This documentary about the Brooklyn rock band The National centers on lead singer Matt Berninger's fuck-up brother Tom, who toured with the group as a roadie and fumbled a documentary out of the experience. Given that the band is one of the best and most exciting out there, this is akin to a profile on the Yankee's water boy, or close-ups of the Mona Lisa's frame. There's surprisingly little concert footage, and revelations about the group's dynamics or creative process are few and far between. (The interview questions essentially satirize the format: Do you get sleepy on stage? Where do you see the band in 50 years?)
Oblivion: It seems clear by now that Tom Cruise is in some kind of damage-control blockbuster mode; following his public meltdown and a couple of his only movies ever to disappoint at the box office and with the critics simultaneously (Lions for Lambs and Knight and Day), he headed back to the familiar comfort of Paramount franchises. When Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol hit big like it was 1996 all over again, Cruise got further encouragement: maybe everyone's ready to embrace Tom Cruise, Popular Movie Star, all over again. Hence a star turn in Jack Reacher that seemed like a move he could've made in 1994 or so, had he not made a conscious decision to work with top-level directors like Brian De Palma, Paul Thomas Anderson, Stanley Kubrick, Cameron Crowe, Steven Spielberg, and Michael Mann. Now he has committed to what feels a bit like the B-movie alternate universe of his movie star career: Joseph Kosinski's Oblivion is the first of three sci-fi action pictures Cruise has signed up for. Doug Liman's All You Need is Kill follows in spring 2014, and it's looking like the Japanese-originated sci-fi adaptation Yukikaze may follow. Odd that someone who spaces out his signature Mission: Impossible franchise enough to avoid burnout is heading back to the sci-fi well for three straight trips, especially when the non-sci-fi Cruise projects in the mix are a fifth Mission, a second Reacher, and maybe that Man from UNCLE movie that's clearly never getting made by anyone ever.
There’s a not-insignificant part of the population that considers the biggest corporate threat to America to be not an energy giant or weapons manufacturers but Monsanto, the agriculture giant involved in genetically modified seeds and other “Franken-foods.” A key part of the American food debate, which is so linked to health issues, agribusiness has gotten little attention in movies other than documentaries, which is why At Any Price is a particular disappointment. Like Promised Land, a similarly earnest, similarly unsuccessful attempt to delve into the problems of the heartland, Price never feels comfortable in its own skin.
V/H/S/2 Directed by Simon Barrett, Jason Eisener, Gareth Evans, Gregg Hale, Eduardo Sanchez, Timo Tjahjanto and Adam Wingard
Last year’s V/H/S was an unexpectedly strong entry in not just the horror genre but also—even more surprising—the tired found-footage subgenre. Sporting a murderer’s row of gifted directors, the anthology film was able to concentrate on horror’s natural strengths (kinetic energy, social commentary) while limiting the genre’s weaknesses (an often-fatal apathy towards character development and nuance).V/H/S/2 is more of the same, but shows how vulnerable the formula is to become tired and repetitive.
The Mortal Storm (1940) Directed by Frank Borzage This great American director worked under the influence of F.W. Murnau; from the German émigré he learned how Expressionist lighting and a moving camera could be used to show sweethearts uniting against a dangerous encroaching outer world. Storm unfolds in Nazi Germany, where “non-Aryan” Professor Viktor Roth (Frank Morgan) proclaims the value of personal freedom as his grown children choose their paths. His two sons become National Socialists while his daughter Freya (Margaret Sullavan) and her darling Martin Breitner (James Stewart) follow him in resisting the Party. Storm’s release led to all MGM films being banned in Germany, with good reason. The film’s chief villain is Fascism, to be defeated by love. Aaron Cutler (Apr 20-21 at MoMA, part of its The Weimar Touch)
Scary Movie 5: As much as the Weinsteins have triumphed recently by betting on past successes like Quentin Tarantino and David O. Russell, they've had a hell of a time when attempting to revive long-dormant signature franchises. Scream and Spy Kids had trilogies that averaged around $100 million per entry, and they grossed almost exactly the same lousy $38 million when TWC revived them for sequels—even with the original directors on board. This suggests that Scary Movie 5, arriving seven years after Scary Movie 4 in a series that has never had more than a three-year gap, may be poised for similar disappointment. Then again, the Scary Movie series has pretty much always defied box-office gravity. Even Scary Movie 4, a downright terrible installment (right in line with what I've seen from Scary Movie 2, and a major comedown from the mildest of bright spots that was Scary Movie 3) made 90 million! Dollars! Former masters of the spoof genre David Zucker (of the once-mighty Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker) and go-to gagman Pat Proft (he of both Police Academy and the Naked Gun series) have the cowriting credits, while Malcom D. Lee (the sweet Roll Bounce; the slapdash Undercover Brother) takes over directing, maybe in a bid to curb some creepy neocon influence from Zucker, who last directed the why-do-you-hate-America-and-let-the-terrorists-win screed-comedy An American Carol.
