Footloose

Posted on October 13, 2011 at 11:11 pm

Director Craig Brewer doesn’t so much remake 1984’s Footloose as tweak it. At times, it feels almost identical, with small changes that are as likely to be commentary as updates. But the most important thing this version has in common with the original is that the talking parts are too long and the dancing parts are too short. Like the first one, it is not a good movie but it is a lot of fun.

Kenny Wormald, a back-up dancer for Justin Timberlake, takes over the Kevin Bacon role as Ren, a boy from the city (Boston) who moves to a small town in Georgia to live with his aunt and uncle (in this version, the single mother is dispensed with). “Dance With the Stars” favorite Julianne Hough plays the Lori Singer role as Ariel, the daughter of the local preacher (Dennis Quaid) who led the town to impose a curfew and prohibit dancing for teenagers after a car accident that killed five teens on their way home from a party. His son, Ariel’s other brother, was the driver. Five years later, grief and guilt still hang over the town, and the high school students who walk by the memorial display for the kids who were killed every day feel that the restrictions are pointless. The most disturbing change from the original is the decision to begin the film by showing us a group of teens dancing and letting us realize to our horror that these are not the kids we will be watching for the rest of the movie; these are the ones who are about to die. It is intended to give some weight to the otherwise dubious premise but it does not. It just starts things off like another episode of “Final Destination.”

Once that is over with, we get on to the themes of the movie. Ariel has to learn that her risky behavior is not just rebellious; it is self-destructive. And Ren and his new friends have to find a way to make a difference.

But let’s be honest. It’s really just a lot of opportunities to dance. Wormald is not the actor Bacon is, not even close, but he is a sensational dancer with an electrifyingly athletic style (in both versions, part of Ren’s backstory is his experience as a gymnast). Hough is a beautifully supple dancer who makes her joy in movement a part of every step, and she has dazzling aqua eyes that are very expressive. They are better suited physically than the compact Bacon and lanky Singer and generate some real sizzle. Brewer unfortunately does not make the best use of the camera in the dance sequences (compare them to Rob Marshall’s highly kinetic work in “Chicago,” where the camera moved like another dancer). At times he awkwardly cuts off the feet or shoulders just when we most want to see them. But he does show us the explosive energy of kids dancing together because it is just too exciting to be young and have music inside you to do anything else.

While some of the accents are wobbly, Memphis native Brewer (“Hustle and Flow”) understands the Southern rhythms of talk, especially its humor, and it is good to hear something that does not sound like a Californian’s idea of the way Southerners talk. The always-reliable Ray McKinnon is clearly very happy to play a nice guy for once. Miles Teller (“Rabbit Hole”) plays Ren’s cheerfully redneck friend Willard, and, like the late Chris Penn in the original, his scenes are a delight. Brewer, working with the original screenwriter Dean Pitchford, pays respects to the first version with touches like the red cowboy boots and the yellow VW bug, and with witty updates like the Blake Shelton cover of the title song and the effects in the final dance number. I won’t spoil the surprise of the twist he gives to Deniece Williams’ “Let’s Hear it for the Boy.” I liked the expansion of dance styles to include country line-dancing and crunk and loved the Big & Rich song, “Fake ID.” And whenever the talking stopped and the dancing began, I had a wonderful time.

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The Debt

Posted on August 30, 2011 at 6:04 pm

A+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Adult
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for some violence and language
Profanity:	Some strong and offensive language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking, drugs
Violence/ Scariness:	Characters in peril, injured, and killed, some graphic images, references to Holocaust atrocities
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	August 31, 2011
Date Released to DVD:	December 6, 2011
Amazon.com ASIN:	B003Y5H4Y8

Stories are linear. Part of what gives them their power is that we jettison the details that are distracting or unimportant. But real life is messy. That may not be as compelling, but is honest. As we are told in “The Man Who Shots Liberty Valance,” “When the truth becomes legend, print the legend.” And sometimes the legend becomes the truth.

That is the story of “The Debt.” It begins in 1997, when a woman is celebrating the publication of her book, which tells the story of her parents’ daring capture of a Nazi war criminal named Vogel in East Germany three decades before. Her parents, now divorced, are Rachel Singer (Helen Mirren) and Stephan Gold (Tom Wilkenson). Rachel still has a scar on her cheek from the prisoner’s attack on her when he tried to escape. She shot him to keep him from getting away.

Then we go back to the 1960’s, when Rachel (Jessica Chastain) passes through the Berlin Wall on her first assignment as a Mossad agent. The man they are looking for was responsible for atrocities that were a grotesque version of medical experiments during the war. Now he is a gynecologist under the name Bernhardt (the Danish actor Jesper Christensen), and Rachel is assigned to visit him as a patient, posing as the wife of another agent, David Peretz (Sam Worthington), under the direction of their leader, Stephan (Marton Csokas). The first time through, we saw the story they told. Now we see what really happened, and then we will see how the three of them, in their 60’s, finish the story.

