Matinee with Snacks

Michael Jackson's death this year elicited a lot of strong responses in the
world, from deep mourning to disdainful pedophile jokes.  When this film was
announced, the cynics of the world eyed it as a last ditch to profit off the
talented, troubled man who now lies in Forest Lawn Cemetary.  I was pleased –
no, I was thrilled – that This Is It serves as a reminder of the talented man
behind the tabloids, the creative soul who knew and loved his audiences and
demanded so much of himself.  However you may have felt about him as a person,
there is no denying his capacity for showmanship and talents after seeing this
movie.

The concert at London's O2 Arena was still under construction at the time of
Jackson's death.  Dance moves were being tweaked, technical effects were being
engineered, the projected imagery was shot but incomplete.  Costumers had just
begun their work, lights were hung but not cued.  It's a time of much sweating
and enforced patience, of running songs to tighten and perfect but still doing a
lot of arm-waving and "this is what happens here."  I find this inbetween time
to be where you finally start feeling the magic of the show that will be, but
still feeling like it can still grow and change and improve.  This Is It gives
us enough to see that this concert series was going to be the kind of show you
tell your grandkids about, full of incredible dancing and innovative staging and
energetic wowness.  The missing elements serve to feature the star who has
fallen.  Instead of a huge pyrotechnic number and machinery, we have Michael and
his focused voice, his tightly controlled movement, his palpable love for
performing and for this show.

As a documentary, this film is light on story and more just us watching and
listening  Most of the footage, taken April through June of 2009, was shot for
review or self-critique or storyboarding, or just home movies.  The editing is
fantastic, cutting between multiple visual sources and occasions to give us a
nibble of what each number was going to feel like, flowing seamlessly between
days and angles.  This underscores how precise of a technician Jackson was as a
performer as well as how much stamina the man had until the end.  Director Kenny
Ortega was the director of this concert as well, and his prowess is evident as
well.  We get a few talking heads speaking about the experience of working on
this show, some pictures of the demands made on the creative team, and the
inspiration felt by his fellow performers.  At no point does the film turn into
a maudlin rending of garments.

Seeing all the work that had already gone into this show, I know that I am
grateful for the chance to see what could have been, instead of it being
scrapped wholesales into the memories of its participants with a sad shrug. 
This Is It is so elaborate, even in this nascent stage, so ambitious, you can't
help but mourn that the final product will never come to fruition.

Going in knowing these are Michael's last days, it is bittersweet to watch as
well.  For myself, my nine companions and I had been immersed for weeks prior in
Thriller-era Michael for Thrill The World, so it was hard for me to see his 2009
face suddenly.  We've all watched his metamorphoses over the years; whether we
responded with mocking or sympathy, the end result is still painful to look at.
(For the record I came down on the side of sympathy.)  Then he takes a stance,
outstretches his thin arms and opens his throat and he's still Michael Jackson,
so familiar and funky and fresh.  His energy seems boundless – snapping movies
with chorus dancers half his age, his power seems almost unearthly.  Only the
very highest prepubescent notes are anything but natural for him.

His dancers!  His band!  His 24 year-old prodigy guitarist smokes up Beat It and
all the other numbers with the same magic power he seems to have.  Surrounding
oneself at an older age with vibrant young talent sometimes serves to mask one's
deficiencies, or highlight them.  Here it only show he still had it.  Jackson's
team builds up each other's performances and gives tribute to the man's final
effort.  I am so glad to have had the chance to see what there was to see.  See
it for the physical wizardry, stay for the love.  Also, stay through the credits
for a little treat.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

2012

Matinee with Snacks

I'm not giving anything away when I say that 2012 is about the day our world
ends.  No stakes could possibly be higher.  It's not just human civilization
(though there's some of that being lost certainly) but the whole freaking
planet.  By now you have seen some of the spectacular previews with crumbling
freeways and mind-boggling floods.  What you didn't see is all the other amazing
spectacle that 2012 has to offer.  I was desperately in need of some wanton,
effects driven fun that also doesn't piss me off, and 2012 was just what the
doctor ordered.  Now, my enthusiasm for 2012 is not because I think it's high
art with an important social message.  Screw that – this movie is about pure
spectacle, and it pulls that off fabulously.

Director Roland Emmerich has wreaked big-scale havoc before, most successfully
with Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow.  This movie is both of those
and more:  Volcano/Dante's Peak/Deep Impact/The Core/Airport/Earthquake/The
Poseidon Adventure/Towering Inferno/Evan Almighty/Titanic/Independence Day/The
Perfect Storm/Independence Day with a little splash of moral rectitude
compliments of the Planet of the Apes.  So basically, if you liked any of these,
you will enjoy 2012, because it does them all one better.  You know billions of
people are getting killed, but it's so spectacularly amazing, so realistic, you
get distracted with just the incredible details.

Remember in Titanic, when the (spoiler alert!) ship is sinking, and the deck
tips upwards so extras go crashing down its surfaces like so many CG mannequins?
In this film, every casualty really looks like an actual person, like they took
the time to shoot one extra getting thrown from a car off a bridge onto a
crumbling chunk of freeway just to be crushed by another car.  Every screaming
person who is crushed or dropped or flung or washed away is fully detailed. 
Every structure scatters debris, every geologic feature collapses with regards
to its internal structure and seeming permanence.  The effects are phenomenal,
and frankly it's worth seeing just for that – which is of course the point.  It
was made just for that.  Gone are hapless attempts to reverse the cause – no
Powerbook can upload a virus to stop the earth from collapsing into itself. 
We're just here to ride along with John Cusack and his family as they try and
survive.  The science is more sound (or appears to be based on something
actually sound) but the world events are so unprecendented, most computer models
would implode trying to run an accurate simulation anyway.  Screw the science –
look out for that aircraft carrier!

The score is exciting, the cinematography lovingly depicts entropy large and
small, and the overall race against time is pretty fun and intense.  We have
some characters, they're not super richly realized but there's enough there for
the good actors in their shoes to make something of them.  Oliver Platt and
Chiewetel Ejiofor need to be in another movie together where they aren't
upstaged by dissolving continents.  They had a great complementary energy that
buoyed their scenes above "No YOU listen to ME" panic and posturing.  Cusack's
character has written an unsuccessful novel involving a grand doomsday scenario,
and Emmerich hits us over the head a few times with Cusack's "I told you so"
attitude about human altruism in the face of immense disaster.  You actually
hardly notice because he beats us much harder and much more relentlessly with
the That Was Lucky stick.  One inch in almost any other direction and our heroes
would be so much sidewalk jelly like the others, and this happens about once per
script page.  We know the dog will make it, we know which character will
complete his destiny and who will get a giant scene, we know the insufferable
bastard will get his just reward.  That's OK.  We need that kind of reliable
trope so we aren't distracted from the freaking incredible technical wizardry
that really pulls apart our entire planet (with daubs of irony here and there).

2012 has got it all – Man versus Man, Man versus Nature, and Man versus Himself,
even Art versus Commerce.  I haven't been this impressed with CG work since
Titanic, and that was 11 years ago.  It's the biggest summer movie of the year,
and not a moment too soon.  Go, have fun.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

Men Who Stare At Goats, The

Rental

While apparently some of the characters in The Men Who Stare At Goats are
composites and other narrative short cuts, this film asserts that "more of this
is true than you would believe."  I found it fun to keep that in mind as the
narrative went from kooky to wacky, from improbable to impossible.  You're never
quite sure how much all the characters believe what's going on either, which
challenges your own credulity.

Basically, Ewan McGregor is a journalist who stumbles scross the history of a
Vietnam-era black op involving training soldiers to be psychic peacekeepers,
gentle warriors of the mind.  Regardless of your own level of belief in the
possibilities of ESP, remote viewing, telekinesis, and so forth, the fun is
watching McGregor run the gamut from sheer disbelief to mostly buy-in.  George
Clooney is his window into that hippie brigade, relating stories of the
training, the complicity of the army, the abuses, and so on.  It was clearly a
significant time for all involved; the program takes credit for things we
commonly know today, which grounds them in Well Maybetown, or else eye-rolls us
to No Waysville.  Watching Clooney lecture erstwhile young Ben Kenobi on the
ways of being a Jedi warrior is amusing but distracting.  The real pleasure is
watching McGregor interact with Clooney's demonstrations of his powers, and
watching original Jedi Jeff Bridges channel a sort of Fisher King Dude in his
character.

Sometimes the movie cannot get past being merely smile-inducing, but it's a
gently funny story of belief in one's inner potential and in the general
goodness of most people.  Well,, I guess it's also about perception on many
levels, be it extra-sensory or just interpersonal emotional intelligence.  The
Men Who Stare At Goats is based on Jon Ronson's book of the same name which
appears to have been written by McGregor's character, Bob.  It sells itself as a
mostly true story, but it's hard to divine which parts are.

I don't know how faithfully Clooney portrayed his character, Lyn Cassady, but
for the sake of the yarn, he's a perfect choice.  Clooney carries that peculiar
and charming mix of complete self-confidence, almost cockiness, blended with
detachment from those around him, and genuine earnestness.  I miss seeing him in
funny roles and it was pleasant to travel with him here, mustache and all. 
McGregor had long ago perfected his naïve, wide-eyed "I want to be convinced"
brand of gee-whillikers, and he shines that one up real good for this one.  Add
in Stephen Root as a vaguely unstable but harmless kook, Jeff Bridges' groovy
alpha male, and Kevin Spacey as a cold, calculating egotist, and the film feels
more and more like something you have seen before.  In this sense, perhaps
not…and then you recall "more of this is true than you would believe,"  The yarn
starts to get a little long, though it generally clips through its 94 minutes at
a pleasant pace.  I may forget I ever saw it, but I had a pretty good time
nonetheless.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

Christmas Carol, A (Disney's)

Rental

This story is well-enough known that I will indulge in some spoilers, mostly
because some elements of this movie are beautiful and innovative, and some just
plain did not belong.  The aggregate score makes it a rental, because the highs
were very high, but the lows very low.  First of all, all performance-capture
technicians should be so lucky as to have a face such as Jim Carrey's to use for
source movement.  Like Andy Serkis before him, Carrey has fine control of his
expressions, and his entire physical instrument.  As a result, the character of
Scrooge is a wonder to behold.  You can almost feel the veins pounding with ire
behind his dessicated skin.  Carrey plays him with real heart, real bile, real
fear.

That said, why would you then skimp on every other character – even the other
ones played by Carrey?  Sure, Scrooge is the reason we're here, but you spoil us
with a rich, nearly photo-realistic performance and then bust out faces like the
kid in the first Toy Story movie (admittedly with better texture mapping)?  The
uncanny valley looks all the deeper when you've got the mountain in the same
shot.  Also:  stop making the characters look like their voice actors.  Sure, it
helps identify their player, but that's what credits are for.  When you give us
Colin Firth's voice coming out of a creepy Colin Firth waxwork, it's even more
jarring than say, Cary Elwes' voice coming out of a portly stranger.  OK, huzzah
for the casting reunions from Princess Bride and Liar Liar.  Give everyone with
a substantial speaking part a new face and put a ton of dots on them too, or
don't do it at all.  Poor Gary Oldman could really have worked Bob Cratchit to
the maximum.

London is a beautiful place to fly a camera through when rendered with such
loving Dickensian detail – people and streets, chamberpots and shops, sweeps and
urchins.  I imagine in 3-D it would be even more swooping and gorgeous.  But
then the creepy robots sing their stiff-mouthed carols – even with adorable
character design they just disturb next to Scrooge's twitching nasolabial folds.