CB4 (1993) Directed by Tamra Davis It throws you headlong into the gonzo antics of aspiring middle-class rappers who have to cop the criminal persona of a nightclub owner who fears they've double crossed him in order to achieve superstardom. Few films that appeared on the scene in the midst of the early 90s hood-cinema craze have the staying power of Davis' second feature, a Guestian gangster rap mockumentary cowritten by Chris Rock (who also appears in his first starring role) and perpetually dissatisfied black cultural critic Nelson George. The film has aged well, even if N.W.A.'s music hasn't; beyond featuring Charlie Murphy's finest performance this side of the Chappelle Show and the late Phil Hartman's most subversive work, it has a legitimately intoxicating soundtrack of faux hits, "Sweat From my Balls" being the album's cri de coeur. Brandon Harris (Apr 12 at 92Y Tribeca)
Evil Dead: Hollywood, Sam Raimi, and his Ghost House Pictures have long-threatened a remake of Raimi's no-budget horror classic The Evil Dead, and what little comfort the presence of the director himself as producer provided was erased, at least for me, by the abysmal track record of his Ghost House Pictures—a horror shingle that has produced exactly one strong horror movie, Raimi's own Drag Me to Hell. But Raimi and his fellow producers Robert Tapert and Bruce Campbell pressed on, and eventually handed the spiritual keys to Raimi's Oldsmobile over to newcomer Fede Alvarez, who, it's said, impressed the team with a fresh pitch.
Posted
by Henry Stewart
on Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 9:30 AM
Simon Killer, about a vaguely unhinged, recently graduated New Yorker who travels to Paris and ends up shacking up with a sex worker, opens today at the IFC Center. We spoke to director Antonio Campos, who lives in Williamsburg, where he moved after a breakup, about the script vs. improv, how to film a sex scene in France, and why he's so interested in fucked-up characters.
Why set the movie in Paris? Was it so you could take a trip to Paris?! It seemed like the natural place to start the story of a young college graduate trying to find himself, and love, on his first European trip.
My father passed away last year, a few years older than Roger Ebert but of the same generation: just after The Greatest, just before the Baby Boom. A few years ago, he wrote to me after reading a couple of my reviews and said something like, "You're sounding even more like Ebert these days. Or maybe he's starting to sound like you." It was the former, of course. I've copied Roger Ebert consciously and unconsciously for years. Ten years into writing reviews on a regular basis, and I still catch myself doing it: phrasing something (or trying to) with a voice of avuncular authority, that matter-of-fact wryness, that earnest appreciation even of movies that just do their job and get it done with reasonable efficiency.
Posted
by Henry Stewart
on Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 9:30 AM
"Nitehawk’s The Works series was created to highlight and contextualize significant contributions to cinema," according to the Williamsburg movie theater's blog, and its Karen Black series—the actress' first retrospective—kicks off this weekend with Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider (1969), featuring one of Black's earliest screen roles. She would go on to appear in other classic films like Nashville. (Nitehawk will also show Five Easy Pieces, Family Plot, Day of the Locust, and more.)