It is a tense thriller with some action and a lot of suspense, especially the war of nerves as Bernhardt and the three young agents are stuck in a grimy apartment for days, essentially prisoners of each other. The young agents are rattled by Vogel’s coolness and manipulation. And then, decades later, their story starts to unravel and they have to finish what they started.

The movie works very well as a thriller that benefits from some ambitious aspirations and superb performances from Christensen, Wilkenson, and Mirren. But it spins out of control in the last 20 minutes, sacrificing story for action and losing much of its gritty momentum.

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The Green Hornet

Posted on May 3, 2011 at 8:00 am

Anyone here remember Van Williams?

He was the star of the 1966-67 television series, “The Green Hornet.” But the only thing anyone remembers about the show today was the actor who played the title character’s martial arts and automotive expert sidekick, Kato: Bruce Lee. The tradition continues with this new film. Jay Chou (“Curse of the Golden Flower”) has the screen charisma, timing, and fight skills to make Kato watchable. That guy who plays the Hornet? Not so much.

In fact, the three things wrong with this movie are: Seth Rogen co-produced, Seth Rogen co-wrote, and Seth Rogen stars. Seth Rogen the co-producer and writer badly over-estimates the appeal of Rogen the performer. When called upon to play a clueless schlub, he can convey a certain shambling lack of pretension or artifice with some appeal. He was perfect as the brainless jello character in “Monsters vs. Aliens” and held his own fairly well as a secondary character in “Funny People,” “Superbad,” and “Knocked Up.” He may have some meta aspirations in casting himself as a self-indulgent and irresponsible playboy who decides to become a force for justice. But he doesn’t even make a persuasive dissolute. When he tries to do more, he loses all of the affection from the audience he ever mustered in playing guys who were better than they knew. Here is is so much less than his character believes to be and is supposed to be, he comes across as full of himself and egotistical; it’s as though his success in Hollywood and his hyphenate status have finally gone to his head. And even though he apparently recognizes his limited range by reducing the character arc to about an inch and a half; even after Britt decides to become a sort-of grown-up and a sort-of crime-fighter, Rogen the writer and Rogen the actor keep him pretty much an immature dope all the way through. It wears thin long before the movie is half over.

It also drags down the parts of the film that do work, especially Chou, whose precise, understated delivery is a nice counterpoint to Rogen’s messy stumbles. Michel Gondry (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “Be Kind, Rewind”) has a gift for whimsy that adds visual interest. An impossibly souped-up supercar has an old-fashioned turntable for playing disarmingly retro LPs. He slices up the screen into segments resembling something between “The Thomas Crown Affair,” the opening credits of “The Brady Bunch,” and that Breck shampoo commercial about “and they they told two people and they told two people.” And he makes good use of the depth of 3D in the fight scenes. We get Kato-vision to see how he sizes up the opposition, with a clever variation later on. Oscar-winner Christoph Waltz (“Inglourious Basterds”) manages to make more of the villain than the script gives him and there’s a nice cameo from the ubiquitous James Franco (giving us time to think that he would make a great Hornet).

Rogen is falling into the Adam Sandler/Peter Pan trap, the endless boy-man, alternately wolfish toward and intimidated by girls (Cameron Diaz has the thankless role) and incapable of taking responsibility at home or at work. At one point, Kato literally puts him in a diaper. The only reason to give the audience such a mess is so we can have the fun of seeing him learn some lessons. But he never does. This is a hornet that’s all buzz, no sting.

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Gulliver’s Travels

Posted on April 19, 2011 at 8:00 am

A cringe-inducing catastrophe with all of the appeal of fingernails on blackboard, this movie’s first early warning sign should have been the omission of Jonathan Swift from the opening credits.

I thought at first it was an arrogant oversight. Now I think it is more likely his ghost showed up and threatened to haunt the film-makers and their descendants forever if they did not remove any mention of his name. Swift is the man who wrote the book, with satire so biting and fantasy so thrilling that it has endured for almost 300 years. It will survive this, too, but just barely.

The story has been updated so that Gulliver, like every other aspect of the story, is downgraded (and degraded). In Swift’s book, he is a surgeon. Here, played by a doughy and lusterless Jack Black, he is a guy who works in a newspaper mailroom, too insecure to try to get a promotion or ask out the beautiful editor he adores (Amanda Peet, who does her best to pretend she is in a better movie).

In order to impress her, Gulliver plagiarizes some travel pieces. She gives him an assignment to investigate the Bermuda triangle. I know this is a fantasy, but since when can newspapers afford a mail room staff and what appears to be a bountiful budget for investigative travel pieces?