The reason to remake this story in CG is to explore storytelling techniques that
you couldn't do as well or easily with live-action, right?  Not just to jump on
the 3D bandwagon.  Right?  Not just to find ways to poke things into the faces
of the kids in the audience and go "Wooo Dickens is COOOOL!"  Right?  Of course
I expect some expansion from the relatively intimate story, but some of these
elaborate showcases felt like someone wished he made a different movie and
decided just to keep the idea.  I am glad I didn't see it in 3-D because the
camera poking was pretty egregious at times.

This Christmas Carol also doesn't seem to know its audience.  Between goofy
chase scenes and glossing over some of the better poetry of the novel, and
genuinely scary, profound moments of self-discovery on the part of Scrooge, I'd
say they may also not have read the book.  I would never take a child to see
this – the sections with Jacob Marley and the spirit of Christmas Yet To Come
are quite scary and effectively done.  Future was portrayed as only a silent
shadow, its bony hand sliding along reality t o point the way for Scrooge…unless
it poke, black and glistening and fakey, into the 3-D realm, ruining the
beautiful and haunting effect.  After the Ringwraiths and Dementors and
depictions of Death over a century of cinema, I was so pleased to see something
different for Christmas Yet To Come…and then frustrated.  Did I mention the
ridiculous, gratuitous chase scene?  Chase. Scene.  Future does not chase you
and shrink you and – Zemeckis!!!!!

The Ghost of Christmas Past was handled like a human candle, a creative and
different interpretation of happier times and the ephemerality of memory.  He
and Christmas Present are also played by Jim Carrey (Future may have been as
well, but there was no face to animate), and Past had an inexplicable Irish
accent and a hissing whisper, the blame for both of which I can only lay on
director Robert Zemeckis' shoulders.  It was such a lovely idea of a candle and
then ruined.

And then we come to Christmas Present.  As we know, Present is the boisterous,
merry love-of-life spirit of jolly, earthy goodness and generosity.  They got
the general look of him right (oddly including the petulant forehead wrinkle
that Carrey fans will recognize as his impish look, not his expansive
humanity-loving look), but the booming warm laugh is instead incredibly horrible
and fake and creepy.  If this was meant to be a Scrooged-type cynical commentary
on how artificial our seasonal bursts of kindness are before we slide back into
11 months of selfishness, well, it didn't work.  It looked bush league.  His
laugh was unsettling and creepy and not at all merry, and it ruined everything
else: the cornucopia of generosity, the hale spirit astride the wonders of the
world, and the truly lovely way he showed Scrooge his part of the spirits'
presentation.  This scene would have been the most effective in 3-D, but if I
had seen that petulant wrinkle shake out those kidnapper-van laughs in 3-D, I
might have fled the building.  Present repelled me right when he should have
been washing us in the wassail of what Scrooge is missing.  Again, this
ancillary character wasn't given full animation of his face, despite being based
on rubberface Carrey.

I wish I could cut a montage of the sobering and well-thought-out segue from
Present to Future, the swooping flights through London and Scrooge's face.  But
I cannot.  Wait to watch it at home with some warmth to ward off the chill.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

A Serious Man

Rental and Snacks

So close on the heel of one personal film (Where The Wild Things Are) comes this
very, very personal film from the Coen brothers.  So personal, I never felt a
part of it.  I have come to be a fan of Joel and Ethan Coen over the years,
appreciating their taste for regional language, interesting faces, and ambling
set-ups.  A Serious Man starts out as so many of their films do, with
interesting characters becoming enmeshed in interesting situations.  Unlike most
of their films, however, A Serious Man appears to go nowhere.

Larry Gopnik (the fabulous Michael Stuhlbarg) is a mild-mannered physics teacher
hovering at the lingering ends of the cultural 1950s well after the leading edge
of the late 1960's is already underway.  It's the end of the suburban dream and
the beginning of the sexual revolution, but Larry is late to that party. 
Gradually, personal problems go from petty vexations to real tribulations and
Larry stumbles impotently through it all.  His life devolves before his eyes
like a sand castle in a hurricane.  His crisis of faith takes him to see the
counsel of three rabbis, and he never seems to lose hope that al this chaos must
conceal some plan, some greater purpose, but he's driven batty by not knowing
what that plan is.  His life resembles that of Job, but he's like Candide in his
simplicity - surely, this is how it should be – but with the Jewish academics'
need to know why.  He's a phsyics teacher whose world can be explained by neat,
simple math, until now.  He doesn't seem deserving of his fate, unless sheer
spinelessness is a crime.

Stuhlbarg is a theatre veteran who plays Gopnik with tremulous urgency and meek
bewilderment.  He is instantly sympathetic and we ride every emotional peak and
valley with him effortlessly.  He is definitely the best thing about this film. 
As always, all the Coen actors are well cast and give good performances, but
Stuhlbarg is particularly affecting.  His nemesis, Sy Abelman (Fred Melamed)
embodies that clueless narcissistic infantile adult of that era, trying to
navigate freaky new waters by embracing them without thought.  The other actors
were great, especially Larry's wife, first-time film actor Sari Lennick.  Her
character was so exasperating but so solid, I forgot how much I hated her in my
enthusiasm for the actress.

The problem I had with the movie is this: Larry's terrible travails all seemed
to open dozens of interesting narrative doors but no one ever follows them, and
so most of them hardly even resolve, never mind figure into the big picture.  In
a scene you might seize on a glowing ember of possibility and go, "ah ha!  This
is where the story will take us next," but then it never does.  Like the story
of the goy's teeth, we get interesting threads but empty teases.  A few arcs
come back to earth but so many remain in orbit.  I don't need a rom-com bow on
the top, but I'd like to have some of my emotional investment in these tales
have a point.  If the whole thing is an extended Jewish fable to illustrate the
Heisenberg uncertainty principle, well, thanks for nothing.

A Serious Man is steeped in Yiddish culture and suffering and slang and I felt
left behind pretty quickly despite knowing some of the things they were talking
about.  A fable-like prologue set in a long-ago shtetl left me struggling to
connect their story with his.  Maybe I am too dumb for the Coens nowadays, or
maybe I am just too Gentile for this movie.  Perhaps the emperor is actually
wearing clothes and I just can't see them.  Either way, I came out of the movie
theatre feeling disgruntled and a little cheated.  See it for Stuhlberg and
Lennick, and for Roger Deakin's unfailing cinematic eye, but save your money.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

Where The Wild Things Are

Catch it on HBO

Occasionally I will mitigate opinions in this forum that I know will be
unpopular when I am specifically writing a review of a film that I know carries
a lot of emotional charge for people.  In trying to be politic I try and soften
the subjective emotions I felt to impart a sense of fairness.  This is not one
of those times.  Where The Wild Things Are made me want to punch someone in the
face.  It's not Max Records (Max) – he was given the material and he sold it to
us with real heart and facility.  It's not the art department, whose
awe-inspiring sets and puppet designs are what drew me to the film in the first
place.  It's not the musicians, though they skirt the edge of over-preciousness,
they never quite tip over the edge.  It's the words.

The Where The Wild Things Are film purports to celebrate the wild feeling of
being nine, of being old enough for complex emotions but too young to deal with
or communicate them properly.  Instead, it feels like a paean to bratty
self-absorption, to the same alienating je ne sais quois that occasionally makes
me skim McSweeney's articles or itches me under my skin like the musical Hair. 
It's that kind of "every man is an island" lack of self-reflection that I seem
to find most often in the films targeted to the Baby Boomer demographic.  Not
the people, per se, but the stuff "made for them."  It also gave me the same
stomachache that I get reading about financial scandals, but I can't figure that
one out.  It's just a gut sense of being repelled, despite the aforementioned
artistic triumphs.

Max's acting out is almost immediately followed by touching remorse – he's
hardly a real problem child, and his home life seems pretty dang nice, even for
being a single parent one.  He runs away and ends up in the Where of the title,
a land of immature, self-involved, bickering monsters who seem to need nothing
other than air and each other to sustain themselves.  Since he's street-smarter
than they are, Max becomes king.  Prolix days pass and characters are annoying
and tautological, sounding like these dopey 70's TA for Tots books.  Director
Spike Jonze wrote the script with Dave Eggers, who flirts with excessive hipster
preciousness quite a bit in his work,; here they try to create a rich and varied
world from the unique drawings and brief sentences of Maurice Sendak's beloved
book.  In doing so, it seemed that they filled the cracks with some personal
baggage that hadn't been fully sorted yet.

I applaud the film's strong sense of tone and reality and beauty, I marvel at
the puppet-acting and the CG enhancement of the monsters' faces.  These creature
costumes were put through the ringer with lots of very physical demands put on
them, in huge crashing movement and small, delicate acting moments as well.  All
the Wild Things' movement seems very natural and fluid, there are no stiff
Skeksis here.  If the dialogue could bear the force of the script's arbitrary
mood swings and motivationless tantrums with the same durable pliability of the
costumes, I wouldn't have been so irked.

Jonze and Eggers are my contemporaries, growing up in the same Generation X
atmosphere of upheaval and insecurity that marked our childhoods, but these guys
seem like they are flirting with the same navel-gazing self-centeredness of
their parents.  Sure, we've all gotten old enough to be disillusioned by our
once-seemingly-infallible caretakers.  It's how we deal/dealt with it that forms
the core of our character as we grow past that, perhaps into the seemingly
infallible caregivers of someone else.  If these guys are questioning their own
childhoods based on their own daddyhoods, it doesn't belong here.  Max appears
to have learned no lesson, nor imparted one, except maybe "yep, life is the same
all over so we should probably learn how to be responsible."  I found it to be
crushingly slow to come to any sort of narrative interest, after being so
circumspect with the creatures in the beginning (I was also reminded of Samuel
Beckett, and I don't mean that as a compliment).

Overall, besides the gorgeousness and the genuine actual performances of Max and
the Wild Things, this movie drove me around the bend.  Watch it on HBO for the
glory of the captured image and save your money for greater things.

Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant

Matinee

After a truly fantastical opening credits sequence, I worried that Cirque du
Freak might have exhausted its quality potential.  Thankfully, it had not. 
Adapting the first three of Darren Shan's books and having a whimsical and
sardonic dark tone, this film will inevitably be compared to Lemony Snicket's A
Series of Unfortunate Events.  That film also squished three wonderful books
into one passable film and had an outstanding cast.  To compare them is a
disservice to both, however.  I have not read Shan's books, but The Vampire's
Assistant made me want to.  A key difference between these works is the
generally more sunny and big-picture tone of Cirque du Freak, compared to the
cynical, intimate feel of Unfortunate Events.  The filmgoing experience is very
different but the superficial similarities might make you prejudge and miss this
one, if the other one didn't do it for you.

The real appeal of Cirque du Freak is the engaging cast of characters.  Our
sweet goody two-shoes titular hero (named Darren Shan!) gets himself into a
pretty serious pickle, but has a fantastic network of freaks and outcasts by his
side.  Key among these is John C. Reilly, the vampire who makes it all happen. 
Reilly has always solidly marched the line between weird and sympathetic, and
this role benefits from this and his wonderful, dry sense of humor.  Fellow
freak-show denizens have small yet titillating parts, sucking you in for future
tales to tell and flitting away to let the central relationships in the story
play out.  We meet, briefly, Salma Hayek, Orlando Jones, Ken Watanabe, Patrick
Fugit, Jane Krakowski, and Jessica Carlton.  We want more of all of them.  But
for now, we must have exposition.  A war is brewing between the Vampires and the
Vampaneze, and you can probably guess that Universal really wants to have a
sequel explore this plot element, which drops in at the end, Lord of the Rings
style.  Meanwhile, we have families to abandon, best friends to negotiate, and
teachers to complain about (Galaxy Quest's Patrick Breen, always a hoot).