Many of the screenings will feature celebrity introductions; Sean Young will introduce the April 5th screening. Black herself is presently battling cancer, but she has pre-recorded a Q&A for the Easy Rider screenings. An exclusive clip from this interview is below, in which she discusses why she thinks the film did so well; part of it is because cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs was willing almost to fall from a helicopter just to get a shot!
G.I. Joe: Retaliation: This is a sequel to the totally lousy initial attempt at mounting a G.I. Joe franchise from way back in 2009. Troubled productions that scrape their way to break-even status at the box office aren't usually locks for sequels, and especially don't tend to inspire sequels released almost four years later, the kind of gap Star Trek or Batman can get away with; maybe not so much Hasbro. But Paramount really, really wanted to make G.I. Joe 2 happen, so they did what all franchises must do in order to guarantee success: they called The Rock (starring in the second of four last-weekend-of-the-month features in a row). They also called Bruce Willis, apparently in a bid to turn every franchise into The Expendables. They also added 3D, which is the stated reason this movie got bumped from its summer 2012 release date into this spring. They also probably (spoiler alert? It seems clear from the trailers) killed off the Channing Tatum character as a vestige of the previous, not particularly well-loved movie, and then watched as Tatum became a much bigger star with The Vow, 21 Jump Street, and Magic Mike (which shared Joe 2's original release date! Oh the double features that might have been!); it seems likely that they used the extra time to put some extra Tatum in the movie—either via existing footage or reshoots. Basically, two entries in, this film series has gone through so much tinkering, you'd think NBC was in charge of it. But director Jon Chu did a pretty nice job on the better Step Up movies (his best work, Step Up 2 the Streets, also featured Channing Tatum appearing basically just to peace out of the series); maybe Chu plus the Rock plus ninjas will equal stupid fun instead of just stupid.
Here are a few stray thoughts I had while sitting and watching Olympus Has Fallen, an also-ran action movie about the White House under (literal) attack.
Posted
by Henry Stewart
on Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 12:35 PM
Today is Dyker Heights native Angelo Badalamenti's birthday, and, in celebration of the renowned composer best known for his David Lynch collaborations, there'll be a Twin Peaks costume party at The Owl's Head wine bar—WHERE THE OWLS ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM—tonight in Bay Ridge (as close to Dyker Heights as you'll find someone willing to throw a fucking Angelo Badalamenti party). While I raid my closet to see if I can pull off a One-Armed Man costume, I figured we could all get into the mood by listening to the best tracks from Julee Cruise's first two solo albums, with lyrics by Lynch and music by Badalamenti, many of which were used on Twin Peaks. [photo]
Posted
by Jeff Klingman
on Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 12:17 PM
Weirdly, the biggest entertainment news of the moment is that Veronica Mars, a cult-beloved but long cancelled teen detective show, has been resurrected on the strength of fan base devotion and is now destined for a major motion picture, which will shoot this summer and be released in early 2014. Show creator Rob Thomas (not the terrible Matchbox 20/Santana song Rob Thomas, it should always be noted) put up a Kickstarter funding page a couple days ago, hoping to gain the movie-modest sum of $2 million dollars. At this point, 2 days in to a 30-day project window, they've got 50,000 backers and $3.3 million dollars. Holy shit! Despite throwing money at all sorts of things, Kickstarter, the website founded in 2009 to provide crowd-sourced funding, has never funded a project on this scale before, and as a magic cash sponge for other seemingly marginal projects, it's obviously drawing a lot of attention.
But is this a brand new day in film financing that has the potential to change how Hollywood works? Probably not! But it's still cool! Except when it's really troubling! A breakdown...
Posted
by Henry Stewart
on Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 11:45 AM
The Amityville Horror—first the 1975 news story, then the 1977 book, then the 1979 film, then its many sequels and remake—captivated the country, and the Long Island town became synonymous with haunted houses in the late 20th century. Skeptics, though, rapidly emerged, poking holes in the family's story of spirits, demons, and unusual happenings until it's now more or less agreed, at least among the commentariat, that the whole thing was a hoax. But at least one person still believes that paranormal horrors transpired at 112 Ocean Avenue, someone who was there—Daniel Lutz, the eldest "Amityville kid," who goes public with his story in Eric Walter's new documentary My Amityville Horror, which opens today at the IFC Center.
