Wallet worn out yet? Credit card crying “Uncle” under the strain of your increasing personal penury? Well, too friggin’ bad! Tinsel Town is not done delivering potential materialistic mandates for your ever-growing list of compulsory consumer purchases. After all, with a pair of the summer’s biggest titles just now hitting B&M shelves (and many more on the way before 25 December) and a non-stop barrage of catalog and reissue content, your cash is guaranteed to be strapped for weeks to come. Hoping you believe in the otherwise noble sentiment that ‘giving is better than getting’, marketers are making it harder and harder to avoid the digital domain as a potential gift category. Even when the titles are less than tantalizing, the presentation and packaging can boost a forgettable effort into a full-blown blind buy. Here’s something to ponder, however. If it really is the thought that counts, what does it say about you when a loved one unwraps the collector’s edition of Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector. You better have your excuses ready in advance. The other choices chasing your checkbook this 5 December include:
Bernardo Bertolucci’s follow-up to his international hit Last Tango in Paris turned out to be a five hour and eighteen minute epic spanning 45 years in a small Italian town. Centering on the rise of fascism and the role communism played within the populace, the Mediterranean maestro cast Frenchman Gerard Depardieu and American Robert DeNiro as his heroes and filled with screen with images both beautiful and baneful. Some of the content pushed the limits previously set by Tango even further, and to this day, several sequences involving young boys have never been shown in the United States. While more than a few film fans find it all rather rough going – it is a very long 318 minutes – there is no denying Bertolucci’s connection to the material – or his inherent artistry.
Documentaries don’t get more spellbinding than this look at wealth in decay and the lives of two women, both lost within their own insular universe of privilege and pain. Brothers Albert and David Maysles struck subject matter gold when they discovered Big Edie and Little Edie Bouvier Beale (cousins of famed First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis) living in reclusive squalor in the title estate on the Hamptons. Eager for the attention they once held as members of high society, the pair were happy to “perform” for the directors, letting down their guard just enough to see the substantial sadness inside. The 1975 masterpiece is now supplemented with an amazing contemporary companion piece, arguing for the timelessness of both the Maysles moviemaking prowess and the Beale’s quiet desperation.
Based on Tom Rockwell’s classic kids novel, this story of bullies belittled and invertebrate guts digested should have been a fun family classic. But somewhere along the line, director Bob Dolman (whose only other credit, 2002’s The Banger Sisters, does not bode well for his filmmaking acumen) loses the lessons and overdoes the gross outs. Granted, in this post-millennial maelstrom of mixed juvenile messages – parents push safety while allowing questionable content to guide their wee ones – such an entertainment approach may be defendable. But silliness always needs to be balanced with substance, less the whole endeavor grow unruly. Dolman does have a good eye for underage talent, and there will be certain kids who could care less about a message. They’ll just want more of the sticky, slimy stuff. For them, the title tutorial will be sickeningly satisfying.
As Big Boi and Andre 3000 of Outkast went from multi-platinum recording sensations to disgruntled bandmates on the brink of imploding, the announcement that their next effort would be an old fashioned movie musical sent many of their fans reeling. How would these hip hop heavies, responsible for reinventing the genre with their style defying indifference to the rules, actually match up against the song and dance classics of Hollywood’s Golden era? The answer was…confusing. Idlewild‘s over the top flights of fancy, loaded with visual finesse and pop art poetry lacked the cohesive narrative that drives most song and dance showcases, and the aural element provided by the duo definitely lacks the sonic internalizing of a Broadway effort. But writer/director Bryan Barber, creator of many of the group’s classic videos, proves himself a fine filmmaker. He saves something that otherwise feels slightly self-indulgent.
It was an interesting idea on the part of writer/director Michael Mann: take his seminal TV series that seemed to define the ’80s and strip it of every last iconic element. Then mix in heavy doses of star power (in the form of Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx), modern technology (cellphones, laptops) and illustrate the new 21st century version of the undying drug trade. The results should be realism reinvigorated. The only factor he left out was the fun. This is a deadly serious, almost expressionistic thriller, a movie where tone takes precedent over almost everything else on the big wide screen. Filmed in digital video for that Collateral-like look, and loaded with breathtaking imagery, there’s no denying that Mann has a flare for the epic. Sadly, the rest of the movie feels underdeveloped and superficial.
It’s hard to fathom why critics ganged up on this wonderful follow-up to the original seafaring adventure. It had so much more of everything that made the first movie great – more Johnny Depp, more insanely inventive villains, more tantalizing thespian eye candy (Mr. Bloom for the gals, Ms. Knightly for the guys). Still, reviewers treated it as some reprehensible pretender to the scallywag throne, condemning it to walk the pedestrian plank. We here at SE&L couldn’t disagree more. For us, this second portion of POTC is the reason why we anticipate the summer season year in and year out. It perfectly encompasses the best that blockbusters have to offer especially in this overly ironic age. Is it overlong, narratively convenient and piled high with occasionally contradictory concepts? Absolutely – and we wouldn’t want it any other way.
Signaling the exact moment when the J-horror fad died in America, this reimagining of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2002 masterpiece Kairo forgets the first rule of any adaptation – try to keep what made the original so compelling in the first place. Instead, screenwriters Ray Wright and Wes Craven give filmmaking novice Jim Sonzero very little to work with outside the standard “technology is evil” idea (a minor part of Kurosawa’s creative conceit). Filmed in a manner that desaturates all the colors out of what is already a dour setting, this is the motion picture equivalent of mildew. Instead of mimicking the first film’s snowball approach, where small moments gather and build toward an apocalyptic ending avalanche, we get typical teens trapped in a sloppy spook show. While it can be visually arresting, Pulse pales in comparison to its source.
And Now for Something Completely Different:
In a weekly addition to Who’s Minding the Store, SE&L will feature an off title disc worth checking out. For 5 December:
As a standard maxim, certain cinematic elements just don’t mix. Perhaps the most obvious example is any attempt at mixing science fiction with comedy. It’s like oil and water. Luckily, Brian S. O’Malley never listened to this routine rule of thumb. If he had, we wouldn’t be blessed with the remarkably engaging, absolutely hilarious end of the world insanity known as Bleak Future. Like George Miller mashed with Peter Jackson, this satirical shape of things to come is simultaneously smart and stupid, realistic and retarded, inspired and insipid, wholly original and a complete and utter rip off. It is also one of the oddest, most endearing entertainments to come out of the outsider arena in quite a while. It’s a gangly geek fest just waiting for the right collection of nerf herders to embrace its cool cult craziness.