The funny bits are amusing, the action entertaining, the themes simple, the
promise of future tales tantalizing, and the overall feel of the movie is more
charming than epic or scary.  It has the simple feel of a Young Adult series but
some of the same adult-friendly wit that Mr. Snicket engages in. I love these
people and I want to see more of them.  I also want to see more story involving
Mr. Tiny (Michael Cerveris, in artificial layers of blubber), who was a
delectably prissy and menacing creature.  I want more!  Some book adaptations
feel like they left something out; this movie is dense but still just a sample
size.  The creepy small CG creatures aren't particularly compelling but I
suspect they will become important.  Meanwhile, I'll grab the book and see if it
sates my need to wallow around in this fun and adventurous world.  The only real
deficit is that the stakes, whatever they are, never feel all that high, despite
death and battle and soul sucking and so forth.  So, maybe it's a little frothy?
It's still fun.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

Food, Inc.

Matinee with Snacks

By now, most of you with an interest in this topic will have read Fast Food
Nation or seen its odd film adaptation, or enjoyed the gastronomic minefield of
Supersize Me.  Food, Inc. is less about the horrible contents of processed food
and more about the unseen machinations in boardrooms and government buildings,
as well as their unseen costs.  Don't worry, we are still privy to the horrors
that the sources of our meat go through, but here it is more to illustrate the
why.  Efficiency fattens stockholder's portfolios, and certainly leads to
fattening our lower and middle classes as well.  Behind the veil of the pastoral
fantasy (that corporations sell us with their monopolistic food processing)
lurks people with no intent to compromise in favor of ethics, health, the
environment, animals, or even product heterogeneity.  The bottom line is
profits, and it's killing all of us; not just Americans, but all of us.

Not only are the thousands of cows or chickens or pigs crammed into feed lots
merely numbers to these invisible puppet masters, but so are we.  Not unlike the
tobacco industry, the food processing conglomerates are only interested in
moving product, so they punch our evolutionarily-installed pleasure centers,
squelch their smaller competitors or make them cost-prohibitive, frame our
tastes and expectations, and then blame the consumer for not making responsible
choices.  I can tell you from my own experience that if I want to buy a loaf of
bread from the grocery store that doesn't have enriched wheat or high fructose
corn syrup, I am going to have to read the labels of just about every loaf (and
still may come up emptyhanded), or learn how to bake at home.

This film was made in 2008, shortly before America got punched in the gut with
the object lesson "unchecked greed is bad."  Many of us knew greed and growth
were unsustainable and unrealistic but now everyone is finally waking up to it. 
Food, Inc. reminds us that it's not just bankers and traders and real estate
investors that can crush humanity.  This documentary gets great footage of feed
lots and processing plants using both overt and hidden cameras.  The interviews
are well spoken, and despite the tone of my review, not at all preachy.  The
infographics are funny and sad and useful.  Food, Inc. clips along with lots of
information, but it's well organized and flows into you like so much toxic
runoff.  But in a good way.

We learn that it's actually more efficient, on a small scale, to raise a cow on
grass – no growing, buying, trucking, storing feed corn, fields get fertilized
by their grazers, e. Coli is prevented, antibiotics are unnecessary, mowing is
naturally taken care of.  But efficient is defined in the eye of the CEO.  Fewer
feed lots equals less variance in product, less deviation from dictum, fewer
communities that hate you.  Corn-fed beef breeds e. Coli; grass feeding an
infected herd clears out the deadly bacteria.  So what, a few people die, look
at our sales numbers!

Integrity, compassion, humanity, quality, purity of food source is lost in the
mass corporatization of food production.  When low-income people can't afford
fresh meat or vegetables, they eat the processed crap, get diabetes and
cardiovascular conditions, can't afford health insurance, drain the system. 
Then they are blamed for the high medical costs.  Deregulations removes
protections, subsidization removes competition, and all this food machine
creates is obesity, toxic waste, worker exploitation, excessive litigation,
food-borne illnesses, and increasing costs across the board.   SARS and the
avian flu began in crushing animal storage areas as well.  The giant companies
are well protected behind walls of cash, and, until recently, the powerful
influence of their former employees-turned-government-staffers.  Food, Inc.
decries the actions of the conglomerates, but every big business (except,
interestingly, Wal-Mart) declined to respond to filmmaker Robert Kenner.  Kenner
shows us the man behind the curtain and wants us to know we're not powerless.

As I encourage my readers to vote with your wallets at the box office, so does
Kenner exhort you to vote at the grocery check out.  His film shows us ugly,
faceless corporate greed and its truly fatal consequences, but gives us tools to
dismantle or at least throttle back the machine – and hopefully solve some of
the world's ills as well.  This film is important to see and comes at just the
right time to ride the wave of anger at the powerful despoiling the planet, the
economy, and even our bodies to make a buck.  We won't be able to reverse the
culture of consumerism, nor will we fully eliminate profit-centric public
policy, but we can change how much we let ourselves be patsies for their
enrichment.  As Edmund Burke said, "No one could make a mistake than he who did
nothing because he could do only a little."

I think everyone should see this documentary and vote accordingly at the box
office.  But if your Full Price Feature dollar can be spent buying something
from outside the Big Four food processor cartel, I think the filmmakers would
prefer you take action that way, and talk up the movie to more people.  Check it
out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

The Stoning of Soraya M.

Matinee

It's a tough sell, a film about the 1986 stoning of a woman.  And yes, I mean
the barbaric execution sort of stoning, not anything with a bong.  It came and
went in theatres like a flash; when I received my screener DVD, I eyed it with
trepidation.  It is a difficult topic and an emotionally wrenching concept, and
that's even before you slide the disc in and read "based on a true story."  It's
the sort of movie you might have chosen to avoid, but I think it is very
important to squarely face this tale as best you can.  See it.  I confess that I
(even inured little me) spent some time peeking through the cracks of my
fingers, and I did need help divorcing my rational brain from my empathy. 
Soraya's story got out of Ayatollah-controlled Iran at great risk and at a
terrible price – she deserves the comparatively mild commitment of us to watch
the dramatic retelling of her story.  And the filmmakers and actors deserve it
as well.

Soraya (Mozhan Marno) falls victim to her village's calculating, dismissive men.
Her only friend and ally is her aunt, Zahra (Shoreh Aghdashloo), a fearless
woman who wields some of the only feminine authority in that place.  Aghdashloo
has always impressed in small roles and large, but here is a role of cunning,
bravery, misery, steely resolve, and crumpled hope.  Marno's role is in some
ways easier – she has only to suffer, resign, mourn.  I don't mean at all to
belittle her performance: it was harrowing.   Her end can only elicit horror and
despair, no matter how well she succeeds in making us love her.  Aghdashloo has
a showy role, but one where she must dole out her showiness in careful measure.

Everyone gives a profoundly affecting performance.  I can't imagine being asked
to play any of these men; even the gentlest male soul has to bury his actorly
humanity in service of the character by the end of the film.  I wonder too how
close these actors (male and female) are culturally to the world they are
depicting, and how it must also have affected them.  This is a very good film,
but it is hard for me to chirp "check it out" because it will stick with you,
twisting in your stomach and making your life's petty annoyances feel less than
trivial.

Based on the book by Freidoune Sahebjam (portrayed by Jim Caviezel), The Stoning
plays out much as it must have been told to him.  It unspools like a fable, the
terrible course of Soraya's life before the story begins, and the plot to end
it.  The reign of the Ayatollah Khomeni continued for three years after this
story takes place, and, like the Taliban in Afghanistan, set the cultural
attitudes back in that country by 2000 years almost overnight.  For such
ugliness of humanity to rise so easily, for such unfairness and cruelty to bloom
so virulently requires such a deficit of empathy, rationality, compassion it
hurts to think about it.  I wonder if this film might inadvertently re-injure
the peaceful followers of Islam who are still smarting from the backlashes of
9/11-motivated hate crimes.  My heart found it inconceivable to see any good in
these men, even Hashem (Parviz Sayyad), a man unique among his peers for
shedding tears over the death of his wife.  Still, to allow such atrocities to
continue is impossible to endure.  My hope is that Soraya will serve as a symbol
for so many others who in modern times have met the same fate, and help stop the
practice of stoning.  This film is eye-opening and heart-draining and it is
excellently produced.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

Paranormal Activity

Matinee plus Snacks

Not unlike its inevitable comparison film, The Blair Witch Project, one of the
most exciting things about Paranormal Activity is how while you are watching it,
it feels real enough that you feel unsure whether it's a movie or a
found-footage presentation.  I dissected various actions and moments in the
film, searching for the cinematic mechanical justification behind an action (for
example, handling sound recording throughout an entire house) in the beginning,
while this movie worked up its head of steam.  It played very naturalistically
and felt justified and normal, and I was able to abandon myself to the fun.  (Or
is it a snuff film?)  The whole film is 98% two people, Micah and Katie, shot
entirely within their San Diego home (a very fancy one for persons of their
apparent income level), shot completely with a fancy-but-still-consumer-grade
digital movie camera.  It feels very much like what it purports to be – Micah
wanting to capture on film weird things that have started happening to them in
their home.

The performances are unselfconscious when appropriate and very natural, which is
the most convincing aspect of the movie all around.  From their dialogue to
their at-home wardrobe to their blood-curdling screams, it feels and sounds very
real.  Also, the cinematography is consistent with that which would be managed
by an online trader who just got a fancy camera, so if you had queasy problems
with Blair Witch or Cloverfield's shaky-cam, you might want to skip this one. 
Realism and grounding everything else besides the actual scary thing in reality
is what makes this film work.  If you can manage the shakycam it's a very nicely
crafted, slow burn of a scary movie.  It's organic style means no hackneyed
tension release mechanisms that sustain the audiences of most narrative horror
films.  Ahhh!  It was only the cat.

The bursts of activity (paranormal) are varied and unpredictable and hit your
various reptilian brain centers in different ways.  If you normally find X
scary, but chortle your way through Y, you'll get a dose of both.  The sound
design also contributes a great deal to the proceedings.  A nearly-sub-aural
rumbling announces that something is coming, and your body learns to tense up
when it hears it.  (This was no fun at all driving home.)   It's all very
low-tech – some sounds could literally be a group of grips lifting and dropping
a couch – and this makes it feel even more convincing.  Unearthly screeches or
banshee music or gooey tentacles would kill the mood.  Nothing is scarier than
what we can imagine for ourselves.  A creak of a stair caused by nothing we can
see – heebie jeebies!

Katie and Micah are a believable, likable couple, knocking around their
gorgeous, immaculate house, and they sell the smallest moments for full price,
especially Katie.  Don't bother holding out for a stinger at the end of the
credits – that menacing rumble will only end with the MPAA rating.  Paranormal
Activity is edited almost clinically, like an evidence tape, and with none of
the framing or vanity-screen time Blaire Witch sometimes betrayed.  I'll tell
you one thing, it's not the scariest movie I have ever seen, but it's probably
the most efficient and insidious.  The noises in my house never seemed so loud
or inexplicable as they do after seeing this.  It's a great scary treat and the
filmmakers should be rewarded with your business.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

Surrogates

Rental with Snacks

You know how Hollywood sometimes puts out two of the same movies in one year,
like animated ants or volcanos or meteors?  The premise of Surrogates is kind of
like that of Gamer, an idea that feels like an inevitable future, based on the
truth of what we know about how avatars are used even now.  In a year when plots
centering around the identity and control issues of surrogates and the
interpersonal complexities of dealing with manufactured representations of an
unseen operator, Surrogates continues to entertain us philosophically as we as
with lots of fun Surrie mishaps and unveiling a mystery.  In the present day of
the story, James Cromwell's company has gone from smart prosthetics to full
personae replacement via robot.  You stay locked in your stinky bathrobe while
your sexy idealized self interacts with other sexy idealized selves, free from
concerns about mortality.  Similar to the idea in Society in the movie Gamers,
operators are remote and anonymous, their avatars canoodling risk-free on the
outside.  Dissimilarly, the avatars here are nice disposable robots, rather than
semi-consensual real human strangers with an implant.  It's a cool notion and a
scary one too.

