Monthly Archives: March 2012

Review: “The Hunger Games”

24 Saturday Mar 2012

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“Food Fight”

Grade: B- (RENT IT)

THE MUCH-ANTICIPATED screen version of “The Hunger Games” comes with baggage.  A lot of baggage, in fact: more than twenty million readers (and growing) and that perennially impossible pressure of bringing a beloved book to life on screen.  Let’s face it: you can’t appear as if you love the book if you love the movie as well.  But what’s to rave about here?  “The Hunger Games” begins and ends not with a bang but with a whimper, and that’s the surprising deficiency in Gary Ross’s screen retool of Suzanne Collins’ best-selling dystopic triology with this cheery premise: a futuristic Orwellian autocracy in which minors are marched into a televised fights-to-the-death.  Call it “Keeping up with the Kill-dash-ians.”  Ninety million dollars later, not to mention a costume department that resembles the offspring of Tim Burton and Marie Antoinette, and we have Part 1 of “The Hunger Games,” but it’s a snooze and you’re lying if you weren’t left a little hungry for just a little more gaming and a lot less exposition.

In terms of Collins’ savage plot, there’s really nothing new here.  Critics cite the Japanese film “Battle Royale,” but there are influences even more obvious: Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and Stephen King’s sci-fi novel, “The Running Man” (later a film starring Schwarzeneggar), in which the clairvoyant King, who saw, back in 1982, where reality-TV was headed, put game-show contestants in a death match.  As Collins’ 16-year old heroine Katniss Everdeen, Jennifer Lawrence (Oscar-nominated for “Winter’s Bone”) has already been call bland and lifeless in the role.  Not so.  The leitmotif of The Hunger Games is containment – segregation, really, as in the district-ization of this future nightmare-socity – and Lawrence gives a restrained, rather contained performance, focused and somber.  Some of the first images of Lawrence are powerful: like a Diana in pigtails, she stands inside in a verdant forest, hunting bow in hand.  Of course, the huntress becomes the hunted as she joins twenty-three other so-called “tributes” to inhabit a vast televised landscape, replete with genetically engineered hornets and man-eating dogs the size of VW bugs, compliments of reality-show producer Seneca Crane (Wes Bentley) and blue-skinned Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci) as the games’ slimy talk-show host.

Regardless, the supporting cast contains some delightful stand-outs: the always-entertaining Elizabeth Banks who cites Joel Grey in “Cabaret” as the inspiration behind her Effie Trinket and Josh Hutcherson (“The Kids Are Alright”) as the passive Peeta Mellark.  Two others are severely miscast: a wooden Lenny Kravitz as Cinna and a Woody (Harrelson) as Haymitch Abernathy.  Apparently, the party every night during shooting was in Kravitz’s trailer but he brings little of that fun to the screen.  And the fact that two of the audience members in my row were asleep two hours in – and it was a 12:15 screening! – speaks to the film’s snail’s-pace.  Simon “Slumdog Millionare” Beaufoy has adapted the second book “Catching Fire” for the screen – production begins this September – and let’s hope he can give the plot the Bollywood bop it deserves.

A sinister Donald Sutherland, whose white beard is combed into a ghostly mask, plays President Snow and in the film’s final scene, we see him assessing the winners of the Games and perhaps determining what’s to come.  “Contain it,” he tells Seneca earlier in the film.  Still, what are we to make of that last look at the games’ sole survivors?  It spells sequel, but how exactly?  What’s left uncontained?

With the next three films in the works and fans ravenous for more – that’s right, Hollywood will split the third book into two films to play the game some more – it’s safe to say the Kat Fight will continue.  Let’s hope it can overcome the low blood sugar that slows down this first installment.

Review: “Casablanca” (In Re-Release; 1 Night Only)

21 Wednesday Mar 2012

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Grade: A (SEE IT)

HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU, KID.

Yet 1942’s “Casablanca” (winner of three Academy Awards, including Best Picture) isn’t a kid anymore.  Tonight, to celebrate the film’s 70th anniversary, Turner Classic Movies will screen, for one night only, a digitally re-mastered edition of the classic World War II romantic drama and mainstay of Top 10 Classic Films lists.  “Casablanca” isn’t just the perfect film; it’s an iconic collection of top-shelf actors (Bogie, Bergman, Rains, Henreid, Lorre), a superb script, perfect pacing, music, melodrama, comedy…say when!

If you can’t visit Rick’s Café Américain tonight, be sure to rent a copy, which is just as well: TCM’s screening includes an introduction by Robert Osborne and commentary by that senile satyr otherwise known as Hugh Hefner (hardly worth the price of admission).  The observations of Osborne are surely worth taking in, but at this point, “Casablanca” and its basket of quotable sayings have already worked their way into popular culture: the misquoted “Play it again, Sam,” “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship” (which cleverly comes at the film’s ending), and of course, “We’ll always have, Paris.”  Fortunately for film buffs, we’ll always have “Casablanca” for five, fine reasons on which you can rely:

