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Review: Semi-Pro, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Horton Hears a Who!, The War on Democracy, Across the Universe, How She Move and Rambo

By Cinema and Reviews

200804161055.jpgWhen the cur­rent Writer-in-Residence at Victoria University’s Institute of Modern Letters sug­ges­ted I take anoth­er look at my neg­at­ive review of Blades of Glory, I made a prom­ise that (while I could­n’t bring myself to watch that tur­key again) I would approach the next Will Ferrell with a con­sciously open mind. Sadly, with Semi-Pro (a cross between Anchorman and Talladega Nights fea­tur­ing the strengths of neither and the rampant self-indulgence of both), I heard no laughter, only the sound of the bot­tom of the bar­rel being scraped. Recently New Line Cinema ended it’s life as an inde­pend­ent pro­du­cer and I’d like to think Semi-Pro was respons­ible. It’s no less than it deserves.

The Spiderwick Chronicles posterAnd, at risk of sound­ing like a total film-wanker I’m going to alloc­ate what strengths The Spiderwick Chronicles has to the pres­ence of the great John Sayles as co-writer. Sayles’ inde­pend­ent work includes clas­sics like The Brother From Another Planet and Passion Fish but makes a liv­ing doing (mostly uncred­ited) punch-up jobs on big budget screen­plays. I was grow­ing increas­ingly frus­trated with the plod­ding story-telling, and the over-reliance on the well-designed digi-creatures, before a great moment at the cli­max restored my faith that a prop­er screen­writer was on board after all.

Three chil­dren have to leave New York when their par­ents split up and live in the big, old, aban­doned house in the coun­try that their crazy Aunt lived in. Freddie Highmore, so ubi­quit­ous in these sorts of films that he even does double-duty in this one, plays bad-boy Jared who dis­cov­ers an old book in the attic, reads the note warn­ing him not to open it, ignores it, and unleashes a world of gob­lins, fair­ies and ogres that are invis­ible to nor­mal people. Nothing new to report there, then, but every gen­er­a­tion seems to need a new ver­sion just for them.

The War on Democracy posterI’ve been a John Pilger-sceptic for a while, not helped by his bom­bast­ic and unpleas­ant beha­viour to loc­al inter­view­ers, but his first inde­pend­ent doc­u­ment­ary for cinema, The War on Democracy, even­tu­ally won me over. It makes an excel­lent com­pan­ion to Helen Smyth’s Cuba-doc ¿La Verdad? as it provides the kind of encyc­lo­paed­ic back­ground to the United States’ nefar­i­ous engage­ment with Latin America that she could only hint at. Starting in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, Pilger uses the failed coup in 2002 as a spring­board to show how, for more than 50 years, the US has installed or deposed gov­ern­ments across the con­tin­ent in order to fur­ther its own polit­ic­al and fin­an­cial aims. It’s not great cinema – that’s not Pilger’s bag – but it is essen­tial viewing.

Horton Hears a Who! posterHorton Hears a Who! may well fea­ture the most pro­found moment in cinema this year. As the tiny cit­izens of Who-ville (a bust­ling and happy com­munity liv­ing on a tiny speck, itself sit­ting on a dan­deli­on being blown around by fate) real­ise that in order to be saved they first must be heard, they bang drums, blow trum­pets and chant “We are here!” Like the for­got­ten poor in Pilger’s Caracas bar­rio or the dis­placed in Darfur, the power to pro­claim our exist­ence in the face of ignor­ant or malevol­ent author­ity isn’t just a right, it’s an oblig­a­tion, and I’m cer­tain that the good Dr. Seuss would­n’t have missed the connection.

Big-hearted ele­phant Horton (Jim Carrey) res­cues the speck when his enorm­ous ears pick up the tiny voice of the Who-ville Mayor (Steve Carell) and he real­ises that he has a mis­sion. In the face of com­munity stand­ards ruth­lessly enforced by Carol Burnett’s Kangaroo, Horton is houn­ded out of the jungle but he nev­er gives up. So, not only does Horton not suck like all recent Seuss adapt­a­tions, it bristles with energy, humour and pan­ache. Choice!

Across the Universe posterLike the forth­com­ing Dylan por­trait I’m Not There, Across the Universe feels like the Baby Boomers’ last attempt to claim the 60s as, you know, import­ant, mean­ing­ful, unique. The music of The Beatles tells the story of star-crossed lov­ers Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood) and Jude (Jim Sturgess) as they try and keep a rela­tion­ship alive across that tumul­tu­ous dec­ade. I emo­tion­ally dis­en­gaged the moment I real­ised that Sturgess soun­ded like Robbie Williams instead of John Lennon but was nev­er less than enter­tained. A trip, man.