Naturally there is a "real life real world-only" movement, the Dreads  (insulted
Futurama-style by being called "meatbags") who surely must be behind the
shocking inciting incident:  somehow, someone can kill the operator through
their Surrie! Dun da dunnnn!  Enter Robot Willis, FBI agent whose meatbag
operator is starting to feel the ache of his disconnection. It's long been a
movie fan cliché that when Bruce Willis' character has hair, Willis does not act
as well as when he has no hair.  Go ahead, check the filmography.  In
Surrogates, we have smooth-headed, grizzled good-actor Bruce as his real self,
and waxy faced Willis Surrie with the fringe on top as his robot.  It's kind of
perfect.  Overall, hairless Bruce gets more screen time and the film benefits
from it.

Willis' lovely robot partner is played with alarming artificial facility by
Radha Mitchell.  The leader of the Dreads is the always intimidating Ving Rhames
as The Prophet.  Try not to think about the last time Bruce Willis and Ving
Rhames were opponents in a movie.  It all seems very simple – finding the
balance between human connection and personal safety, the Minority-Report-like
monitoring stations that can stop naughty Surries mid-crime, the identity
mystery we can experience even now through our myriad ways of connecting online.
Then Surrogates kind of tries to out-think itself; instead of letting a simple
plot unfold in an interestingly complex world, the writer(s) bring(s) in
unnecessary sort-of surprises and double crosses and zig zags to try and spice
it up, and trip on their own shoes in the process.  Do not look up the
screenwriters' filmographies because while they stumbled in Act 3, they really
were onto something for a good chunk of this film, and we want to encourage more
of the good stuff and less Catwoman.

In comparison, Gamer was simple and as a result we got to immerse ourselves into
a somewhat mind-bending world, which is of course the actual point.  Here, we're
just trying to remember who is on what side and is being driven by whom.  It's
not so complex that it's unfollowable, it's just more than it needed to be.  The
source material is a graphic novel, which makes sense when you watch the
beautiful exposition sequence – it's efficient, informative, and lovely to view.
I would have liked to explore this world more and not keep slamming into some
convoluted scheme that defeats its own purpose.  I had fun watching it, but I
actually thought the movie was smarter than its plot.  See what you think.  I'm
going to check out the graphic novel.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

Zombieland

Matinee

Like any proper spoof (not like Date/Scary/Epic/Dance Movies, actual
spoof), Zombieland serves also as an example of the genre it's
spoofing.  Unlike the inevitable comparison with the British Shaun of
the Dead, this movie feels less like a spoof and more like a
straightforward zombie movie with just some comedy thrown in.  Zombie
movies already have some comedy in them, so the line between the
"serious ones" and this one is fine indeed.  It's funny, but it's not
outrageous or satirical or genre-skewering or anything like that.
It's more acerbic and snappy.

Told mainly from the perspective of Jesse Eisenberg's character
"Columbus" (as in the destination in Ohio), we learn how a skinny,
neurotic drink of water like him has managed to be one of the few
survivors left after a truly cataclysmic spread of undeaditude.  In
fact, our young lead's reliance on the hard and true rules of
surviving a zombiepocalypse are pretty much what anyone his age or a
bit older (like, Woody Harrelson's age) would already take as read as
how one would survive.  Like Jamie Kennedy in Scream, Eisenberg sticks
to the basic principles and they work.  His survival is thorough and
long-standing, more routine than terrifying at the point we join his
story.  Throughout the movie, Eisenberg explains the various rules he
adheres to, which are then amusingly graphically presented and used as
visual punctuation whenever employed.

Naturally, others have survived by less meticulous but no less
effective means.  He runs into the wonderfully over the top Woody
Harrelson, gleefully massacring his way across the country to find a
Twinkie.  (It is funny to see Mr. Hemp and Compost firing a huge gun
out of a Hummer.)  They later meet Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin,
jaded streetwise urchins all.  They make their way through distrust
and moaning hordes to a huge set-piece finale, a hyperbolic spree
seemingly created as the central point of Zombieland.  In fact, the
movie's title and its focus on this climax makes me believe that the
whole movie was created just to bring us to the carnival of carnage.
Spoiler alert:  zombies get blowed up real good.

Eisenberg's character from Adventureland is now in Zombieland, with
only the wisdom of his numerous near-brushes with death.  I almost
didn't recognize Stone; she was a sexy teen vixen in Superbad, a
hopelessly tremulous nerd in House Bunny, and now she's a cavalier
cool chick here.  It's funny/sad that her resume, if viewed by someone
who had seen none of these movies, makes her look like a B-Movie
bimbo.  Stone's chameleonic comedic capacity, her hot-yet-accessible
appearance, and the fact that all three of those movies were surprise
critical and audience hits – all this tells me that she's in for the
long haul.

Harrelson is playing to his go-to tough redneck type, but with a comic
edge and a truly creatively brutal side.  If the mayhem weren't
against voracious undead cannibals, it would be disturbing.  As it is,
it's pretty much videogame level appreciation of the novelties of
application and the unapologetic hyperbole.  And finally (well, not
finally, but we'll leave that last survivor as a delicious marshmallow
surprise) we have precocious angel Abigail Breslin.  Always acting
beyond her age, she's one of the few 12 year-olds who can possibly
pull off her character's deeply-ingrained cynicism and instincts.  I
got flashes of her in Signs and Little Miss Sunshine while she rolled
her eyes at a poorly executed kill.  Adorable.

Zombieland is a road movie, a little meta-commentary on zombie movie
mayhem, and an extremely violent and pretty funny comedy.  Come on,
zombies, what more do you need?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

Informant!, The

Rental

The Informant! (yes with the exclamation point, though no more for the
rest of this review) positions itself as a wacky comedy and a sort of
industrial espionage thriller, adapted from Kirt Eichenwald's novel.
Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon as a kind of Talentless Mr. Ripley) imagines
himself a master sleuth – or a master criminal – and most of the
comedy in this movie is Mark's internal monologue.  I haven't read the
book, but the movie makes me want to.  Mark goes from being a man with
an adorable sense of importance to the inverse of a corporate shark;
his machinations implode. The movie itself starts to slowly implode
into a still-amusing but increasingly convoluted muddle of absurdity.
I was reminded of the short-lived but brilliant TV show Profit, except
upside-down and inside-out.

Whitacre is a whistleblower who draws the Feds' attentions to his
agricultural company, revealing malfeasance amongst his colleagues.
He clearly enjoys being a mole, but he really didn't think through the
whole process.  The screenwriter also wrote the Bourne Ultimatum, but
this amount of doublespeak and back-pedaling appears to have done him
in.  Since the book in paperback is a surprising 656 pages, naturally
the film is a lesser-than ad for the book.  I was enjoying Mark's
internal monologues much more than the actual "plot," and wished I
could just relax and enjoy that part of the story's universe.  Don't
get me wrong, it's still diverting, but it's the kind of movie that
stymies my proper critical eye (and ability to write) due to being so
jumbled and ambitious, much like its hero.  I can't really blame the
screenwriter; director Steven Soderbergh often falls prey to the very
intangible thing that bogs down this film: that foggy mushy feeling
that I think he uses to make something feel real but instead obscures
everyone and makes us sleepy.

The supporting cast is littered with random comedy luminaries (from
Seth McFarlane to the Smothers Brothers) who plau their roles with
deadly seriousness.  Perhaps this lends to the chimaeric feel of the
movie, because you have Mr. Action/Drama as a pudgy situational
disaster on wheels, and Misters Comedians as hard-nosed heavies and
foils.  The movie feels uneven and unfinished; it would be easy to
blame the adaptation process, with all its necessary slicing and
dicing, but even the design of it feels off.  Set during the years
1992-1995, the tone is irrepressibly 1970's.  If it weren't for more
modern technologies popping up here and there, I'd never have known it
was taking place during the Clinton administration.

My recommendation is to rent the movie, and it may make you, like me,
want to check out the book.  Save your money for the late fall Oscar
releases.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

Invention of Lying, The

Matinee with Snacks

Ricky Gervais was himself reason enough to see the Invention of Lying, but I was
also interested by the premise.  Without having given it much thought before
entering the theatre, while watching, I was perpetually reminded of the fruitful
nature of what seems so simple: In a world where no one is capable of uttering
anything that isn't true, one man (co-writer/co-director/star Gervais) suddenly
develops the capacity to lie.  Mayhem ensues, right?  The preview implies that
he rushes out to take advantage of everyone else, which wouldn't actually be
funny enough to sustain a movie.  Gervais is not that kind of guy.  He writes
screenplays for movies – but in a world without untruth, there is no fiction, no
fables, no tall tales, no myths, no icons, no legends.

Not one of us (eg lie-enabled) could be brought up in a universe of pure truths
without sustaining some serious psychological damage.  The undistilled credulity
of his fellow man is too much to take.  Not only can no one utter an untruth, t
seems that they are also incapable of keeping their thoughts to themselves. 
It's a carnival of blunt remorselessness – why be remorseful, it is just the
truth?   If someone finds you repellant they will go ahead and volunteer that
information and you know it is the truth. What must self-esteem be like as a
person in that world?  Anyone who finds you stupid or ugly or threatening or
intimidating will tell you so.  It's all so simplistic and straightforward – no
one need delve below the surface of a person since no one can prevaricate or
self-aggrandize or even have an unspoken agenda.  His new power, discovered by
accident at a happily fortuitous moment, is mighty indeed.  Perhaps he took his
ultimate plan a step too far by the end, but imagine the impossible position he
finds himself in.

The pre-lie part of the movie at first seems to go on for too long – we know
what's coming, and are greedily awaiting the plundering of these innocently rude
and heartless, non-introspective people.  Really, they are like three year olds
– what they see is what exists and they believe everything you tell them and
blurt out things not realizing the consequences.  However, it's very important
to establish how profound this truth-telling is and establish Gervais' innate
altruism before he's tempted by the knowledge of truth and untruth.

From here, the movie becomes dizzyingly hilarious, mixed with genuine sympathy,
while an amusing and subversive element grows slowly, beginning as fascinating
and then stumbling into inevitability.  Where there can be only truth is also a
basic assumption of best intentions – Gervais has a lovely scene with his mother
that sets the ball rolling – but in this superficial universe, where the words
are so often painful but endured, you tend to protect yourself by choosing to
only hear what you want to hear.  This matters.  Oh just for the ability just to
hold one's tongue!  These people are toddler-like also in that they are barely
able to lead their own lives once their responsibility is taken away from them
by Gervais' web of storytelling.  Their implicit reliance on the infallibility
of everyone is crippling. [Message!]  Invention ends up being very sweet, very
funny, and definitely winking about what is required in order to live in a world
such as that to which we are accustomed.   I'll let you discover this particular
conundrum for yourself.  This movie is definitely not Ghost Town – it's
philosophically titillating.

