ELEVEN MOVIE REVIEWS, IN BRIEF
- July 6, 2009
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MOVIE REVIEWS IN BRIEF: SIN NOMBRE, X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE, STAR TREK, SITA SINGS THE BLUES, STATE OF PLAY, GOMORRAH, SUNSHINE CLEANING, THE GREAT BUCK HOWARD, EVERY LITTLE STEP, and EASY VIRTUE
It has suddenly occurred to me that-except for the Lumina reviews-I have seen quite a few movies since I last wrote a review. That means that I need to catch-up with a series of short reviews. Most of these films are still in theaters (somewhere, if not necessarily near you) and will nevertheless soon be available for home viewing in at least one of multiple formats. Are they worth plunking down $8, $9, or $10 for a full-price evening ticket at your local Cineplex? How about a bargain matinee? Maybe a DVD rental? Should the theater door really say, “Abandon hope all ye who enter here”?
That is definitely not what cinemagoers should see on the door of the theater showing Sin Nombre. This film premiered successfully at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, winning awards for its director Cary Fukunaga and cinematographer Adriano Goldman. It has received rave notices since it began its limited release in the United States on March 20th. This is the kind of buzz that has people-like me-looking forward to seeing it for a couple of months or more. However, frequently this type of anticipation results in disappointment as the expectations outstrip the actual film. This is not the case with Sin Nombre, as it more than matches the expectations. The stories of people illegally immigrating to the United States have been told on film before with varying degrees of success. Most of these have focused on that experience after the immigrant has entered the United States. It is as if the challenges of deciding to leave home and come to the United States began at the point of entry. Sin Nombre makes it clear that for those from Central American nations such as Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, it is a hard and dangerous journey just to get to the U.S.-Mexico border. Sayra (Paulina Gaitan) is a young Honduran woman coming to the United States with her father and her slightly older uncle to become part of her father’s new family in New Jersey. Mexican Willy (Edgar Flores)-whose gang moniker is El Casper-is coming to a crossroads in his gang career. He is a respected member of the vicious Mara Salvatrucha gang, serving as the mentor for new recruit El Smiley (Kristian Ferrer), but would like to disengage from gang life to spend more time with his girlfriend Martha Marlene (Diana Garcia). His gang leader Lil Mago (Tenoch Huerta) senses his divided loyalties, and during a botched attempted rape, he accidentally kills the young woman who has been luring one of his lieutenants away. Lil Mago decides that an expedition with Casper and Smiley will buoy the esprit de corps for both the faltering lieutenant and his new member. The expedition is to rob Central American migrants passing through Mexico on their way to the United States. Willy makes a dreadful and irrevocable decision when he sees Lil Mago menacing Sayra. This begins a beautiful love story that is shadowed by tragedy. The flip side of this tragedy is Smiley’s loss of his soul born of his desperation to redeem himself to his Mara Salvatrucha brethren. This is a powerful film beautifully shot by Adriano Goldman. The images are dark and grim as well as lush and colorful. The acting by Gaitan, Flores, and the young Ferrer is excellent. This is first-rate filmmaking and clearly showcases exceptional new talent both in front of and behind the camera. 
On the other hand the theaters showing X-Men Origins: Wolverine should not necessarily tell filmgoers to “abandon hope” of seeing an entertaining movie, but they might reasonably tell audiences to “check their brains” in the same way that coats and hats were once “checked” (or stowed) in the past. This was 2009’s first summer blockbuster and a prequel in the popular X-Men series, which means high-octane, effects-augmented action. Character development with thoughtful analysis and understanding of motivation and plot is not the name of the game. True to its title, it provides a back-story for Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and his mutant brother Victor (Liev Schreiber)-albeit a paint-by-numbers one. Born James Logan in the Canadian West in the first half of the nineteenth century, the tragically orphaned Logan and his brother run away together. A montage of scenes showing the now-grown brothers fighting side-by-side during the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, and then Vietnam cover about 125 years in a couple of eye blinks. Aside from their readiness to enlist for a war and their imperviousness to normal aging, we learn very little about them or their relationship. It soon becomes apparent that Victor (aka Sabretooth) possesses a taste for cruelty and viciousness that is severely straining their filial loyalty. It is about this time that the military begins to understand the weapon potential of men like Logan and Victor with their special gifts. Enter Colonel William Stryker (Danny Huston) and his cadre of mutant fighters that provides a whole new meaning to the term “Special Forces.” When Logan decides he would like a peaceful life as a logger in the Canadian Rockies with a lovely schoolteacher (Lynn Collins), Victor comes a-calling to eliminate the companion that has replaced him. Stryker offers to turn Logan into the fighting machine that we have seen in the X-Men movies so he can exact revenge on his brother. He calls himself Wolverine after his lover’s favorite animal. Things aren’t always as they seem in this sort of movie, and there are a couple of twists to the story. There is, of course, a full dance card of skirmishes, fights, and titanic mano a mano combat. The movie is robustly saturated with violence, and CGI effects provoke a paradoxically muted emotional response as the viewer quickly learns that the normal rules of physics do not apply to the mutants. No lasting injuries will be sustained by Wolverine, Sabretooth, and the other mutants, despite blows that would not only kill, but also dismember and mutilate mere mortals. Unfortunately, this makes it easy to not care much about the entire film. There is an explanation for the conflict between the brothers, but almost nothing to explain why their relationship has endured for well over a century. The backstory doesn’t enlighten the audience about Wolverine’s character, and there is little that allows the audience to feel the underlying humanity of any of the characters-a strength of the earlier X-Men films.