How She Move posterHow She Move is a Canadian ver­sion of films like Step Up 2 The Streets, Stomp The Yard and count­less oth­ers. Featuring all the usu­al ele­ments of the genre: under­ground urb­an dance crews; a kid has to get out of the ghetto via a schol­ar­ship; she needs the prize money; par­ents just don’t under­stand, etc. It’s as if the pro­du­cers could­n’t decide which banal clichés to leave out and gave up, stuff­ing the fin­ished film to break­ing point. I’ve grown to really dis­like the dan­cing in these films, too.

Rambo posterFinally, a late word on behalf of Rambo (which missed the cut dur­ing the last few weeks). By mak­ing his vil­lains Burmese human-rights viol­at­ors and his vic­tims inno­cent aid work­ers, dir­ect­or Sylvester Stallone stacks the deck effect­ively and, des­pite look­ing com­pletely bizarre, he infuses his tacit­urn killing-machine with the occa­sion­al moist-eyed moment of human­ity amid the fly­ing limbs. A respect­able end to what had become a car­toon franchise.

Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday 16 April, 2008.

Notes on screen­ing con­di­tions: Semi-Pro was at a sparsely atten­ded pub­lic mat­inée at Readings. The Spiderwick Chronicles was at the Empire in Island Bay and the review was in no way influ­enced by the lovely free cof­fee they made me just as the trail­ers were play­ing. The War on Democracy was a DVD screen­er provided by Hopscotch (via GT) and the film is cur­rently only play­ing at the Lighthouse in Petone. Horton Hears a Who! was also screened at the Empire where I was the only unat­ten­ded adult present. Across the Universe was screened at the Paramount’s World Cinema Showcase. How She Move was an exceed­ingly sparsely atten­ded mat­inée at Readings and Rambo was anoth­er Readings week day mat­inée, a couple of weeks ago.

Review: Lars and the Real Girl, The Eye, Never Back Down, Change of Address, Bonneville, ¿La Verdad? (The Truth?) and Definitely, Maybe

By Cinema and Reviews

Lars and the Real Girl posterIn past columns this review­er has pretty much uni­lat­er­ally labelled 27 year old Ryan Gosling as the new Marlon Brando (thanks to extraordin­ary per­form­ances in Half Nelson and The Believer) but it is unlikely that even Brando would have been brave enough to choose Lars and the Real Girl as one of his pro­jects. Lars is a slightly dam­aged young man, liv­ing in the gar­age of his fam­ily home in a snowy north­ern American town. Under pres­sure from the fam­ily and the com­munity to be a bit more nor­mal, Lars finds him­self a girl­friend on the Internet – an ana­tom­ic­ally cor­rect doll named Bianca.

A lovely, sweet film about accept­ance, love and judge­ment (lack of), Lars is anoth­er win­ner in a sum­mer of them. Gosling’s per­form­ance is a thing of won­der but it would­n’t be half as suc­cess­ful without great work from Paul Schneider, Emily Mortimer and Patricia Clarkson to play off. Kudos to them all. Not to be missed.

The Eye posterThe Eye screened in Cinema 6 at Readings and was the most hand­some on-screen present­a­tion I have seen since I star­ted this gig: pin sharp focus, con­sist­ent light levels across the entire screen, no print dam­age and a per­fectly steady flicker-free image. It’s a shame that the film was such garbage but you take your pleas­ure where you can find it. (Flicker is the unac­know­ledged curse of poor pro­jec­tion. Watching a film without it is like walk­ing down Courtenay Place without the wind punch­ing you in the arm the whole way. You don’t real­ise how annoy­ing it is until it’s gone.)

Jessica Alba plays a blind con­cert viol­in­ist who gets a pair of haunted corneas in a trans­plant but instead of the real world she begins to see vis­ions of death all around her. Yet anoth­er tired remake of an asi­an hor­ror (this one came from Hong Kong ori­gin­ally) The Eye struggles and fails to jus­ti­fy its own existence.

Never Back Down posterNever Back Down is the ugly and offens­ive story of a high school kid (Sean Faris), angry and bit­ter after the death of his fath­er in a drunk-driving acci­dent he could have pre­ven­ted, who gets involved in the loc­al fight club and take on the bul­lies using mixed-martial-arts and the train­ing of a wise guru (Djimon Hounsou).