The entire cast from top to bottom is stuffed with great comic actors and
comedians – but it is not a wacky woo hoo zany fest.  The comic performer's
sense of timing and absurdity, no matter how large or small the part, is vital. 
Gervais' particular popular acerbic persona is restrained, but still retains
that wonderful sense of impatient impotence – he's lovable and treads that fine
line to keep himself sympathetic even when he may be bending our moral code
somewhat.  The Invention of Lying is very enjoyable, do go see it.  Discuss it
with friends of different backgrounds than yourself for a fun evening.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

World's Greatest Dad

Matinee with Snacks

This movie is the sort of movie that sends me to the keyboard to
topple negative expectations, praise the participants, and hopefully
drive up their box office a little.  I know that Robin Williams has
done some insufferably things in recent years, but remember him in The
Fisher King?  One Hour Photo?  His doting father in Mrs. Doubtfire?
World's Greatest Dad involves a certain degree of redemption, and this
film should redeem Williams in your heart.  I almost don't want to
tell you who the writer/director is, for fear of your expectations
getting in the way of seeing this movie.  Let me be clear:  this film
is excellent.  It's beautifully written, deftly directed, and
performed with letter-perfect precision.  It's sad and funny and even
a little shocking.  Robin Williams is so warm and vulnerable and
conflicted, and in a morally compromised way, hilarious.  Our mystery
auteur?  It's Bobcat Goldthwaite.  No, I'm serious.  And it's
wonderful.  I have seen some good stuff this summer and this is one of
my favorites already.  Why only Matinee with Snacks as a rating?
Well, it's not perfect, but it is truly worth your time and money.

Daryl Sabara, as Williams' complete wastrel of a son, Kyle, dominates
Act I.  Beyond normal teen obnoxiousness or rebellion, he's rude &
perverse, misanthropic and causic, even to his one friend (Evan
Martin, who you just want to hug).  When Kyle's proclivities veer into
tragedy, Williams is left with a gaping hole in his life, and a chance
to redeem his difficult son.  Somehow this snowballs into places he
never expected, or dreamed of hoping for.  Sabara creates a strong
impression before the movie is left for Williams to carry, but we
never forget him.  The responses to his absence, as well as the
responses to his father's actions, are deeply hilarious and quite a
trip.  I don't want to spoil it.  I can say that this movie is
seriously funny, yet still stays grounded and serious.

Most of the story takes place in the school that Kyle attended and
where Williams teaches.  Alexie Gilmore plays Williams' girlfriend,
that kind of sexy dream girl who can be a teddy bear or a succubus on
a dime.  She is the bellwether for every change in his life; he
probably would never have noticed how shoddily she treats him if he
didn't have the abuses from his son blocking his view all the time.
Henry Simmons, the handsome, charismatic, successful teacher/coach
lingers on the periphery as a perfect contrast to Williams.  Naomi
Glick and Lorraine Nicholson are two misfits who carry the burden of
representing the student body attitude shift, and I hope to see more
of both of them, as well as Martin and football stud Zach Sanchez.
While some of the side characters veer a little sharply into the realm
of caricature, I imagine it's done more for economy of scale, rather
than lazy shorthand.  The important arc is the one along which
Williams careens.

So much of the action is unexpected, but never feels forced or
unlikely.  It pokes fun at our cultural short-term memory, and our
need for symbols even more than reality.  What is better, the truth,
or the myth?  The delicious emotional complexity of Williams' response
to his son, his actions in response to his loss, and his actions in
response to his gain are all wonderful.  The tagline "Lance Clayton is
about to get everything he deserves" is more perfect than it seems.
To properly gush would be to reveal plot points, and I really really
want you to go see it for yourselves.  This film deserves your money
and time, and I hope Magnolia lets Goldthwait keep making movies.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

Extract

Rental with Snacks

Mike Judge's forte has always been finding the beauty and absurdity in
simple, regular folk.  From Beavis & Butthead through Idiocracy, and
of course cult favorite Office Space, Judge pokes at the stupid things
that well-intentioned people can do, and the petty evils we all visit
upon each other just trying to get by.  Extract's hero fits neatly
into this mold.

Jason Bateman is the owner of an extract factory; he's disenchanted
with the business, his marriage to the sublime Kristen Wiig, pretty
much everything.  Thanks to his friend Dean (played with a wondrous
touch by Ben Affleck), Bateman starts making a series of mistakes that
puts it all at risk.  His shame spiral is exacerbated by petty crook
Mila Kunis, who inserts herself just where she can do the most
damage.  This already funny cast is increased by the awesome J.K.
Simmons, the dooftastic Dustin Milligan, and career jackhole David
Koechner.  Clifton Collins, who last warmed my heart in Sunshine
Cleaning, plays his imperious warehouse worker so straight, he
(wisely) sacrifices easy stereotype funny for sympathetic.  All these
comedy powerhouses (and the lesser-known faces in the film) take this
script and squeeze every last drop of potential out of it.  Wiig and
Bateman have a great stale marriage chemistry that you still root for
as they continually misread each other.  Simmons plays a version of
his stock exasperated character, but seriously, that guy can do no
wrong.

Despite the huge farcical situations and comedy genius cast, Extract
is not so much riproarious as thoughtful and true – not unlike Judge's
animated series King of the Hill.  Affleck is the disjointed voice of
reason, unless you really think about what he's saying. I haven't
enjoyed Affleck this much since Shakespeare in Love, he's excellent
here.  Koechner is abrasively guileless and so familiar in his style
of annoying.  Wiig is, like Bateman, playing straight man to the
situations, but both their performances are clever and funny and
real.  Extract has plenty of laughs, but largely it has a story that
makes you shake your head in wry appreciation of the humanity of it
all.  It's really character driven, though there are two and a half
plot lines twisting through these people.

I really enjoyed it, but it's not a split your sides and snort your
soda kind of comedy, not even as much as Office Space.  It's a very
well-written and well-performed example of Mike Judge's insight into
the human condition, and the vagaries of suburban boredom and crisis,
and will be a very enjoyable rental with snacks for you later.  Maybe
Judge's work is just better on the small screen, which is not a
crime.  Whatever the case, I am very glad he can make real characters
we can care about and still make us laugh.  Check it out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

September Issue, The

Matinee

The fashion universe in America centers around – maybe even depends
upon – exposure in Vogue magazine.  It’s the flagship of Condé Nast’s
publishing empire, and for twenty-one years, it’s been under the cold,
watchful eye of editor-in-chief Anna Wintour.  Even if you don’t
follow the caprices of the fashion industry, you have probably heard
of Wintour.  The book (and its film adaptation) The Devil Wears Prada
was based on the singular, stressful experience of working for such a
woman.  Wintour’s closed, expressionless eyes drift decisively over
thousands of garments and images daily, and what she says is
fashionable goes.  Her taste, her mood, and her mind shape what
runway, couture, and later discount designers create and we wear.  It
sounds hyperbolic, but in many ways it’s true – she has this huge yet
superficial power.  She surveys her kingdom with inflexible demands
and everyone struggles to keep up and to anticipate her whims.  The
September issue of Vogue is the big year kick-off, the definitive
volume.  I’m not sure why – the film takes it as a given.  The movie
concerns itself with the process behind creating this issue (September
2007) and also in trying to unlock the legend of Anna Wintour.

When speaking with the camera, Wintour peers smiling out from under
her signature London swinging ‘60’s bob, her eyes polite but her
demeanor alternatively rushed or reflective.  For her, this world is
serious, it’s vital, it’s curing cancer.  You know that time the
copier exploded right before that big meeting, how it was the most
important thing in the world for you?  Well, her whole life is run at
that adrenaline level all the time.  For others, even including her
siblings and daughter, and certainly myself, it’s much ado about
frippery, a huge misuse of intensity and perfectionism and creative
energy and money.  If Wintour applied her perfectionist micromanaging
no-compromise attitude in a lab, she probably could cure cancer.  It
has got to be an interesting experience being deified by your industry
but trivialized because it’s about Fashion.  Lots of people don’t get
Anna Wintour, and part of me thinks she cultivates that inscrutability
to increase her power and prestige.

As a fashion editor, she is no fashion plate.  She wears a lot of the
same pieces, in a narrow but busy color scheme, and with a small
selection of accessories, yet she oversees photo spreads of some truly
unflattering, trendy, weird, horrifying, and expensive clothes.  She
approves a dumpy, bright colored neck brace and then crosses her arms
over her sensibly clad (though loud) self, and moves on to the next
ordeal of the day.

The access granted the film crew is impressive, and as the publish
date for the magazine draws near, they are included more and more in
the store.  They are unwitting confessors, conspirators, and
mitigators of conflict, employed as such on purpose, and even find a
role in the magazine itself.  At Vogue, everything is a resource, a
tool, a feature.  It’s interesting to see the process behind magazine
layout, location shoot wrangling, cover design, and so much more.

What I loved best about The September Issue was not the insight into
the iconic boss from hell, but her creative director Grace
Coddington.  Grace and Anna have been cohorts for years, with Grace
cast firmly as the underling.  Where Anna tolerates only
perfectionism, Grace wears her frizzy red hair wild over a clumpy
black outfit and no makeup.  She also happens to be absolutely genius
at designing photoshoots.  She creates these gorgeous photo essays
that succeed on their own as art, even making the outrageous clothes
seem more like artistic choices than fashion trends.  Anna never lets
anyone forget she’s boss, and she grinds Grace down to retain control
of the situation.  By the end of the film, we come to realize that
their passive-aggressive dance has gone on for decades and will go as
long as either of them let it.  Anna might dictate the direction of
clothing trends, but Grace creates the signature style that keeps
Vogue the leader on the shelves.  Even if the subject of the magazine
doesn’t interest you, the mechanics of making it happen will add much
to the story of these two women for whom fashion is the world, not
just a job.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

Cold Souls

Rental and Snacks

High concept movies are difficult beasts to tame.  Being John
Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are immediate
analogs to Cold Souls in being inside-out explorations of the
metaphysical.  (Do familiarize yourself with both of these films if
you have not already.)  Cold Souls deals with the idea of a person
willfully removing their soul to aid them with the burdens of living.
It's also about the inevitable exploitations that kind of practice and
business can lead to.  Paul Giamatti plays Paul Giamatti, a film and
theatre actor, who undergoes this procedure, and then gets caught in a
web of complications of the soul harvesting industry.  Giamatti is a
delicate enough actor that we can actually perceive the difference in
him before and after extraction – and other developments – thank
goodness.  He's also one of the few people who can pull off the red
socks and white dress shoes look; it helps with his character, when he
removes it.

Here we experience the absurdism of a man tracking down his lost soul,
the imagining of the intimacy and self-confusion of being a vessel for
someone else's soul, and the exploration of what a soul really means
in terms of identity.  I confess it sounds way more navel-gazy that it
actually is.  I would hate to see such a concept devolve into a
horrible "who am I" monologue.  Thankfully writer/director Sophie
Barthes avoids that trap by giving our hero Paul a quest and a hope
for redemption, through what seems to have been intended as either
comic or sobering circumstances.  The metaphors she could have
addressed are left to us, the audience, but the movie doesn't turn
into a caper either.

Giamatti is aided in his journey by soul harvesting salesman David
Strathairn, radiating kind competence and yet disorganized flakiness
with a flick of his hair.  A mysterious blond woman Nina (Dina Korzun)
floats in and out of the soul sucking workplace and eventually becomes
very important to the story.  She remains mysterious even when we
think we know her.  They are accompanied by a really cool score by
Dickon Hinchliffe.

