Cheri (2009, dir. Stephen Frears)

Deja vu. I know I've seen this movie before. But where? Oh, right. EVERYWHERE. "Cheri" is like one of those tired period pieces that Hollywood seems to toss out every couple of years just to prove that it can still make films without massive explosions or CGI. The kicker here is that "Cheri" isn't a big-budget American movie. It's the latest film from British director Stephen Frears, the wildly uneven culprit of both the critically acclaimed ("Dirty Pretty Things," "The Queen," "Dangerous Liasons") and the cinematically challenged ("Hero," "Mary Reilly").

"Cheri" charts the illicit love affair between the aging Parisian courtesan Lea (Michelle Pfeifer) and the young, dark, and fabulously wealthy Cheri (Rupert Friend), who happens to be the son of another famous courtesan Madame Peloux (Kathy Bates). At the beginning of the film, we find Cheri adrift in a world of loose women, alcohol, and opium, and Lea whisks him off to the country as a favor to his worried mother. However, they find themselves oddly drawn to each other, and what was supposed to have been a short respite from the sins of the big city turns into a 6-year affair. Neither seem really aware of what they have until Peloux abruptly ends it by arranging a marriage for her son to the young daughter of yet another wealthy courtesan.

I think you can see where this is going. The problem is that you won't care. If the tired thematic material doesn't turn you off, the genuinely insincere acting certainly will. Pfeifer's performance is predictable at best, and Kathy Bates plods through her scenes with all the grace of a rhinoceros. Cheri was the only character I was even mildly intrigued by, but Rupert Friend's "performance" rested entirely on how many ways we care to interpret the same doleful expression. The remaining supporting cast consisted mainly of over the hill prostitutes drenched in makeup, and the cinematography was cookie-cutter from start to finish.

The film is based on the book of the same name by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette. Collete is perhaps best known for her novel "Gigi" which was also adapted for the screen in an award winning 1958 Lerner and Lowe musical. Maybe back then Hollywood filmmakers were still new enough to the material - and audiences were conservative enough to be mildly shocked by them - to make these sorts of films worthwhile. But today, with a few very notable exceptions, adaptations of this nature seem doomed from the outset.

Last Word: A tired, predictable period piece filled with wooden acting and cookie-cutter filmmaking.
Read more...

Terminator Salvation

Published on InReviewOnline

Terminator Salvation is not not half bad. For those of you confused by a double negative, that means that it's half bad. Which is a shame, since in order accomplish that, director Joseph McGinty Nichol had to not not ruin what was one of the most promising new characters the summer blockbuster season has produced yet.

Franchise resurrection is no simple endeavor. In fact, over time, you might have expected Hollywood to have learned something about it, given the number of half-resurrected abominations they've unleashed on us. Yet you have to give it to them. Like a Terminator, they simply don't know when to quit.

Terminator Salvation takes place in the year 2018, and for anyone familiar with both the original Terminator films and the paradoxes of time travel, you'll know that we might find John Connor (played by Christian Bale) in one of three realities: #1 a future in which John Conner had no foreknowledge of Skynet yet had somehow managed to lead a resistance movement against them; #2 a future in which he had grown up listening to tapes of his mother telling him about the Terminator that had traveled back in time and had nearly destroyed her before he was even conceived; and #3, the future in which not only did he have tapes of his mother, but in which he himself had been both hunted and protected by dueling Terminators from the future. Terminator Salvation resides firmly in #2.

If the first Terminator (made in 1984) showed us anything about our society, it showed how scared shitless we were of computers. By that same logic, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, made only seven years later, reflected an America a bit more comfortable with the machines. Maybe they're not out to replace us! Computers are our friends! Or as Sarah Connor so poetically stated in the film's last voice-over, "The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it, for the first time, with a sense of hope. Because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too."

Now that we're living in a time when computer implants are giving the deaf hearing and performance artists are turning their bodies into Internet portals, it's only fitting that Terminator Salvation toy with both our fascination and revulsion of all that modern technology seems to portend. As the film begins in the year 2003, we're introduced to Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a death-row inmate preparing for his final meal, seeking no reprieve and asking only to pay for the crimes he committed. Skipping forward to a post-nuclear-holocaust Los Angeles in the year 2018, we find that same Marcus miraculously crawling out of a hole that had just been atomized and which John Conner narrowly escaped. It's not long until we discover that (unbeknownst to him) Marcus's body has been replaced (save the heart and brain) by a cybernetic construct not unlike the original Terminators.

Christian Bale's dreadful, non-dimensional performance of future resistance leader John Conner surprised me almost as much as Australian Sam Worthington's magnetic role as the human terminator. In fact, given that John and Marcus's stories run parallel throughout the entire film, we could view the film not as a battle not between humanity and Skynet, but as a battle between compelling character development (Marcus) and a groan-inducing action-hero cliche (John). Can Marcus save the film from the overbearingly simplistic machinations of a John Conner reduced to gruff platitudes and slack-jawed stares? Or will the entire experience collapse beneath the weight of Hollywood's over-reliance on CG? At one point during the film, John Conner melodramatically asks, "If in the process of fighting this war we become as cold and calculating as the machines, then what's the point?" I might melodramatically add, "If in the process of unleashing the power of computer imagery in our films, we lose all that made film worthwhile, then what's the point?"

Final Thought: "I'll be back." Sigh.

Read more...