An arte­fact from a decrep­it and derel­ict cul­ture, I hated this film so much I left the theatre and imme­di­ately tried to loc­ate my Al-Qaeda applic­a­tion forms. Irredeemable.

200804101111.jpgBut at least I stuck it out to the end which is more than I can say for the dreary French rom-com Change of Address. I don’t often leave films early but after yet anoth­er scene fea­tur­ing sev­er­al double-entendres about the main char­ac­ters horn (he plays and teaches French Horn) I was­n’t sure wheth­er I was watch­ing an art movie or “Are You Being Served?”

Bonneville posterThere must be an audi­ence for Bonneville, a pleas­ant road movie fea­tur­ing the great Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates and Joan Allen, though the attend­ance on Monday night would indic­ate oth­er­wise. It’s a shame there was nobody else there as there was some pleas­ure to be got from watch­ing great screen act­resses work­ing togeth­er in a story that was . Our trio play three mor­mon women (of vary­ing degrees of devo­tion) who are car­ry­ing the ashes of Lange’s hus­band to his estranged daugh­ter in California. Traversing the back­roads of Idaho, Utah and Nevada in the con­vert­ible that gives the film its name, they meet some inter­est­ing people, have some adven­tures and learn a bit about each oth­er. Nothing start­ling but per­fectly pleasant.

La Verdad stillOpening Thursday for a lim­ited engage­ment is Helen Smyth’s remark­able loc­al doc­u­ment­ary about Cuba, ¿La Verdad? (The Truth?). On an exten­ded hol­i­day in Cuba in 2000 Smyth met a delight­ful old gen­tle­man named Nestor and spent sev­er­al weeks inter­view­ing him about his life before and after the revolu­tion. He iden­ti­fied him­self as an inde­pend­ent journ­al­ist and said he was too old to get any atten­tion from the secur­ity police so he could write what he liked and sup­port the counter-revolutionary organ­isa­tions in Miami. Well, the truth was infin­itely more inter­est­ing than even that.

The film is a lively test­a­ment to a good journ­al­ist’s instinct for a story as she finds her­self unrav­el­ling lay­ers of intrigue and learn­ing about more than a cen­tury of U.S. involve­ment in Latin America – all thanks to a chance meet­ing on a bus. Special men­tion must also be made of the pho­to­graphy, par­tic­u­larly Geoff Marsland’s Super 8 foot­age of mod­ern Cuba which adds so much to the fla­vour of the piece.

Definitely, Maybe posterFinally, a sur­pris­ing win­ner called Definitely, Maybe: anoth­er romantic com­edy from the Working Title stable (Love Actually , etc). Ryan Reynolds (Smokin’ Aces) plays Will, about to divorce his wife. Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine) is his 9 year old daugh­ter and, under­stand­ably upset about this turn of events, she demands to know how this could hap­pen. Were they nev­er in love? Will tells her the story of his romantic life (chan­ging the names) so she can see how com­plic­ated grown-up rela­tion­ships are. Which of the three sig­ni­fic­ant oth­ers over the peri­od 1992 to 1998 (Elizabeth Banks, Rachel Weisz and Isla Fisher) becomes Mom? It’s actu­ally a lot more eleg­ant than I’ve made it sound, and well-observed, too, about lots of things (not least Presidential polit­ics). I’d watch it again, and I don’t think that very often.

Printed in Wellington’s Capital Times on Wednesday 9 April, 2008 (although for cov­er photo reas­ons Aaron made The Eye the lead).

Notes on screen­ing con­di­tions: Lars and the Real Girl screened at a pub­lic pre­view in Penthouse 3; The Eye was almost per­fect in Readings 6 (coin­cid­ent­ally that is the Readings digit­al cinema so maybe the 35mm got a tweak recently); Never Back Down was a pub­lic mat­inée screen­ing at Readings; Change of Address was in the Bergman at the Paramount and the print was look­ing its age; Bonneville was in the Vogue Lounge at the Penthouse which has no digit­al sound and the sound was very poor – blown-speaker poor; ¿La Verdad? (The Truth?) was screened at home from a pre­view DVD and Definitely, Maybe was anoth­er pub­lic Readings mat­inée. I have to say for all their faults in terms of atmo­sphere the tech­nic­al con­di­tions at Readings are gen­er­ally excellent.