It's interesting to see the subtle disabling quality of soullessness,
and it's great to see Giamatti react to each new direction his literal
soul search takes him.  It feels a little uneven, unfinished, and, I
chafe to say it, but it's true – even a little soulless.  And not
apparently on purpose with that.  To fully commit is to implode into a
dippy meditational snorefest, which would be tedium.  To fully switch
gears from metaphysical to caper/quest would be to devalue the quest
in the first place.  I am glad to have seen it and I enjoyed the
journey we went on with Paul, but it had some intangible thing lacking.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

Gamer

Matinee

I confess, I went into Gamer with some excitement, but generally low
expectations.  The premise I found intriguing:  the insatiable need
for more realistic virtual reality has evolved into the player
virtually controlling an actual live person in real situations.  In
the game Society, that just means taking the indignities of Second
Life or the Sims and forcing real people to debase themselves for an
anonymous, panting puppet master.  It's the future, so both TV and
Society are pretty much rated M for Mature and E for Explicit.  In the
game Slayer, it means Death Row prisoners play real life war games and
try to survive 30 games to win their freedom.  Needless to say, no one
has ever made it.  It's a hard core premise which is even more
provocative because of how seemingly inevitable it is.  It's a logical
extension of today's competitive game market and contemporary
society's disassociative loss of empathy.  Big stupid action movie?
Well, it's no District 9, but Gamer still manages to pull off this
tale and be more than an exploding toy movie.

Gerard Butler is Kable, the international star of the Slayer game, and
you don't need a crystal ball to know that someone's going to try and
foil his bid for freedom.  The how is cool, and the why is actually
cooler.  Some of these situations are seriously messed up, and the
movie benefits from one's ability to get in the shoes of these
characters.  Fortunately, the way they shot the movie makes it
difficult to remain disassociated, which I hope was on purpose but
either way, makes the whole thing an awesome metacriticism of
desensitization.  I am so not kidding!  You enjoy everything better if
you have empathy for those involved, and of course everything is
streaking away from that point of view even now.

Enter software magnate and all-around creepazoid Castle (Dexter's
Michael C. Hall, doing all he can to keep me from wanting to watch
Dexter).  He's the genius who came up with the nanotechnology that
made Society and Slater possible, and you can tell by his face that he
had nothing but philanthropic intentions when he did so.  The
enjoyable Kyra Sedgwick is confusingly used as a talk show host whose
motives and interests are either totally random, pointless, or
capricious.  She doesn't seem interested in anyone's agenda, not even
her own as a member of the press, but her pointlessness does little
harm and the story continues to operate smoothly around her
character.  Then there's Amber Valetta, Butler's desperate wife (why
desperate?) and Logan Lerman as Simon, Kable's operator.  (Get it,
Simon Says, ha ha ha).  Everyone (well, almost) wants Kable to make
it, and they all go about it in such weird and unlikely ways, and yet
it all kind of tumbles accidentally together in the last act.

The game itself, Slayer, is really how this movie got made.  Hall's
creeptitude or Valletta's 100 yard stare are just window dressing
(like the live NPCs used in Slayer) to give the action a legitimate
story.  It's a good story, it just skips a few steps to really work,
but by the time you notice, you're too caught up in enjoying the rest
of it.  The game play, from the perspective of Simon, is immersive and
intense.  For Kable, of course, it's life or death.  To make things
worse, he has to hope his player's instincts are good because he has
nearly no independent movement – basically his eyes, and talking.
He's at the mercy of the skill of some rich person in a VR room.  It's
a terrifying position to be in.  All notions of control,
consensuality, slavery, will, or even murder go out the door.  We the
audience are immersed as deeply as a two-dimensional movie can make us
– either plugged in to the player interface or fleeing pursuers as
Kable.  It's fantastically vivid and really an impressive bit of
camera engineering.  It definitely puts the viscera in visceral, so
proceed with caution; I think the trip is worth it.  Check it out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

Inglourious Basterds

Matinee with Snacks

I was nervous about seeing Inglourious Basterds because of late,
director Quentin Tarantino has been kind of a turn off for me; also
the preview looked more violent than even my desensitized action-movie-
loving self could stomach.  I was pleasantly surprised by a 97%
mature, solid, suspenseful, respectful, artistic movie.  I'll go ahead
and complain about the 3%, all of which typifies what Tarantino has
been doing to keep me away from his movies.  He employed his pre-post-
ironic random font party titles, metacommentary, severely
anachronistic music (no matter how legitimately awesome David Bowie's
Cat People is), and disabled my ability to focus on a key scene with
one incredibly distracting casting choice.  No, not B.J. Novak (The
Office) – Mike Meyers.  Now, Mike was great (so was B.J.), and I am
glad to see him try his hand at straight acting, but his eyes still
sought approval in every take so I still have no idea what that scene
was about.

Now: for the rest of it.  We've seen enough World War II movies to the
point that it really is its own genre, with its own shorthand visual
language and even clichés.  Tarantino pulls out a strong, tension-
filled WWII movie and drapes it over a full-on alternative universe
revenge fantasy nearly as over the top as Kill Bill, but with – I have
to say it – a ton more class.  Tarantino keeps his coolness factor up
by casting the always naturally hilarious Brad Pitt as Lt. Aldo Raine,
the backwoods leader of the titular American vigilante group.  They
kill Nazis, and one must confess, they do it with a style designed to
grow their reputation from infamous to legendary.  Showmanship was a
major skill of the Third Reich, and the Basterds in their own
hardscrabble way are fighting fire with fire.

And then there is the delectable Christoph Waltz as Col. Hans Landa.
This guy is an amazing and wonderful oozer of charisma, menace, and
sociopathic charm.  From his first scene, in a farmhouse in France, to
his last (I won't say where), Waltz is a riveting character and a
sublime bit of casting.  He's as unpredictable as the weather, and
twice as deadly. It's a delicious and ironic contrast to see his
urbane smoothness contrasted with our good guys' rough, ignorant
crassness.  Young Nazi wunderkind Frederick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl) is
well cast too, his face balancing boy-next-door with serpentine.

The plot does not, as the previews would suggest, center around the
pillaging exploits of the Basterds, to my relief.  Instead we have a
confluence of a Jewish cinema owner, a Nazi hero infatuated with her,
a British infiltration, and a film premiere.  Chapter three is a web
of agendas crashing together in an exciting and suspenseful climax.
It tickles you and terrifies you in turns.  Melanie Laurent is
wonderful as the cineaste whose humble venue becomes the epicenter of
all the plots of the film.

I was surprised and pleased to be so surprised and pleased by this
violent, sophisticated, tremulous, funny movie.  It is none of these
things alone but a heady mix of all four.  One forgets, with all the
French and German over 153 minutes, that you're watching a Hollywood
movie at all – until a trademark Tarantinoism pops in to remind you.
It's good.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

Paper Heart

Matinee

Paper Heart is a story about a documentary being made starring Charlene Yi. 
It's not the documentary, it's a biopic of the documentary – the events
portrayed happened to Yi before the filming of Paper Heart.  Even her filmmaker
friend Nick Jasenovic (who is the cowriter and director and producer of Paper
Heart) is played by Jake Johnson – so it's about as meta as it gets in some
places.  The small but vital distinction shapes the film as a whole – rather
than being Lost In La Brea, it's more of a mockumentary story about love (not
necessarily a love story).  Can you imagine how Big Hollywood Marketing would
mess this up?

Yi set out to make a documentary about love, studying it as an anthropologist
studies primitive cultures and rituals.  She believes she will never be in love,
that love has no role in her life, or maybe she's broken.  Her whole demeanor is
so awkward, so unselfconscious, and so seemingly socially inept; yet she does
stand-up comedy and performance art and pals around with smart (and famous)
comics who all seem to be very fond of her.  She seems to be lovable – perhaps
the problem is she is not open to feeling love herself?  In anyone else's hands,
this project would seem narcissistic or fake-humble aggrandizing. With Yi as our
lead, it's embarrassingly sincere.

She crosses the country with her film crew, including Nick (as played by Jake)
and Nick (the director of this film), finding wonderful interview subjects.  The
interviewee's sections aren't always question-response, but sometimes are
storytelling opportunities to reveal themselves, an act of love to the audience.
When reminiscing, rather than showing us talking heads describing the humorous
or romantic events, Jasenovic has them as voice over while puppets act out their
story.  Not polished puppets, paper and string and wire and tape stick figures. 
They are crude, sweet, and subtly innovative (raging rivers, passing through
scenery).  It's childlike but detail-oriented (what Yi seems to be), and hugely
smile-inducing.  The stories are already warm and nice but the puppets make them
even more vulnerable and memorable.

When not getting the life stories of long-term marrieds, biology professors, or
divorce lawyers, Paper Heart is about this little crew making this movie, and
checking in on Yi to see if she believes in love yet.  They reference the crew
and the scene goals as if we're watching a making-of featurette, and eventually
it is the film itself that gets in the way of the story being told.  This sounds
like a criticism, but actually it's an interesting and unique narrative device,
and very meta-fictional.  During production, Yi meets Nick's friend (who happens
to be Michael Cera – these folks are all in show business after all, so it's not
artificial at all).  Cera takes a liking to Yi and she retreats, as we knew she
would.  She's not insecure in herself, but she's definitely locked down in some
way that let's her be all out on stage and hang as one of the dudes with her guy
friends.  She seems to have no female friends.  Having had phases of that
myself, I bet it's because male friends just aren't as emotionally challenging
or risky to someone who is afraid to open her heart.  Men don't ask to be
allowed into their buddies' hearts, not compared to female friends, so she's
safe from risking her heart with the dudes.
Cera is not like other dudes.  True to many of the characters he has portrayed
in film and television, Cera is very sweet and a little shy, and comfortable
only with friends he trusts.  He's the perfect foil for Yi's guard.  Nick
decides to incorporate their tentative, awkward courtship into the movie, and
Yi's project takes a big turn.  I feel like I am spoiling it, but the movie's
appeal is how it twists in midstream and surprises you.  The story the
documentary was telling is sweet and the story of Yi possibly finding her heart
blend together very sweetly and naturally.  We grow to believe her disbelief in
her own heart, and she learns things as well.  Paper Heart is a kooky, gentle
movie that's all about love, and well worth a look with an open heart.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

District 9

Matinee with Snacks

The early previews of District 9 looked like a dark update of Alien Nation –
visitors come and can't leave so we take them in and let's see what that's like.
The previews are deceptive.  That may be what Act I of District 9 is about, but
certainly not the real story.  Set in Johannesburg, South Africa, the film parks
the aliens for 20 years in a shantytown and it's impossible not to recollect the
same slums from the time of apartheid.  In that country's history, the minority
white settlers ghettoized the conquered native blacks, and here it is the
established humans ghettoizing new arrivals.  The fear and hatred and resentment
outside District 9 is real, but the secret exploitation is what makes this film
more than a thinly veiled allegory.  We know, looking back over human history,
that the treatment of these castaways would be just like this, or worse.

Newcomer Sharlto Copley (sexy in person at Comic-Con) is Wikus Van der Merwe, a
nerdy pencil pusher who inadvertently stumbles upon the aliens' greatest secret.
Called Prawns by humans, the aliens have something we want, but they have
managed to defy our exploitation until Wikus accidentally opens that door. 
Sharlto is wonderful – new to film, he's very natural and earthy and believable,
and we are caught up in his performance and his empathetic nature.  Director
Neill Blomkamp encouraged his actors to improvise as much as possible to add
realism to the scene, which is a seriously ballsy choice considering how
pre-planned heavy effects movies need to be as a rule.  I learned that one
performance-capture actors performed all the motion work for the Prawns, and
regretfully have been unable to retrieve his name to applaud him.  The alien
body design is bipedal, but with bird-like reversed knees and a chitinous and
reticulated body.  Still below all that is that actor's vivid humanity, which
serves to bring the audience closer to these visitors emotionally.  A cowering
form elicits pity even if it has antennae.

District 9 was made for a seemingly impossible $30 million, and it wows you not
with expensive overdone bells and whistles, but with making everything feel as
real and grounded as possible.  The best effects are the ones that don't seem
like effects (the perpetually hovering derelict spaceship, for example) and just
fill in the story.  We feel like we're really there with Wikus and the main
alien known as Christopher Johnson, thanks to the digital video and hand-held
camera, oh and the incredibly realistic effect of Johnson.  This film doesn't
throw itself around trying to be the biggest movie of the summer (no offense,
Iron Man), it just is a blessedly original story told as bare bones as possible,
while also exhibiting seamless special effects.  It's low key in its excellence
by just being solid and real and well thought-out.

