REVIEW: We Bought a Zoo

3 04 2012

“Almost Famous” sure was a long time ago for Cameron Crowe, who has truly surrendered to hokey cornography with “We Bought a Zoo.”  Gone is the man who rocked our socks off with an autobiographical tale of coming of age and rock and roll, replaced with the spirit of “The Blind Side?”  Crowe deserves better than a straight shot for the tear ducts.  We deserve better, too.

He throws just about every banality in the book at us – the dad (Matt Damon) trying to be a good parent, the kids trying to thwart his every good intention, the ridiculous decision made on blind faith that just so happens to work while teaching them all valuable life lessons … only at the movies!  Especially when that crazy idea is purchasing, renovating, maintaining a zoo.  Oh, and there’s a snarky inspector played by John Michael Higgins who gets far too much screen time and threatens to destroy all their hard work.  Around his second minute on screen, you’ll want Scarlett Johansson to stop playing Kelly Foster the love interest and resume her role as the Black Widow from “Iron Man 2.”

The question here isn’t, will they succeed?  Will Damon’s Ben Mee make the zoo and his family function again?  Watch a trailer, look at a poster, read the genre on IMDb, and you’ll find out the answer to that.  The real question is why Cameron Crowe would sell his soul for “We Bought a Zoo.”  Look at his past movies and it’s clear that the man has a knack for narrative; this just plays on minimal satisfaction to the lowest common denominator at all times.  If he just wanted to make a family movie where the animals don’t talk, that wouldn’t bother me … but it’s clear that he needed to reach a little deeper into his script pile.  C+ / 


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REVIEW: Rio

2 04 2012

2011 will likely go down in the comedy record books as a year where raunch ruled the roost.  Yet it is possible that “Rio,” a G-rated animated comedy from BlueSky, packed the most laughs of them all (save perhaps “Bridesmaids“).  Without ever uttering a curse word or resorting to the profane, the animals take the day in a wholly unexpected and delightful way.

While it may not be able to boast the complex emotions or deep storyline of a Pixar film, “Rio” is just like a beach ball, meant for fun and little else.  And I’m totally fine with that.  Its clean, innocent humor charms anyone willing to resume the persona of a child.

The movie boasts some hilarious characters thanks to very clever voice casting.  Neurotic Jesse Eisenberg plays opposite the sassy Anne Hathaway as a macaw returning to the Brazilian wild after years living in a Minnesota bookstore.  It’s a journey done many times before, but when you take it alongside Tracy Morgan as a drooling bulldog, it can still be fun.  Add in a few toe-tapping musical numbers that are not necessarily well incorporated (but still enjoyable nonetheless) and a setting against the backdrop of the Brazilian Carnaval, and you just might want to book your ticket to Rio for 2016.  Or maybe just watch it repeatedly on TV.  A- / 


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Shameless Advertisement #26 – April 2012

1 04 2012

Boy, it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these.

But anyways, back by popular demand (and by that, I mean I feel compelled to resurrect this), the Shameless Advertisement highlights the upcoming month’s most anticipated new release.  While I advocated for “The Five-Year Engagement,” and still anxiously await it, the readers are fanboyishly most excited in April for “The Cabin in the Woods.”  I don’t get it, but then again, I haven’t really tried.  We’ll see if I make it out for this one.

I’ve never been a Joss Whedon fanboy, but I understand that there’s a significant portion of the Internet that is.  So they can rejoice at their appetizer for May’s “The Avengers,” his horror-comedy “The Cabin in the Woods.”  I, on the other hand, will still try to figure out what it is that has the Web so enamored with this man’s work.

Enjoy a month of moviegoing, folks – summer’s almost here!

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REVIEW: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

31 03 2012

With “Super Size Me,” Morgan Spurlock set out to change the way we consume fast food.  For the most part, it worked.  (A society doesn’t just naturally all decide they want fruit slices instead of fries with that burger, do they?)  With “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold,” Spurlock set out to change the way we consume movies – and that might be an even bigger challenge.

Did it work?

If you want to judge in box office dollars, no.  There was no consumer rights revolution sparked by this movie.  But while it didn’t affect the masses, those who take the time to watch Spurlock’s documentary will find the way they look at the movies to be totally different.  It’s as if studios are happy for us to watch their products through a foggy lens, and “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold” is a wipe that allows us to see them more clearly for what they are: advertisements for all your favorite corporations!

Now that you TiVo through their million-dollar commercials, they have to find some way to reach you!  (After all, you just ignore their sidebar ads on Facebook and phony “top results” on Google.)  Sure enough, most products you see in movies have been paid to appear there.  Tony Stark wasn’t written into “Iron Man” being a Dr. Pepper drinker, but that company sure will pay for Jon Favreau to read between the lines and put a Dr. Pepper can in his hand throughout the movie.

