is essentially a nice movie for nice people who want to feel nice. It might actually be the definition of a “good” movie: It offends no one and takes no chances, placing itself somewhere comfortably between greatness and trash. Which isn't a bad thing because it remains an undeniably pleasing picture.
You'd want to run away too if, like Lily (Dakota Fanning), you'd accidentally murdered your mother at age four and were currently being abused by a father named T. Ray (Paul Bettany). She does just that, and takes the recently brutalized maid Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson) with her, not sure where exactly they're headed.
By chance, and some crafty storytelling on Lily's part, they become guests in the home of a successful honey maker named August Boatwright (Queen Latifah) and her sisters, May (Sophie Okonedo) and June (Alicia Keys). The Boatwright house is like nothing they've seen, a luxurious, warm, cultured world ruled by three empowered and fiercely independent black women. That Latifah, Okenodo and Keys kept those characters from becoming caricatures is amazing.
The movie is set in the south in 1964, and although the scenes of racial strife are violent and jarring enough, director Gina Prince-Bythewood never gets in over her head with politics. She stays focused on the little world inside Miss August's house, one that operates more or less outside of the era's oppressive social climate. Focusing on the Boatwright universe isn't a cop-out, just an uncommon priority and the only honest option in regards to the story. And that story can be a little thin.
Thankfully, Latifah, Okonedo and Keys take charge of their characters and bring them fully and vividly onto the screen. Without them, The Secret Life of Bees easily could have turned into just another nice, inexpensive way for white people to have black friends for a few hours.
Even besides those three, the performances are generally good. Fanning has some excellent moments, although she often teeters on becoming another shameless Hollywood sob-thief. While the movie's probable Oscar potential is unwarranted, it's a fine example of light entertainment that knows where it stands. A melodrama of the heart-warming variety, The Secret Life of Bees is a well-crafted piece of mediocrity, nothing more and nothing less.
Grade: C
And finally...drumroll please, the top spot goes to:
1.) Movie: My Winnipeg, Reviewer: Ben Coffman
From the invention of the term "crockumentary" to the pitch-perfect invocation of Slim Goodbody, this is the review I reread most often this year. Nicely played.
Oh, Canada?
Maddin rewrites history, puts Winnipeg on the map
Ben Coffman
If we are to believe director Guy Maddin, Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba, is the stuff of surreal, haunting nightmares. It is a city inhabited by somnambulant zombie-citizens, below which a confluence of rivers create some kind of magnetic, mystical field, always pulling its denizens back whenever they attempt to escape. All of these bizarre allegations (and many more) are enough to send most logical viewers scrambling to Wikipedia for verification.
Of course, these details are, most likely, from Maddin’s vibrant imagination, and My Winnipeg is no more a documentary than James Frey’s much-vilified A Million Little Pieces was a memoir. In Maddin’s words, all of this hyperbole-fueled narration and whimsy is “docutasia,” a close cinematic relative to magical realism, Canada-style. But, if you don’t mind, I’d like to call it a crockumentary.
The movie begins with the director himself delivering the highly repetitive, pseudo-sinister narration while reels of happy, old-school stock footage of Winnipeg spin away. Maddin’s prose quickly becomes so maddeningly repetitive that if we were to string up the director and skin him alive — removing one square inch of flesh for every time he uttered the word “Winnipeg” — Maddin would resemble Slim Goodbody by the film’s tenth minute.
But all this repetition (and the sleep-themed narrative) works like a hypnotist’s soothing voice and spinning pocket watch. Twelve minutes in, when Maddin believes the tone of the movie to be properly set, we get to the good stuff — ridiculous and hilarious tall tales of Maddin’s fantasy hometown, populated with historical characters that seemed to have stepped right out of Fire Walk With Me. Blend in some metacinema, as the narrator, who plays a character named Guy, attempts to recreate scenes from his childhood using his mother (Ann Savage) and a small group of extras as his brothers and sister, and you have utter, hilarious weirdness, all shown to us via old stock footage, 30-year-old home videos and newly shot, black and white scenes.
My Winnipeg is so unusual and unique that it truly must be seen to be “believed.”
However, I placed that last word in quotations for a reason. My Winnipeg is the kind of movie that can make a fool of you. Please, please don’t recite some of the movie’s details as “facts” at your next cocktail party. Your friends who have not seen My Winnipeg will think you’re crazy.
GRADE: B
I'm sure there were some great reviews prior to June, but they have been devoured by a system that cares not for archiving. Tune in tomorrow to see my miserable box office predictions!
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