Oh, but I should note that this movie is crazy gory.  But, so were the Oscar
bait movies Saving Private Ryan and Gladiator.  It's not gore for gore's sake,
but it is definitely unapologetically vivid.  In the 72 hours during which the
majority of the story takes place, writers Blomkamp and Terri  Tatchell pack in
story and character and spectacle and humanity at its best and worst.  By the
time we get to Act III it's pretty intense, so be ready for it.  I'm so grateful
that the original project project that Blomkamp and producer Peter Jackson were
going to do (a movie adaptation of the video game Halo, deep sigh) fell through
so we could have this great original work.  District 9 is going to be studied
and discussed for a long time, it's substantial and revealing.  Go see it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

Ugly Truth, The

Rental and Snacks

In a scary economy, buzz will keep me out of a movie theatre when my hard-earned
dollars are at risk.  While I will often sacrifice my dollars for you, Constant
Readers, to possibly prevent you doing the same, sometimes I just…hesitate.  The
Ugly Truth is exactly what the preview promises – a cliché-ridden, predictable
boy & girl resist each other love story.  However, the Ugly Truth is also quite
hilarious and sexy in turns, as well as a call to arms for friends of people
like these to help prevent these kinds of pathologies.  Director Robert Luketic
was responsible for 21, which for all its lack of veracity was a well-paced,
entertaining and sexy movie, but he also directed Legally Blonde (just the
first, excellent one), so, he's proven he can take a character whose type would
immediately be resisted by his target audience and make her strong, interesting,
and someone you would actually want to know.  Well played, Mr. Luketic.

Katherine Heigl continues to be beautiful, charming, and sympathetic as an
actress (no, I don't watch Grey's Anatomy so I don't know her TV side. In movies
she's luminous).  She manages to take a successful, career-driven OCD control
freak character and make her genuinely human and likeable.  Gerard Butler
continues to be beautiful, alpha male, and vulnerable as an actor (yes I saw
300, that doesn't count).  He manages to take a vulgar, emotionally stunted
chauvinist trash-talker character and make him genuinely human and likeable.  Of
course we get to Heigl's gooey center first because the filmmakers know the
cardinal rule of chick flicks, which is never let us see inside the guy's mind
at first (yes I saw Notting Hill, please stop interrupting).

The premise as revealed by the preview is Butler says women should accept and
approach men as the simple dogs they are instead of expecting or providing
high-falutin' romance.  He promises to teach Heigl how to worm her way into her
dream guy's heart, and you know the rest.  The movie does one wonderful thing
with the management of all the dream guy (TV's Eric Winter as Dr. Colin Perfect)
business, from their movie-ready meet cute to their narrative's sudden but
inevitable end.  Like all good movie romance couples, Heigl and Butler would
drive each other to murder in real life, but their path to realizing what it is
they were missing in their previous lives is the joy.  The supporting cast is
fabulous, though little used.  Co-anchors Cheryl Hines and John Michael Higgins
are a troubled married couple who help us like Butler's character when he's
doing his Man Show best to not be liked.  Heigl's assistant Bree Turner is
quietly hilarious in her too-small part.

My companion and I were taken aback (to say the least) at echoes from our social
circle in the dialogue.  Considering how hugely over the top the whole premise
is, that realization made the movie as a whole feel much more possible, much
more poignant.  This movie overtly states that the ugly truth about the two
genders is that they want different things from each other than are wanted from
them; the real ugly truth is that there are 100 ways to grow a thick protective
skin on a cat, and only one way to remove it.  I enjoyed the film taking the
time to show the shrapnel created when people wall themselves off from intimacy
or trust. I valued the film emphasizing character over characteristics, and
reminding us all to thine own self be true.  After all the rote funny restaurant
scenes and giddy banter, I got my nice easy girlie movie fix, but also I came
away from The Ugly Truth appreciating it for what it really is.  I was sorry the
movie had to pretend to be something that it really wasn't, in order to seduce
audiences to the theatre at these prices.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

In The Loop

Matinee

Ah, politics.  On the world stage, all the players seem larger than life, and we
kind of hope that they live up to that.  Their decisions, whether you agree with
them or not, have such import, we need them to have come as a result of either
careful deliberation or at the very least, strong emotional convictions.  In The
Loop is a delicious, quick-witted but gently paced comedy about two countries
who get entangled together in a sticky situation because of what amounts to a
slip of the tongue that snowballs into a sort of cliff dive of the tongue.

I found it difficult to parse out the ranks among the various government wags,
but a British Minister (the perfect Tom Hollander) says on camera that war, in
general, is unforeseeable.  The resulting internal poopstorm leads to meetings
with Americans, which leads to misunderstandings, yelling, back deals,
reinforcement, and farcical clusterfraks.  Look, if you can't take my cleaned up
language here, you won't make it through the movie; no one can cuss out someone
like the Scottish.  The plot evolves like a crazy keeping up with the Joneses,
only the Jones are wearing the Emperor's new clothes.  No one wants to be left
out or left behind, but business has to continue as usual, and freedom and spin
and wagging and so forth.  It's very funny, but god help you if you can't enjoy
a profane Scottish tonguelashing.

The low-key giggles and dry throwaway wit belie the manic one-up-manship and
saber-rattling.  War may be hell, but at least you know who's on whose side. 
These world stage actors are just people after all, feeding their allies
information to get information, bluffing and leaking and trying not to get
fired.  Security is tight yet humanity-permeable, and there's so much
dick-swinging it's like a Maypole of machismo.  The CYA dance is funnier at a
distance; imagining this might go on for real somewhere is quite sobering.  Not
long ago, we Americans had a leader who (even his fans would agree) was less
than precise in his speeches – I confess this movie gains a lot of funny for
American audiences when the joke isn't on us.

Director Armando Iannucci has a lot of great British television under his belt,
as do his screenwriters.  This may explain the kind of weird pacing – it's
subdued and a little slow, like the British Office, but it also feels like it
isn't sure how to stretch out into 106 minutes.  Keep your ears on though – the
speech outstrips the scene tempos handily.  Hollander is small and nervous and
clearly in over his head as a Minister.  His – boss? – Peter Capaldi (as
Malcolm) is excessively hilarious.  The whole cast is great, Anna Chlumsky (yes,
My Girl!), Steve Coogan, Chris Addison, Mimi Kennedy – they are all racing to
the finish line that none of them can see, and work as a tight ensemble.  It's
funny, reward the studios for a political comedy without any politics.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

Julie & Julia

Rental

Reading the book Julie & Julia, I found myself alternately repelled by and
identifying with the main narrator Julie Powell.  Powell is the blogger who took
a year to cook her way through Julia Child cookbook, Mastering the Art of French
Cooking.  Child, of course, is, in Powell's mind, a larger than life, benevolent
food angel, guiding her hand and transforming her miserable cubicle existence
into, um, something else.  A blogging career? Interrupting Powell's navel-gazing
are dribs and drabs of Child meeting her husband and deciding to cook.  In the
film, Child is already blissfully married and struggling to publish the very
book that Powell is laboring over.  I like this choice on the part of
writer/director Nora Ephron – it makes a nice parallel for the two women to be
struggling with cooking and then giving birth to a book. It's all a true story
so narrative license isn't an issue.  Ephron brings in more of Alex Prud'homme's
book My Life In France and the movie is all the better for it.  As for the scads
of onscreen cooking, go to the movie hungry at your peril.

I mentioned being repelled by Powell.  I can't put my finger on it but I laid
down the book and came out of the movie disliking her a lot.  No, it's not
professional jealousy.  Ephron wisely cast the winsome and lovable Amy Adams in
the role, and even with such a pair of fairy godmothers, Powell still leaves a
bad taste in my mouth.  The grand pleasure of Meryl Streep as Julia Chilld and
Stanley Tucci as her husband Paul so overwhelms Powell and her hubby Eric that
you thank Ephron for giving them so much more face time.  Streep is transformed
into this big-boned, restless giantess ball of energy and verve.  Tucci radiates
adoration of her, and their scenes together are romantic and funny and
crackling.  Whatever you may have thought of Child before, you will definitely
fall in love with Streep's version.

Overall the human cornucopia that is Streep is carrying the energy and
feel-goodness of this movie.  Adams is providing her natural comic timing and
sweetness to make Powell as human as possible, and she succeeds more than I
would have thought possible.  Through her struggle we are meant to appreciate
Powell's struggle to complete this harrowing task, but instead we learn to value
Child's own struggles to bring out her inner "Chef Julia Child" that Powell
dreams of emulating for her own life.

Both women make it through their transformations largely thanks to the boon of
having truly loving husbands.  The characters of their respective relationships
are reflected in the womens' characters.  Child abounds with can-do spirit, and
her relationship lifts and grows with her new passion.  Powell crumbles and
snaps and dithers and her marriage takes it on the chin accordingly.  As a
result, what might have been a cross-generational connection between two women
finding their bliss through parallel, buttery paths turns instead into an object
lesson in the difference between magnetism and narcissism.

Nora Ephron has her directorial ups and downs but she has always been really
good at the subtle art of forging connections between people who aren't in the
same room/scene.  So she is the best choice to direct this movie (also she is
reputedly a big foodie) and she does the best she can here with the personae
involved, but ultimately we are left to choose between Powell and Child, rather
than groove on a connection.  From a technical standpoint, the movie is lovely
to behold.  Director of Photography Stephen Goldblatt makes all kinds of lovely
mirror and window shots that support the life parallel idea.  However, the boom
operator must have been in a consistent food coma because the microphone dropped
into at least eight scenes.  Not shots – full scenes!  Maybe more.  It was quite
alarmingly visible very often.  This created the unintended effect of showcasing
that we're watching Streep on screen acting like Child, but still Streep
overcomes.  The film wraps up with a sweet, whitewashed epilogue, and we left
only wanting more Streep and Tucci.  Streep Streep Streep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince

Full Price Feature

After Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, I was very concerned that this
very talky, complex book would be ruined like the last film.  Shining beacon of
hope:  Screenwriter Steve Kloves is back! And it makes all the difference in the
world.  Kloves really gets JK Rowling's books and distills the important bits
while taking liberties with specific moments to summarize sweeping chapters with
no loss of meaning.  Bless him, I may love this installment even more than The
Prisoner of Azkaban.  At no point did this movie waste any of its 153 minutes,
and the time flew by, marked only by the less-seasoned bladders of my
companions.

Director David Yates and Production Designer Stuart Craig take us to new
locations, or make previously briefly glimpsed locations new and real and
tangible.  At more than one point in my two-dimensional, non-IMAX showing, I
could only describe Potter's world in this film as very three-dimensional.  The
sets and props as always are gorgeous and detailed and solid.  Building on Chris
Columbus' brilliant casting and core designs from the first two films, this
sixth film of Rowling's series is rich in texture and realism.  I theorize that
so many new locations were developed for this in part because they were already
being realized for the theme park, due to open within the year.  Either way,
wow.  I've always wanted a peek at Arthur Weasley's Muggle collection and
gleeee!  I'll see it again in 3-D IMAX and I can save myself a plane ticket to
Orlando (not!).

Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) gets more screen time than he has since the
Sorcerer's Stone, and Rickman uses every bit of it to project his unfathomable
eyes at us and turn the ladies squiffy against their wills.  Draco Malfoy (Tom
Felton) has grown up and his performance shows it – he's finally got more to do
than sneer his Aryan pride onto our leads.  And oh, Jim Broadbent as Horace
Slughorn.  So sublimely funny and weak and avaricious – and funny!  This is the
funniest of the series, and also the most affecting.  Fans of the books, curious
about That Scene, will, I think, not be disappointed in Klove's interpretation.

Our trio of leads of course has also grown up  - Hermione (Emma Watson) pulls an
Annette Funicello and turns in her best acting to date, while Ron (Rupert Grint)
channels Alan Tudyk's unique and delicate style of broad humor.  You'll see what
I mean.  Because of course, you're going, right?  Why are you still at the
computer?

Harry and Dumbledore's oft-glossed relationship in previous films finally gets
to stretch its legs a bit more here.  So much has to be summarized by their
scenes, so it's lucky we have Daniel Radcliffe and Michael Gambon to pour their
hearts into it.  After so many years together, the whole cast (not just the
leads) has grown together into a tight machine, and while their on-set world is
miles away from their on-screen one, you feel the ensemble making Rowling's
world real for us.

Merlin's pants, what a fine motion picture!  It delivers so much, has so much
humor and pathos and kindness and evil and delicious costumes and sets, you
might forget about the props, special effects, or the painting-like shots; not
just for Huge Moments, cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel makes Hogwarts and beyond
into a marvel.  I seriously cannot think of one thing I would want different. 
This was a fantastic adaptation of an excellent book, and well worth your time
and money.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

Hurt Locker, The

Matinee with Snacks

Jeremy Renner first made an indelible impression on me when he played Jeffrey
Dahmer in the film Dahmer.  His boyish face belies the simmering intensity he
can produce onscreen.  Sure, that's a hackneyed way to describe it, but the
reality is just that.  He gets you with those baby blues.  Here, in 2004
Baghdad, Renner plays a bomb defusing technician whose job is tense even when
performed with maximum caution.  Renner's character does not bother with such
things – he prefers to rock and roll and git `er done, and it becomes gradually
evident that he is past being just a hotshot, past being an adrenaline junkie. 
He's a pusher.

Renner's character is a crazy dude, but what director Kathryn Bigelow does is
ramp up our awareness of the insanity of these soldiers' situation until
Renner's approach seems almost reasonable.  The tactical and practical realities
they have to deal with are vivid reminders of what is still happening out there,
five years later.  Bigelow directed the loathsome Strange Days, but I'll say
this for her there as well as here:  she does not shy away from the ugly side of
people and their capacity for cruelty or dismissing of their fellow man.

Renner's bomb squad is comprised of Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty.  These
two men are nearing the end of their tour when they lose their third man (the
blaster); tension is high and Renner's methods don't make things any easier. 
These guys run missions with intensity, while Iraqi life continues all around
them, as if to mock their efforts – children run about and get in the way of a
patrol, kites fly, women shuffle veiled through the market – it's bananas. 
Despite Renner and some other familiar faces peppering the cast (Guy Pearce,
David Morse, Ralph Fiennes, and of course Renner), I found it difficult at times
to remember that these men are actors.  The tension is pulled to just the right
tautness to be sustained over time without having to defuse it with a narrative
break.  And the acting is great.

So, OK, we have a war movie, with danger, tension, great performances, a pretty
heavy throughline of Renner's need for hard core everything – but, as my friend
pointed out, no Message.  Sure, war is hell, even the hawks will tell you that,
but these guys aren't thinking about politics or parties or re-elections.  They
have missions that keep their soldiers and civilians from being blown up, and
any day could be their last.  Their whole world is focused on that pinpoint. 
War is hell, war is a drug, war is not what the suits think it is when they
deploy tanks and battleships.  It's very, very personal.  The Hurt Locker is
excellent, I hope everyone checks it out and rewards the studios for this great
production.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

Public Enemies

Rental and Snacks

The previews, oh the previews for this sucked me in like free Slurpees in the
Sahara.  I shuddered when I learned that the director was Michael Mann – his
films and I do not get along – but still, Marion Cotillard and Johnny Depp? 
Mann directed Heat, The Insider, Miami Vice, and Manhunter; your feelings on
those films can inform your decision whether to see this one.  I liked
Collateral OK, but Mann did not write that one.  Something about his
writer/director gig sticks right in my craw, no matter how good his cast is.

Depp as John Dillinger is a perfect balance between scary and classy, and his
unsmiling eyes reveal almost as little about Dillinger's inner landscape as this
script does about his life.  Cotillard is just a fabulous moll of another era,
set there to look pretty, get naked with Depp, and attract the inevitable
costume nominations earned by the mens' hand-sewn 1930's suits.  They aren't
given much of their characters to perform, as the movie isn't apparently about
Dillinger the man, or even Dillinger the Public Enemy being manhunted. 
It's…well, it's a Mann film, so it acts like it's about something and then
isn't.  Mann made Hannibal Lecter a dull character, do you see what I am saying
here?

The story starts with a bang and then seems to settle into the middle, without
much exposition or arc.  We don't necessarily need a full biopic to know how
Dillinger became Public Enemy Number One, but seeing as all we are shown of him
is Depp efficiently mitigating unnecessary bloodshed and not stealing from
individuals, or even delving into more profitable crimes popping up all around
him, it would have been nice just for a couple of spinning headlines to
underline the source of his notoriety.  It was only 76 years ago, but some of
the kids in the audience might want to know.

Billy Crudup plays J. Edgar Hoover (imagine Dr. Manhattan in a dress!) with a
wonderful dialect that I wanted to hear more of.  His lackey, Christian Bale is
hunting Dillinger down with his own carefully studied dialect as well, but these
aural pleasures were soon forgotten with all the crazy camera work.  Director of
Photography Dante Spinotti (not showing the restraint he had in The Quick and
the Dead) apparently clamped his camera at waist high, perhaps to make the
characters seem larger than life?  The result is more that the camera looks too
heavy for James Apted to carry, even in a sit down hearing (the camera was
clearly also sitting down).  The shots were weird and distracting and led to
weird film and sound editing hiccups, showing the same gesture twice but clearly
different takes of it.

After an hour I was checking my watch.  I do try and keep that to a minimum, and
I held off as long as I could, but I hoped surely we were almost done.  Nope,
another 80 minutes left.  It felt unfinished, but also too long.  You would
think that sexy 1930's gangsters using excessive force and chasing around in
gorgeous cars would at least be enough to help me forget that I need to do some
laundry, but you would be wrong.  At $11.50 for full price, which I paid and am
still annoyed about, I can only give this dull exercise in machismo a Rental
plus Snacks.  Maybe.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

Away We Go

Matinee

An endearing character study, Away We Go is basically a road trip movie through,
sadly, a few obvious stops before its semi-ambiguous conclusion.  I say
semi-ambiguous because of course I know what occurred, but I couldn't really
tell, for lack of a better descriptor, what the lesson was.  John Krasinski and
Maya Rudolph are an untethered and compassless couple, about to move into
Responsible Grownup territory, ready or not.  As their support networks
dissolve, so do their roots and any semblance of pretending now is forever. 
After a delicious scene with Krasinski's character's parents (Catherine O'Hara
and Jeff Daniels, truly inspired casting), our heroes take off on an adventure
to find themselves.

They make a number of stops, not all planned, and encounter a fantastic cast of
hugely drawn characters – Allison Janney, Jim Gaffigan, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and
Melanie Lynskey were the most notable.  I loved a scene in a strip joint which I
can only characterize as both painful and awkward – but not in the way you would
imagine.  But it was the first time that I felt that the script wasn't just
enjoying its clever observations of wackadoodle people.  Reality bores in more
closely after this, and their last stop drives home (or, I hope it did) the
seriousness of their commitment to each other.  The whole flavor of the movie
seems to be trying to reproduce other small, earnest films, but I always got the
feeling that it was an imitation flavoring here, though I can scarce define why.
A scene that should have been a turning point ended up kind of being a "what can
we write that is clever here," and it left me a little wanting more.

Some character attributes were funny and charming (Krasinski always, always has
his glasses on, even when…(well, it's right at the beginning).  Some seemed to
exist only for the sake of this carefully constructed narrative.  I say
constructed because so little really felt real, or organic.  The human
interactions were real, the acting was uniformly great, it just felt like a
fable, with everything occurring so as to heighten the tension for the next
scene.  By the denouement, I wasn't sure how Rudolph's character was really
feeling, and I wish I had.

Director Sam Mendes uses his usual Oscar bait production team, but like Jonathan
Demme's Rachel Getting Married, eschews his usual polished style for a slightly
awkward indie feel.  He paints with broad strokes (Revolutionary Road, Jarhead,
Road to Perdition, American Beauty) and this feels a little like he's trying too
hard.  It seems odd to complain about the unspecified sense of artificiality
when so many other elements were so enjoyable, but what can I say?  It's a
subjective medium.  My friend has had the soundtrack on continuous loops for
like, a month; it reminded me very much of Garden State's music, but further in
the background.  You should see it, but you don't need to pay full price for it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com

Taking of Pelham 123, The (2009)

Rental

My companion saw the 1974 original film adaptation of John Goday's novel, remade
here by Serious Director Tony Scott, and he reported that the original was just
not this serious in tone.  At the time, I couldn't imagine a movie taking itself
more seriously; the more I thought about it, though, the less serious it was
possible for this movie to be.  Scott takes what is really, as caper adventure
movies go, a small-scale crime, and turns it into a super-intense warlike movie,
with implied conspiracies and unnecessarily unsavory side stories.  Also, his
second unit director was shooting a very different movie, one that is modern and
grainy and jittery and sexy, a rock video urban war documentary cut scene.  The
editing of visuals and sound and effects are so tight and sexy as to feel weird
and out of place – they are trying to be intense, but the overall effect seems
to be getting in the way of the real, two-person movie.  By this I mean the
conversation between complicated-backstory dispatcher Denzel Washington and
overtly-scary unlikely-backstory John Travolta.  Why can't these guys just be a
regular working joe and a scary criminal dude?  I can enjoy Travolta when he's
being a tough guy, and Washington is good at being supereveryman, but together
they really do snap crackle and pop when the movie isn't trying to make sure
it's still exciting.

Travolta's character looks like a cartoon of a Scary Guy, and all his actions
are so irrational and unrealistic, it's hard not to tell the snipers in your
head to fire at will.  He's committed and proves it, but he's still pretty
unstable and an easy target not taken.  Washington is burdened with a Past and
an unintentionally hilarious tool of a boss (While You Were Sleeping's Michael
Rispoli), and an almost-comedic confederate, hostage negotiator John Turturro. 
No one knows what they are doing, but somehow it's all coming together.  Like so
many dramas these days (television and film), the machinery of Getting Things
Done is oiled and ready, crossing midtown traffic in a trice and generating bags
of cash in less time than that.  In real life, even with everyone in the same
room, it can take 20 minutes to have 5 people sign the same piece of paper. 
Criminals seem to know this and make insane demands, and no one even stops to
blink.  It's annoying.

In the moment, it all feels very dangerous and urgent and important, but in
retrospect it seems almost silly.  It still was taking itself very seriously. 
Yes, there are fatalities and mostly grim expressions, but the movie never feels
like it could actuallyt take place, never exudes a sense of reality to keep our
adrenaline pumped.  Washington's wife's last words to him (spoiled by the
preview) before he goes, untrained and unable, into mortal danger, couldn't be
meant for anything but a comedy.  They completely deflate the tension and our
concern for hero Washington.  What is The Taking of Pelham 123 meant to be?
Drama? Spoof?  It succeeds and fails at both at the same time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review copyright 2009 Karina Montgomery.
Feel free to forward but with this signature attached.
Member: Online Film Critics Society
Archive at www.cinerina.com