And how does Spurlock make this exposé of new advertising?  Through advertising and product placement.  In other words, prepare yourself for what might be the most meta movie … ever.  It’s self-aware to such extremes that it makes your head hurt.  But I’d rather finish a movie feeling educated and confused than dumber and satisfied.  Please, for heaven’s sake, put down the Big Mac (metaphorically speaking, this would be a movie like “Captain America“) and put some POM Wonderful (continuing the metaphor, this would be “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold”) into your body.  It’s time that you consumed a movie that’s healthy and aims for nothing less than changing your views.  A- / 


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F.I.L.M. of the Week (March 30, 2012)

30 03 2012

Where do you draw the line between fantasy and reality?  Between art and mental illness?  Between personal and public?  This may sound like any old fictional movie at the theater nowadays, but it’s equally (if not more) fascinating when subjectivity is explored in real life.  My pick for “F.I.L.M. of the Week,” Jeff Malmberg’s “Marwencol,” provides no easy answers to these tough dilemmas in his study of a traumatized man with a bizarre compulsion.

Mark Hogancamp, the film’s subject, sees his life turned upside down by a debilitating attack by assailants outside a bar.  After emerging from a coma, he decides to dedicate his life to giving it to others.  And by others, I mean dolls.

Yes, Mark decides to build a 1/6 replica World War II-era town called Marwencol, which he designs and populates himself.  He even acts as God and narrates their lives, giving them drama, conflict, and meaning.  Take out the brain injury at the beginning, and you would be laughing your head off.

But that’s not what happens, and Malmberg makes sure that you take Mark very seriously.  His in-depth character study that really takes the time and care to show just how passionately Mark feels about the town of Marwencol.  For he from whom life was taken, this is life, and Malmberg will have us respect that.

Obviously, word gets out about Marwencol (otherwise we wouldn’t have the movie “Marwencol”), and art collectors flock to get in on the picee of the action.  Then, things start to get interesting.  Is it OK to masquerade someone’s personal therapy as art, opening it up to mockery and criticism?  Who gets to call it art, anyways?  The drama is real, and the stakes are high – Marwencol was Mark’s way of coping with the harsh realities of his existence.

Interested yet?  Mull over these issues, and many more, with popcorn and “Marwencol.”  It would make for an unconventional, but decidedly meaningful, movie night.


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REVIEW: J. Edgar

29 03 2012

Is the biopic headed the way of the sports movie?  ”J. Edgar” seems to point towards a larger genre decline.  Clint Eastwood’s latest attempt at biography moves slower than molasses or “Invictus,” whichever better communicates the idea that this movie is boring and stuffy.  Everyone knows that he can do better, and with this following “Hereafter,” I have to wonder whether Eastwood should just retire after his next good film (if there is ever another good one).

Really, “J. Edgar” is more worthy to be analyzed as a Dustin Lance Black movie.  The Oscar-winning writer of “Milk” seems to be far more interested in Hoover, the rumored closet homosexual, than Hoover, the revolutionary founding director of the FBI.  There’s so much hinting when it comes to his sexuality and so much omission when it comes to his career that Black’s portrait really amounts to little more than a pencil sketch on café napkin.  If he intended to make Hoover a counterpoint to Harvey Milk, he should have just outright said it.

Eastwood claims “J. Edgar” is not a love story, but the tenor of the movie he intended to direct is directly clashing with Black’s script.  As a result, the film just feels like a half-hearted attempt at everything it sets out to do.  Black writes so many scenes with sexual overtones that so flagrantly obvious, but Eastwood tries to keep it as platonic as he possibly can without changing the lines.  What ultimately makes it onto the screen is just awkward and uncomfortable as everyone seems far too worried about slander or decorum to go for it.

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REVIEW: The Skin I Live In

28 03 2012

Pedro Almodóvar’s latest film, “The Skin I Live In,” is quite possibly the most bizarre, disturbing, unnerving, and twisted movie I’ve ever seen.  And naturally, I loved every minute of it.

Almodóvar is one of the best, if not the best, working writer and director dealing with the theme of obsession, particularly in his recent works “Talk to Her” and “Broken Embraces.”  While this doesn’t quite reach the thematic and intellectual brilliance of the former, “The Skin I Live In” provides a great deal more in-the-moment thrills that will have your jaw on the floor.  I often think of myself as desensitized to shocking, lurid movies, and boy, was I wrong as this had me agape from the entirety of the last act.

So it should go without saying that if you don’t have a high tolerance for rape, sexuality, and plastic surgery, this is not the movie for you.  But if you think you can handle it, then by all means, dive into Almodóvar’s weird world of revenge fantasy.  ”The Skin I Live In” first masquerades as a modern “Pygmalion” with Antonio Banderas’ Robert Ledgard, a scientist, researcher, and surgeon, developing a dangerously close relationship with a specimen to whom he has endowed perfect skin.  However, Almodóvar shifts the narrative back a few years, opens the blinds, and makes us realize that nothing is as it seemed.

Creative and original to an almost deranged point, “The Skin I Live In” makes for quite a tumultuous watching experience for those with the stomach to stick with it to the end.  Amidst the uncomfortable nudity, the unsettling sexual assaults, and the stunning twists, there are ethical questions aplenty raised.  How far is too far, the movie consistently asks – and Almodóvar is willing to go to the moon and beyond to make his film one you won’t stop thinking about.  A- / 


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