The new Star Trek movie could regenerate this venerable sci-fi franchise that began on the small screen in 1966, followed by a series of films with the original television cast as well as having gone through successive small screen iterations that take the franchise even further into the distant future. In the forty-plus years since William Shatner’s Captain Kirk originally intoned that the Starship Enterprise’s mission was “to boldly go where no man has gone before,” the original cast members have gone from being men and women in the prime of their youth to being old men and women. Shatner is seventy-eight, as is his costar Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock. Communications Officer Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) is seventy-six, while Chekov (Walter Koenig) and Sulu (George Takei) are seventy-two and seventy-one, respectively. The actors who played Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) and Scotty (James Doohan) have both passed away, but both would have turned eighty-nine earlier this year. The new film demonstrates a stroke of genius that should reinvigorate the legions of Trekkies that have had a longtime love affair with the original Star Trek TV show. There are, in effect, zero degrees of separation between the characters in this film and the original Star Trek characters. The film introduces us to the show’s original characters as young men and women-younger even than they were when the first show began. Interestingly, the film’s storyline centers on time travel, and, consequently, the lives of all the original Enterprise characters are altered. While one can quibble-perhaps even disagree with the film’s creators much more vigorously than would qualify as mere quibbling-that the impact of such a disruption to the lives of our characters would most likely result in all of their lives never intersecting as they did on the original show, their revised history creates the opportunity for these favorite characters to have a whole set of new adventures. Can you say sequels? Potentially, there could be lots of them. This stroke of genius would, however, be all for naught if the film turned out to be Star Turkey Trek. Fortunately, the film has an intriguing story, plenty of action, a good villain in Eric Bana’s Nero, who is from the future and trying to avenge the destruction of his home planet, and the incomparable Leonard Nimoy, who ties it all together as Spock Prime. It is a definite bonus that there’s an attractive young cast bearing at least some resemblance to the characters they are supposed to grow into. Zachary Quinto (from TV’s Heroes) as the young Spock is probably closest in appearance to the actor who originally created the role, and that resemblance is easy to evaluate since both of them appear in the film. Film viewers will have to rely on their memories for comparisons on the other characters, but I think the resemblances are reasonably close. Chris Pine (Bottle Shock) has the plum role of the young James T. Kirk and is able to give his character an iconoclastic edge more interested in reckless adventure and skirt-chasing than in brown-nosing Star Fleet brass. It will be interesting to see if this film is followed by a string of sequels and whether the films will try to repair the historical rift or just move forward into their own new adventures. Regardless, the film stands on its own and successfully introduces new generations to the original Star Trek characters.
Sita Sings the Blues is a delightful puff pastry of a film viewing experience. It is light, flavorful, and certainly will not linger unduly in one’s cinematic alimentary canal, causing worry or dread or any other form of dyspepsia. It will, however, probably need to be very intentionally sought because it doesn’t have a big advertising campaign, and there definitely won’t be a wall of Sita Sings the Blues DVDs threatening to fall on you at your favorite video store. This animated film manages to integrate a telling of the epic ancient Indian tale of Ramayana and a failed contemporary romance, using the jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw from the 1920s. The film uses several different drawing styles in its animation, which helps delineate the different story strands. Director and screenwriter Nina Paley imbues her stories with an engaging comic sensibility that takes neither the ancient epic nor the apparent unraveling of her own romance (she herself plays the jilted lover Nina) too seriously. Although one could make the case that the film is worth seeing just for its many songs performed in their entirety by a now-forgotten songstress, the film truly is a delightful whole that is more than the sum of its parts.
State of Play is a thriller that was adapted from a highly regarded British TV miniseries (winner of three BAFTA awards and nominated for four others in its robust harvest of prizes) into a Washington-set feature film with an all-star cast that includes Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Jeff Daniels, and Helen Mirren. This illustrates how some stories truly benefit from having a longer format. Condensing the film from nearly six hours into a 127-minute theatrical feature has it gasping and wheezing to sustain the dramatic tension even as director Kevin Macdonald has the cast dashing from plot point to plot point in the script. There is something to be said for building a richer context and slowing the pace to allow the audience the opportunity to reflect on the moral underpinnings of the drama. It clearly doesn’t help that the film’s trailer gives away an absolutely crucial plot twist that has everyone who has seen the trailer knowing there’s another shoe to drop just when the film seems to have happily tied up its tale with a nice pretty bow. Ultimately, State of Play’s trip across the pond has turned a superb miniseries into a serviceable, if mediocre, political thriller.