Gulliver gets trapped in a vortex that lands him in a kingdom called Lilliput, populated by people who are just six inches tall. As in the book, at first he is captured, tied down while he is asleep on the beach. He stands up, ripping the ropes open. But there was noting in the book about his pants falling down, and then having him fall backwards with a poor Lilliputian apparently smothered by his, uh, tush separation.

And then it really gets disgusting. Gulliver has to rescue the king from a fire and, finding no water within reach, pees on everything to douse the flames . As dispiriting as that is, it is not as bad as the flaccid torpor of the script, which shows utter contempt for its audience in every line. Every reference, joke, and plot development is tired and predictable. Gulliver collects — guess! Yep, “Star Wars” action figures. At work, he slacks off by — guess! Playing “Guitar Hero.” When he persuades the Lilliputians that he is known as President Awesome back home where he comes from, we see posters all over the city with Gulliver appearing as the hero of every movie or play from “West Side Story” to “Wicked.” Those are hardly recognizable, much less knee-slapping references for anyone under 40.

Even worse, Gulliver is a thoroughly unpleasant character. He reflexively lies to everyone. He is selfish, incurious, and thoughtless. There is a dull storyline about a Lilliputian commoner named Horatio (a sweet Jason Segal) who dares to love the princess (a regal Emily Blunt), but it is ineptly handled. When the princess challenges the bad guy (Chris O’Dowd, the movie’s sole highlight) to come up with a reason for loving her, predictably, he can’t. But then, shouldn’t Horatio demonstrate some understanding or appreciation of the princess to show his fitness? The script and director Rob Letterman cannot be bothered to follow through. It just keeps desperately throwing stuff at the audience, finally including a killer robot.

Letterman, who showed he knows better in “Monsters vs. Aliens,” blows all the possibilities of the book’s shrewd (and still very relevant) commentary for silly sight gags like Gulliver’s using the Lilliputians to re-enact video games and DVDs. A “Titanic” joke! Stop!

A lump of coal in the stockings of everyone behind this mess.

Arthur

Posted on April 7, 2011 at 6:00 pm

Russell Brand takes over the title role in this unnecessary remake of the better-remembered-than-re-watched 1981 film starring Dudley Moore and the Oscar-winning Sir John Gielgud. It’s harder to find a perpetually substance-abusing hedonist funny these days than it was back in the Reagan Administration era. There have just been too many boy-men comedies and too many episodes of “Celebrity Intervention” since then to give this idea the freshness it had 30 years ago. Compare the advertising taglines for the films. Circa 1981: Not everyone who drinks is a poet, some of us drink because we’re not. Circa 2011: No Work. All Play. Crisper, perhaps, but dumbed down and not too ambitious or intriguing.

Brand, who can do quite well when he essentially plays himself, his offhand delivery contrasting nicely with the outrageousness of the comments, is a comedian, not an actor, and he seems lost just when his character most needs to demonstrate the depth to persuade us that two fine women see something worth loving in him. When Brand shows up in the opening credits as not just star but co-producer, it becomes drearily obvious that this movie was the result of nothing more than a “let’s find a vehicle for Russell” meeting. There is no sense at any point that anyone connected with the film had any special inspiration about either remaking or updating the original. We hear a few notes from the original film’s Oscar- and Grammy-winning song (“When you get caught between the moon and New York Ciiiity….”), but just a few flickers of what made the Moore version so appealing.

As in the first film, Arthur is a fabulously wealthy man who tries to amuse himself by over-spending or over-indulging in alcohol and women or preferably both at once. His loyal nanny (Dame Helen Mirren replacing Gielgud as the butler) is the only one who is close to him and the only one who cares about him. His mother is a tycoon who would hold him in disdain if she thought he was worth the effort. The girl he slept with the night before tucked his watch into her purse. The cops get a bit annoyed when he floors it in his Batmobile. And somehow showering money and gifts on random strangers does not win him friends, either.

Arthur’s mother gives him an ultimatum. Either he marries the rapaciously ambitious Susan (Jennifer Garner, having a lot of fun but not quite managing to squelch her innate niceness) or he is cut off from the fortune and must find some other way to support himself. Even though he has just met a girl named Naomi who might make him happy (indie darling Greta Gerwig in her first big-budget leading role), he agrees. The dilemma gets amped up as Arthur becomes more attached to Naomi and when he meets Susan’s father, played by Nick Nolte in a tasteless role as a nouveau riche bully who casually plucks out the nails Arthur accidentally shot into him and forces Arthur to put his tongue in a buzz saw. And then Arthur, who has always been taken care of, has to care for someone else when his nanny becomes, as she would say, ill.

“I like earning something,” Naomi tells Arthur, “And I know you don’t know what that feels like. It is great.” I like movies that earn the respect and affection of their audience with diligence, sincerity, and imagination. The people behind this movie do not know what that feels like, and that doesn’t feel great.

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