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Home - Film
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Blather Jockey - |
Alice in Wonderland proves Burton has lost it
by Ryan Syrek
To director Tim Burton, the only thing more unimaginable than casting a minority in one of his films is allowing Johnny Depp to keep his dignity. Friends or not, if Depp had shot Burton in the face after watching the computer-generated jig his body was reanimated into performing during Alice in Wonderland’s dénouement, it would have been justifiable homicide. If something as flaccid as this exercise in 3D jackassery can leave a lasting impression, it will be remembered for the moment Depp and Burton officially became parodies of themselves. |
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The Mum Diary - |
Rum could’ve been
silent film
by Ben Coffman
In one scene during the final act of writer/director Claire Denis’ 35 Shots of Rum, a former conductor in the Paris metro rail system who had recently retired turned to Lionel (Alex Descas), an old colleague. “You’re not much of a talker,” said the retiree. Of course, his observation was met with silence.
In truth, no one in 35 Shots of Rum is much of a talker. The movie begins with nearly eight minutes of lingering shots as we follow the endless tracks of an urban French rail system. When we finally hear characters speak, we learn this is a film about Lionel, a black, middle-class man living in a cramped apartment in what seems to be Paris; his adult daughter Joséphine (Mati Diop), who lives with her father; and their relationship, which occasionally drifts dangerously close to Creepyville. (Or maybe it’s a French thing, and I wouldn’t understand.) |
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Cutting Room - |
A sequel to Tron took nearly 30 years before technology really warranted its existence. I’d like to hear the argument behind crafting a Midnight Run sequel after more than two decades. Unless this is a rumor initiated by a drunken, desperate Charles Grodin (FYI: there is no longer any other kind of Charles Grodin), it looks legit. Universal has hired a screenwriter, and DeNiro confirmed he’ll return as the cop-turned–bounty hunter who once tamed the wild Grodin outlaw. I’ll allow this, but so help me God, if I hear rumors of Bulletproof 2, somebody’s gettin’ cut.
In continuing news from the 1980s, New Line is remaking Police Academy. For those who don’t remember or have paid to clinically have the memories suppressed, the series follows wacky cops as they get into shenanigans. It’s sort of like Super Troopers only not funny and starring Steve Guttenberg. Look for the reboot to be 100 percent Guttenberg and humor free! |
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I'm from the future - |
How else could I know who will win at the Oscars?
by Ryan Syrek
Come with me if you want to live … to see your ballot full of winners! I wish I could say the future depends on whether you win your Oscar pool, but it doesn’t. In the future that I came from, things are beyond repair. Weather patterns changed, congressional gridlock created epic poverty and the Chicago Cubs were eliminated from postseason contention. That’s right, I came all the way from March 8, 2010.
Fine, I’m not from the future and these are just guesses. That just doesn’t sound as cool. Oh, and I know this is only the major categories (oscar.com has the full list of categories and nominees), but if I reveal who will win Best Sound Mixing now, no one will talk to me at the party.
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All Things Cinema - |
Omaha’s film community fixes to get its fest on
by Leo Adam Biga
Now in its fifth year of invigorating the local cinema scene, the Omaha Film Festival and Filmmaking Conference is part of the creative class boom that’s drawing attention to local culture.
A film fest is only as good as its movies and participants. By that measure the OFF arrived some time ago, offering relevant pics and panelists. Film nerds and aspirants should check the prequel conference, where the nuts-and-bolts and falderal of the film industry get their due.
Panelists have included how-to-write-a-script guru Lew Hunter, screenwriter Shane Black (Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang), Oscar-nominated visual effects artist Neil Krepela (Heat) and Oscar-nominated cinematographer Mauro Fiore (Avatar). |
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Marsh Madness - |
Corn-fed zombies invade Iowa in The Crazies
by Ben Coffman
If there is nothing new under the sun, then, likewise, the dark and damp recesses where horror movie ideas lurk haven’t offered anything truly innovative for some time. Every once in a while, though, a movie bends the genre just enough to please the old-school horror fans who’ve seen it all. The Crazies, a respectable remake of an overlooked 1973 George Romero zombie flick, doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it does a great job of updating the genre without resorting to torture porn.