One of the quotations used in the trailer for Gomorrah pointed out how Matteo Garrone’s superb film de-romanticized the mob. This is, in essence, an anti-Godfather movie, showing the corrosive societal damage done by the powerful Camorra crime family in Naples. There is no Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, James Caan, Richard Castellano, Abe Vigoda, or Robert Duvall to lend charm to the perpetrators of this moral chaos. There are no references to the mobsters engaging in basically victimless crimes by simply providing the services (gambling, prostitution, alcohol, and drugs) for which society already has a voracious appetite even though society’s moral guardians declare them illegal. Neither does the film contain rationalizations about how they only kill each other or other miscreants deserving of such a fate (and not innocent members of the public). Gomorrah immediately immerses the audience into the neighborhoods of Naples, with little to help dispel the disorientation of language, loyalty, and legality. Youngsters are recruited as teens to literally take a bullet (wearing a protective vest) for the crime families. We follow two young men who deliriously dream of moving directly from teen-aged tough guys to being their own crime bosses in open defiance of the local mob chieftain. The Camorra broker deals with the captains of industry to skirt the laws and poison acres of land with toxic wastes. The mob brutally bullies those who consider working outside their own businesses. A young boy is trapped in a horrible moral dilemma. Both innocents and innocence die. This film and Il Divo-the story of corrupt politician Giulio Andreotti-dominated the David di Donatello Awards (the Italian version of the Academy Awards), winning seven Davids apiece, clearly illustrating that while crime may or may not pay, films about it do. Interestingly, all of the Davids won by Gomorrah were for behind-the-camera achievements (directing, editing, producing, screenplay, music, sound, and best film), while Il Divo captured two of the three acting Davids for which it was nominated among its haul of statuettes. This illustrates Garrone’s rather deliberate eschewing of charismatic performances to tell this story of institutionalized corruption. This is, however, a film that is much more admired than embraced.
Hollywood often glosses right over the lives of real people engaged in the day-to-day struggle to make ends meet to maintain home and hearth for their families, preferring instead to focus on the lives of those who never seem to have a care about where the next dollar or meal comes from. Sunshine Cleaning keeps its and our eyes on the daily struggle for food and shelter as well as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now, this is not an altogether sober look at the struggles of working people. The film stars Amy Adams as self-deprecating single-mom Rose Lorkowski, wondering how to sort out her life and find better work than being motel chambermaid and a housecleaner. She has a very full plate since she is trying to raise her mischievous son, shepherd her younger sister Norah (Emily Blunt) to self-sufficiency, and keep her quirky and scheming dad (Alan Arkin) out of trouble while she carries on an affair with her now-married high school sweetheart (Steve Zahn). Director Christine Jeffs (Sylvia) and screenwriter Megan Holley have lofty ambitions for the film. Not only does it have lots of comic moments built on the sardonic family squabbling, Rose’s dead-end jobs and love life, and then the messy and squeam-inducing detritus of cleaning up after dead people (this latter career advancement comes courtesy of a recommendation by her police detective lover), but it also has more serious issues to address. Navigating between low comedy and high tragedy is a difficult challenge, and this film doesn’t accomplish it without taking on some water. However, the film has a superb cast headed by the ever-buoyant Adams, so audiences will likely overlook the films flaws and root for her and her family.
Sean McGinly’s The Great Buck Howard provides a delightful vehicle for John Malkovich to step away from his signature creepy sinister personas and appear as a quirkily engaging performer-a once-famous mentalist on the downside of fame looking for a way back to the big time. Malkovich has a ball as Buck Howard-a character drawn from the real-life exploits of the Amazing Kreskin. The central character in this film is, however, not Malkovich’s Buck Howard, but his newfound assistant Troy Gable (Colin Hanks), who has fled the law school picked by his dad (Colin’s real-life dad, Tom Hanks) in the hope of finding a more exciting and meaningful life. He finds himself as Howard’s lowly go-for on a minor league entertainment circuit taking him from Sheboygan to Madison to Spokane to Bakersfield to Cincinnati, where Howard arrives at each venue with the announcement “I love this town,” while delivering a handshake that threatens to dislocate the shoulder of the unfortunate host or hostess. Buck does have one more big- time trick up his sleeve, which he is hoping to pull off in Cincinnati. He needs to amp up his PR for this event, and his long-time public relations firm sends junior staffer Valerie Brennan (Emily Blunt) for the duties, much to Howard’s chagrin. This does, however, deliver a suitable love interest and foil for the younger Hanks. This isn’t a great film, but it delivers the low-stress laughs and entertainment that my wife would call a perfect “Friday night movie.”