Spring Breakers: Harmony Korine shoots Spring Breakers in a dreamy neon glow: he starts with sun-kissed spring-break footage equal parts MTV commercialization and Girls Gone Wild debauchery, moves into slow-motion, pumps up the Skrillex score, and goes to shots of a college in the middle of nowhere, desolate big streets at night, and some girls, bored, half of them played by ex-Disney multimedia princesses. I'm describing technique here rather than incident because the movie drowns itself in the former; Korine treats the whole movie as a montage with a tempo that persistently feels as if it will shift but then doesn't. Oddly, the movie's basic outline has some propulsion: vapid college girls steal some money, head down to Florida for a life-changing spring break, get busted, and wind up entwined with a drug dealer calling himself Alien (James Franco). But Korine over-edits most of the movie into a hallucinatory blur.
Oz: The Great and Powerful: Sam Raimi's career hasn't exactly been unproductive, but I was surprised, looking over his IMDB page, how easy it is to divide his movies into three categories. There's the Evil Dead trilogy and its affiliates, which I'd count as Darkman and Drag Me to Hell and even Crimewave: the weird, wild ones, mostly at the beginning of his career (Hell being a 2009 palate-cleansing outlier). There's the run of big studio genre-hoppers he made in relatively quick succession to prove he was ready for bigger things: The Quick and the Dead, A Simple Plan, For Love of the Game, and The Gift. And there's the Spider-Man trilogy, which seems like the natural fusion of his fun, anarchic stuff and his big-studio stuff. Oz: The Great and Powerful seems like it's supposed to fit in the "and affiliates" section of his Spider-Man phase: big budget, effects-heavy, and even more family-friendly (think about that: outside of the always kid-appealing Spider-Man, Raimi's family-friendliest movie ever is probably... Army of Darkness? Darkman? The Stooges-inspired bits of Evil Dead 2?). So as much as big-budget fantasy movies seem to enrage a whole lot of people, it's hard not to see Oz as the destination Raimi has been approaching, quite purposefully, for some time now.
Director Park Chan-wook called Stoker, his first English-language movie, a turning point in his career. Through his on-set translator, he explained last night at a Museum of the Moving Image Q&A that he felt a chapter coming to an end as he finished work on Thirst, his excellent vampire movie from 2009. When reading the script for Stoker—supplied, trivia alert, by former Prison Break star Wentworth Miller—he "heard" a quiet film, one where the small creaks in floorboards would stand out. Stoker is and isn't that quiet movie: it's a bit like Brian De Palma riffing on Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (a Hitch classic that never got the unofficial De Palma remake treatment during his 70s/80s run), fusing the former's lunatic bravado—some of Park's shots have laugh-out-loud audacity—with the latter's intense control. He twiddles the knobs further, turning up (by virtue of this being 2013) Hitchcock's perversity and turning down De Palma's feverish homage. Neither director's name came up in the Q&A, and it didn't seem like a dodge; Stoker fits neatly into Park's filmography.
Jack the Giant Slayer: The fire sale on fairy-tale adaptations greenlit in the wake of Alice in Wonderland, and shelved in the wake of the realization that a billion dollars' worth of people going to see a Tim Burton movie does not in fact indicate a bottomless appetite for big-budget fairy tales, continues: after Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters comes Bryan Singer's Jack and the Beanstalk riff that was, like Hansel, originally scheduled for a 2012 bow. Jack the Giant Slayer now occupies a release-date no man's land; Disney's return to Oz took the early-March Alice slot next weekend, and Warner Brothers has inexplicably decided to live with beating Disney to theaters by exactly one week, presumably assuming that because their movie technically grabbed the first weekend of March, it will emerge victorious. Or maybe they're just trying to spitefully wing Disney's movie on their way down.