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Cutting Room - |
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A moment of silence, please, to mourn the death (and not the passing) of LB 1073, the tax bill designed to attract film productions to Nebraska. I’ll let the following fact show you how incredibly stupid this decision is: Oscar winner and native son Alexander Payne is now likely to film a movie called Nebraska … in another state. Despite assurances that the bill would return as much as $1.25 for every $1 of tax credit, the legislation fell beneath the sword of nearsightedness. A modest proposal: Next time, instead of calling it the “Building Nebraska’s Creative Economy Act,” call the bill “Concealed Weapons: The Movie” and see if it tricks ’em. |
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Shock Treatment - |
Island life is chilling
for DiCaprio
by Ben Coffman
Martin Scorsese is a director who can do whatever he likes — a three-hour William Hung biopic? It’s his, if he wants it. In Hollywood, his name is synonymous with quality filmmaking and, nowadays, cold, hard, delicious cash. His newest film Shutter Island is a genre flick, to be sure (its closest analog in Scorsese’s 20-some feature film canon is likely 1991’s Cape Fear), but it’s a psychological thriller on steroids — creepy, horrifying steroids. |
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War and Preach - |
Tolstoy’s tale is told by way of the Thames
by Ryan Syrek
Writer/director Michael Hoffman’s The Last Station, based on the novel by Jay Parini, is likely as engaging a movie as can be made about a battle over Russian copyright ownership. Every bit as visually exhilarating as it sounds, the entirely non-Russkie cast deploys British accents and relentless grimacing to bombastic melodramatic effect. The air of importance is more preached than earned, but if you freely opt to watch a dramatization of Leo Tolstoy’s last year, you’re likely inclined to buy what’s being sold.
As if resigned to please the eyes as little as possible, the film opens with terse text presented in the least offensive type font imaginable. We’re told that Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) is a pretty big deal, having inspired a worldwide Tolstoyan movement centered on passive resistance and other harmonious ideals. His wife, Sofya (Helen Mirren), loves him as much as she loathes Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), a leader of the movement and insensitive douche. |
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DVD Discovery: Death Wish - |
The Gaudy tale of the other Bronson
Of all the paths a director could take in making a biopic, Nicolas Winding Refn may have taken the riskiest by giving us a story entirely from his protagonist’s perspective. When that protagonist is Britain’s most violent prisoner, Michael Peterson (or Charles Bronson as he prefers to call himself), the results are nothing less than bizarre.
Although he was only sentenced to seven years (for a robbery), Bronson has managed to keep himself locked up ever since by relentlessly battering guards, taking hostages and generally wreaking havoc on Her Majesty’s prison service. Like a furious bull with the reasoning capabilities of an angry 16-year-old, Bronson’s violence quickly earns him a reputation and several pictures in the paper, both of which go straight to his head.
We meet Bronson (Tom Hardy) on a stage in a small theater, where he seems to be performing a deranged one-man show, narrating his life story to a proper-looking, tuxedoed audience. With the flair of a circus ringmaster, Bronson takes us from his birth all the way to a particularly strange 48-hour hostage taking. |
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Cutting Room - |
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A combo that makes less sense than milk-flavored potato chips: Brett Ratner, crap director, paired with Noah Baumbach, genius writer. Trump Heist, conceived as a multiracial Ocean’s 11 that may have Ben Stiller as the point man, is undergoing a massive Baumbachian revision. The new version will be more Robin Hood than robbing games, as blue-collar employees attempt to get revenge on a pension embezzler. Although there’s a chance the pairing will bring out the best in Ratner, the best of Ratner likely still sucks. |
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Back Off, Randy Newman - |
Short films have good reason to live
by Ryan Syrek
Like endangered species confined to captivity for their survival, short films usually stay caged within film festivals and college campuses and only roam the wild briefly around Oscar time. A shame, considering the tiny, tasty treats are often among the most delightful delicacies.
An annual tradition, the nominees in both the animated and live-action short categories at the Academy Awards are shown in two condensed blocks at Film Streams at the Ruth Sokolof Theater (filmstreams.org). And, in what has become The Reader’s annual tradition, we grade each entry and explain what should and will win come Oscar night. It’s a short job, but someone has to briefly do it. |
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Hairy Tale - |
Del Toro grows CGI fur
by Ben Coffman
If vampires are subtle symbols of shy sexuality and lust, the goth Don Juans of the monster world, then werewolves are lonely lurkers in rest stops, clad in trench coats — hairy, naked aggressors who won’t take “no” for an answer. Maybe that’s why, as of late, teenage girls prefer Twilight above anything involving hairy men howling. The Wolfman, a remake of the 1941 classic film, is director Joe Johnston’s solid attempt at placing the silver-fearing beasts back on the silver screen. |
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Cutting Room - |
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Note to Hollywood execs, the punctuation in the title of the upcoming retrospective series at the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center (theross.org) is an exclamation point, not a question mark. Women Make Movies: Women Changing the World! features 12 independent movies by and about women, kicks off Friday, Feb. 26, and runs until March 11. To further, ahem, punctuate this event, the executive director of Women Make Movies, Debra Zimmerman, is appearing at the Ross Sunday, March 7, at 3 p.m. She’ll take part in a discussion about women’s involvement in film history, a discussion that will likely cover how ridiculous the inequities within the field have been. Here’s hoping that day (March 7) is a big one for women in the field and culminates with Kathryn Bigelow hoisting the first Best Director Oscar given to a woman. Talk about an exclamation point! |
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Dangerous Liaisons - |
Come for the explosions, leave before the politics
by Justin Senkbile
Director Pierre Morel’s From Paris with Love is the quintessential dumb, loud action-comedy, with all of the laughs coming from the “dumbness” and not the jokes. With nearly as many dead bodies as there are one-liners, Paris is like a Tarantino picture without the ego-stroking. Sadly, there isn’t an ounce of Tarantino’s wit or intelligence in here either.