I am an observer of how people leave movie theaters because it can tell quite a bit about how the film has affected the audience. It must be noted that Adam Del Deo and James D. Stern’s Every Little Step riveted (and here that hackneyed description trotted out for display on countless movie posters absolutely and truly applies) every little butt to its seat not only to the end of the film but beyond. The entire audience that saw it with me sat absolutely transfixed by what they had witnessed for several seconds after the film ended and even after the lights came up. A friend of mine who had seen the film at a different theater with a different audience observed the same phenomenon. He said, “It was as if we wanted more.” Music theatergoers will recognize “Every Little Step” as one of the signature songs from the hit musical A Chorus Line. The film Every Little Step tells two interweaving stories. The first is about the genesis of the show in discussions taped at a party of theater performers-the dancers and singers constantly auditioning and performing-and then willed into an incredibly poignant and inspiring musical almost single-handedly by the late choreographer Michael Bennett. That isn’t, of course, absolutely true, as a theater production is a collaborative effort that requires the talents of all within the cast and crew, but it has to be noted that there would be no A Chorus Line without Michael Bennett’s genius in envisioning such a show and his efforts to collect the talent to work on it. The film allows the original collaborators to share their stories while we hear their testimonies on the tapes and see vintage video from the show’s early development. It also allows the audience a window into how it felt to be gay (as Bennett was and many others in the theater community have been and are) in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. The second part of the film is to witness the audition and development process for a new version of A Chorus Line more than thirty years after it debuted on Broadway. The show’s themes of being compelled to perform, to put oneself on display, to undergo constant and seemingly microscopic scrutiny, and to face constant rejection in the hope of being chosen apply to the new show’s hopefuls as life imitates art and A Chorus Line’s universality is confirmed. We, the film audience, see the performers both off-stage and on, gaining a window into their lives, their hopes, and their anxieties. Whom would we choose for the roles and why? This is a surprisingly brilliant film that probably should be seen on the big screen to be fully appreciated. Ideally, when the film ends, the movie screen is raised and a real-live A Chorus Line begins.
Australian writer-director Stephan Elliott first gained international notice with his campy gender bending The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), set in the Australian outback. Here he and cowriter Sheridan Jobbins journey to Merry Olde England to try to adapt a Noel Coward play from 1924 into the film Easy Virtue. There are some pitfalls to taking a dialogue-driven stage play and transforming it into the more visual medium of motion pictures. How much of the snap and wit of what Coward’s characters say is lost by reproducing the down-at-the-mouth estate and the era where Coward’s play is set? The re-creation of the world where the story is set requires locations, vintage automobiles, costumes, hairstylists, as well as-for a single scene of a fox hunt-fox, hounds, horses, and lots of proficient horse-riding extras. These production values are essential for many filmgoers in order for them to engage with the story. Yet the film struggles to maintain the comic rhythm of Coward’s best work and frequently seems to be flailing its way through the material. However, it manages to reset its bearings with each rendering from its rich soundtrack of songs by Coward and his contemporary Cole Porter. The film features the fading gentry Whitakers, headed by Colin Firth, Kristin Scott Thomas, Ben Barnes, Katherine Parkinson, and Kimberly Nixon. Firth’s patriarch has physically returned from the War to End All Wars, but remains aloof. Scott Thomas bears the full weight of the family’s fading fortunes. Nixon is naïve and spirited as Hilda, the family’s youngest and most appealing member. Parkinson has the thankless role of the elder sister, Marion, who may have lent a dotty comic presence to the play, but seems just pathetic in this film with her fixation on an absent one-time (possibly dead) love, whom she continually says she sees in pictures of notables of the 1920s. Barnes’s John Whitaker is the picture of the budding aristocratic bon vivant who has eloped with his beautiful bride Larita “Lari” (Jessica Biel). His mom sees gold digger in the bride’s brassy bobbed hair, and Lari turns out to be an American race car driver with both a checkered past and a mind of her own. She is the kind of fresh wind that the estate hasn’t seen for a century or so. She quickly enlists the support of the estate staff. Furber (Kris Marshall), the Whitaker’s button-downed head butler, is soon barely able to suppress the subversive inner slacker persona the actor has shown in films such as Death at a Funeral, Love Actually, and British TV’s My Family. Soon mother and wife are engaged in a not so civilized tug-of-war over the Whitaker scion. Who wins? That may not matter as much as enjoying the ride. The film may not run like a top and may seem like it needs a tune-up every now and again, but it does deliver its share of giggles, chortles, and smiles. One thing is for sure; this has a soundtrack that I would definitely be interested in having.