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Originally published at InReviewOnline

X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the opening salvo in 2009's battle for our expendable income, is both straightforward and efficient. Gone are the cunning stratagems and clever ambushes of yesterday's wars. Modern entertainment warfare, relying on technological superiority, is an all-out assault on our senses, hypnotizing us with an orgasmic array of carnage, sex, and spectacle. Our minds vainly struggle to process the avalanche of sensory data, leaving us few reserves for our intellectual and emotional counter-assaults.

The film begins with a short, confusing, overly melodramatic prelude, in which the young child Logan (that's Wolverine's real name for the uninitiated) impales his friend's father (who's actually his real father) in a fit of animal rage after realizing his real father (who's actually his fake father) died at his friend's father's hands. Confused? Don't worry, all that really matters is that we learn that his friend, Victor Creed (better known in the X-Men Universe as Sabretooth, Wolverine's arch-nemesis) is actually Logan's brother, thus paving the way for the familiar dialectic between sibling bonds and moral imperatives.

Immediately after the prelude, we witness the film's greatest cinematic achievement: the opening credits. No, I'm not joking. In the space of these credits, we watch the two brothers transform physically, emotionally, and psychologically as they fight their way through every major American war from the Civil War all the way to Vietnam. As each war grows more destructive, so do Victor's actions, culminating in an attempted rape scene in a Vietnamese village, with Logan torn between saving Victor from himself and protecting Victor from the criminal consequences of his actions. Few films have so efficiently charted a character's moral degradation, or so effectively set up the primary narrative dynamic.

Unfortunately, the film that follows fails to capitalize on this achievement; it proceeds more like a desperate race to the finish, and one that (perhaps intentionally) leaves us few chances for reflection. Characters rapidly grace the screen, slicing their way through the film, and exiting stage right just in time for the next characters to make their raucous entrance. We bounce back and forth between sets, locations. At the end, we're sweaty, out of breath, and a little light-headed (ironically, not unlike the film's protagonist). Even if we enjoyed the experience, we may not entirely remember it.

Though X-Men Origins: Wolverine can't measure up to some of the more admirable recent comic book adaptations like Spiderman, Iron Man, and Batman Begins, it also mercifully avoids any of the arrogant pretensions of one of it's more recent co-conspirators, Watchmen. And if its tragic, gritty tone may occasionally wobble, we can at least be thankful that the film never for a second pretends to be anything more than it is. Had it foolishly attempted to elevate itself from the ranks of frivolous diversion, we would have undoubtedly grown painfully aware of the lack of depth, narrative coherence, or witty repartee that a higher-caliber comic book film demands. We can endlessly debate the merits of escapist cinema, but there's no debating the inherent flaws of mindless entertainment that masquerades as real cinema.
Read more...

It's a Hoax: Joaquin Pheonix retires from acting and becomes a rapper

Tell me if you disagree, but this has to be a hoax, right? Joaquin Pheonix "retires" from acting.... so that he can become a rapper. And his brother-in-law celeb, Casey Affleck, is directing a documentary about his transition.

Consider the evidence:

#1) He gives a scoop to E! Entertainment of all places that he's retiring from the acting world and pursuing a career in music.


#2) In a follow-up interview, he affirms (in a less-than-sober manner) that he has indeed retired from acting, that there's more to his "artism" than film, and that it's, like, greener pastures.


#3) In a clearly stoned-out-his-gord performance, he hops up and down like a child, points the mic at the audience inviting them to shout the lyrics to a song he's rapping for the first time, and in the end, falls on his ass walking off the stage:



My theory: he and Casey decided to create a documentary hoax, seeing how many sheep would willingly buy into the idea that he's fallen off the wagon and become a rapper. What's even more interesting: how could all of those simps in the club actually believe that they're listening to good music (when he's clearly intentionally trying to be the worst rapper in the world).
Read more...

The Day The Earth (Didn't) Stand Still

Do you know what made science-fiction great back in the day? Dialogue, ideas, acting. Not action. (Exhibits for the prosecution: Forbidden Planet, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris, Soylent Green). The original 1952 version of "The Day The Earth Stood Still" was characterized by an almost complete lack of action - the earth literally stood still. It asked us to contemplate our own role in the universe (albeit in the hokey way Hollywood demanded for mass consumption).

I can't say I was surprised by this trailer. But you'd think after enduring years of crap-tastic remakes, I'd stop caring. Well I'm close.


Read more...

Madagascar 2

This isn’t exactly what I call “film.” It’s more in the orbit of “guilty pleasure.” I’ve seen the first “Madagascar” many more times than I care to admit. My wife and I love it so much, we even forced my grandparents to watch it. Their polite smiles and bewildered expressions were priceless.

I have a deep-seated fear of sequels. 2010, Shrek 2, Matrix 2, Ghostbuster 2, Aliens, Die Hard 2….. It’s an undeniable pattern. Sequels are Hollywood’s systematic prostitution of all that we hold dear and sacred. And we’re all masochists. Not to sound overly dramatic or anything.

So what about Madagascar 2? It ain’t Judas, and it ain’t the second coming. It had enough sparks of originality, irreverence, and pop-culture jabs to make me occasionally laugh my ass off. It’s Alex, Marty, Gloria, Melman. It’s insane penguins and cultured monkeys, with a sexually ambiguous lemur thrown in for good measure. It’s a love-slap in The Lion King’s face.

The story lacks the focus and uniform trajectory of its predecessor. You'll drift in and out. You’ll wonder exactly why it was necessary to bring back the castrating granny.

If you’ve got twelve dollars to waste, you could do much worse.
Read more...