Despite his apparently ideal job in the U.S. Embassy in Paris, James Reece (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is so desperate to join the CIA that he takes a less-than-desirable assignment with loose-canon operative Charlie Wax (John Travolta). A gun-slinging “ugly-American” stereotype with a bushy goatee, the bald Wax shoots and smirks his way through the hairiest of situations. |
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Urban Jumble - |
New York, I Love You … but only a little
by Ryan Syrek
Some of the 11 interwoven short films that comprise New York, I Love You are fascinating in their subtle, nuanced romanticism. The rest of them can go straight to hell.
Like a box of chocolates in which half are caramel filled and half are stuffed with sewage, this successor to the 2006 anthology flick Paris, Je T’aime isn’t so much a postcard of the sleepless city as it is a delicious big apple with plenty of rotten spots. The film’s concept is its own undoing, as the loosey-goosey structure that allows shockingly disparate perspectives on “love in New York” prevents any cohesive experience. Instead, the viewer is force-fed an all-you-can-eat buffet without the benefit of choosing their portions. |
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Cutting Room: Film News - |
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If you’re looking for a downer — and really, who doesn’t love yummy depression these days? — Film Streams at the Ruth Sokolof Theater has a few juicy options for grim ingestion starting Friday. First up is Collapse, which has been called the scariest movie of 2009; it’s a documentary that follows “radical thinker” Michael Ruppert, who accurately predicted the current global financial crisis, as he makes new predictions, namely that we’re headed towards an apocalypse hastened by the dwindling oil supply. Yipee! |
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The Edge of Patience - |
Edge of Darkness treads
a well-worn path
by Justin Senkbile
Director Martin Campbell’s Edge of Darkness (an adaptation of his own BBC miniseries) is a movie we’ve all seen. Grumpy cops fight slimy politicians with a bunch of guns, and violence is avenged with even more intense violence. Beyond the clearly suspect message (and this movie definitely has a message, although perhaps not the one it thinks), it’s a formula that any director would have a tough time kicking any life into.
Boston detective Thomas Craven (Mel Gibson) is rushing his suddenly ill daughter Emma (Bojana Novakovic) to the hospital when she’s brutally gunned down outside his house. Everyone assumes the killer was targeting the detective, but when Craven starts following his own leads, he begins unraveling something much more complicated. |
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Slowed Odes - |
Bright Star is pretty,
poetic and plodding
by Ryan Syrek
If the main players were slightly more angular and the subject matter were significantly less British, writer/director Jane Campion’s Bright Star could pass for a Nicholas Sparks adaptation. Thankfully, this tale of poesy and profundity exceeds the wading pool Sparks frequents. It dives head first into deeper waters. Campion’s stylish staging of the love between John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish) is almost enough to make a General Studies student switch to an English major. |
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Dude, Where's My Guitar? - |
Bridges’ vocal range
is better than his
acting range
by Ben Coffman
If you put Jeff Bridges in a bowling alley and hand him a pair of shades and a drink, you can’t help but think of his iconic character “The Dude” in The Big Lebowski. So, if you’re a first-time director (like Scott Cooper) using an actor like Bridges, wouldn’t you do everything in your power to avoid those almost inevitable comparisons? Unless, of course, you’re cashing in on the popularity of that character, and the man that played him.
In the first scene of Cooper’s Crazy Heart, we watch Bridges’ character, roots rocker Bad Blake, sidle into a bowling alley, plop down on a stool and order a drink. Thankfully, it isn’t a White Russian. Instead, Blake has a penchant for whiskey. Amazingly talented and perpetually down on his luck, Blake just pulled into Pueblo in his ’78 Chevy Suburban for a small-time gig. |
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