  1. SPANNING THE GLOBE.  There are arguably thirty-five nationalities represented in “Casablanca,” the most cosmopolitan classic of all time.  At a surprisingly modern pace, it moves from Vichy-occupied Morocco to Paris with talk of America, Germany, and Bulgaria in between.  Not only are Rick and Ilsa different nationalities, united by their hatred for the Gestapo, the interracial closeness between the couple and their portable musician, Sam (played by drummer Dooley Wilson) is also forward-thinking for its time.  “Casablanca” transcends most, if not all, geopolitical borders.
  2. MAX STEINER’S MUSIC.  Described by Louis as the “most beautiful woman to ever visit Casablanca,” the luminous Bergman plays Ilsa Lund, a Norwegian ex-lover of club-owner Rick Blaine.  It’s the music that transports her and the house pianist Sam whose take on the 1930s song “As Time Goes By” sends her into a forlorn dream-state.  Enter an enraged Rick, saying “Sam!  I thought I told you never to play that –”  From there, the score by Max Steiner moves to melodramatic orchestration but incorporates bits and pieces of “As Times Goes By.”  Still, that wasn’t enough to win Steiner an Oscar for Best Original Score that year.  But that’s okay, Steiner also lost after writing the music for that little picture called “Gone with the Wind” (1939).  Heard of it?
  3. LOVE AMONG THE RUINS.  One of the many charms of “Casablanca” is that intelligently intertwines wartime politics and romance.   When the film went into general release in January of 1943, Americans already knew the city’s name because of the Casablanca conference, a meeting between Roosevelt and Churchill; the Office of War Information kept the film from troops stationed in North Africa, worried that it would stir up resentment toward Vichy supporters.  “Your business is politics,” Rick tells Captain Louis Renault and his cohorts, leaving the table.  “My business is running a saloon.”  The irony, however, is that as hard as he tries, Rick just can’t keep politics at bay since a war-time, international romance is inherently political.  During the France flashback sequence, Bergman tells Bogie: “With the whole world crumbling, we picked this time to fall in love.”  “Yeah,” Bogie mumbles, “it’s pretty bad timing.”
  4. FOR LOVE OR VIRTUE?  The major conflict of “Casablanca” resides in Rick’s last-minute decision: in the famous and final plane hangar scene, gauzed in fog and especially beautiful in black-and-white, the boozy club-owner in a white tuxedo must hang onto the woman he loves or help her and her husband, a Czech resistance leader, escape Morocco (with the Nazi noose tightening) in order to continue the collective fight against Hitler?  Alongside another World War II dilemma, “Sophie’s Choice” (1982), there’s forty years before, Rick’s choice in “Casablanca.”
  5. LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION!  Directed by Hungarian-American Michael Curtiz (“Yankee Doodle Dandy,” “White Christmas”), “Casablanca” is that rare film in which production , plot, and performance are all perfectly matched.   Amazingly, Warner Brothers, in the early 1940s, pumped out a picture nearly once a week and Curtiz’s classic was just one on the assembly line.  And yet  “Casablanca” is the exception; like fine wine, it just gets better with age.  Naturally, this film has a phrase for that, too.  As Sam sings, it’s “You must remember this/as times goes by…”

In Memoriam: Whitney in “The Bodyguard” (1992)

12 Monday Mar 2012

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“The Bodyguard” (1992)

“THERE’S A BIG difference between wanting to die and having no fear of death.”  That’s Kevin Costner teaching the late Whitney Houston (1963-2012) a thing or two in the romantic thriller, “The Bodyguard” (1992).  The love-birds have just seen a samurai film, one that Costner’s character has seen sixty-two times, and strolling along the sidewalk toward dinner, Houston asks: “And because he had no fear of death, he was invincible?”  “What do you think?” queries Costner.  “Well,” she smiles, “he sure creamed them all in the end.”  We all know where dinner and a movie typically lead.  Back in his basement, Costner dramatically unwraps Houston’s  scarf, tosses it in the air, only to let it fall and separate on his samurai sword.  Paging Dr. Freud!

Two decades on, the plot of “The Bodyguard” is not only familiar but simple: before the supremacy of J.Lo and J.T. there was the fictional Rachel Marron, that “triple-threat” of actress-singer-dancer aptly embodied by Houston herself.  She enlists the protection of Frank Farmer, a former Secret Service Agent who rues the day he didn’t do enough to protect Reagan from his assassin John Hinkley Jr. who, in 1981, thought killing the President would win over his obsession, Jodie Foster.  (Speaking of the obsessive re-watching of films, Hinkley saw “Taxi Driver” at least fifteen times.)   Originally, Lawrence (“The Big Chill”) Kasdan wrote the script for “The Bodyguard” in the 1970s for Steve McQueen and Diana Ross.

Still far from her own untimely end at the age of 48, Houston’s big-screen debut in “The Bodyguard” was just the beginning of her movie career.  She made two more films – “Waiting to Exhale” and “The Preacher’s Wife” – before returning to the studio in 1998.  At her zenith, Houston’s vocals spanned an astounding three octaves and she showed, with her Super Bowl performance of 1991, that “The Star Spangled Banner” was about as easy to sing as “Happy Birthday.”  At the time of her death in Beverly Hills one month ago, she was reportedly proud of her comeback performance in a remake of the 1976 film “Sparkle.”  We’ll get the chance to see the mezzo soprano sparkle one last time this summer with the film’s posthumous release.

Looking back, much of “The Bodyguard” feels flat and dated: the slow-motion assassination attempt on stage at the Oscars, that nifty James-Bond karate chop that can knock a man out with just one jab to the neck, the weepy epilogue in which Frank and Rachel bid their adieus on the tarmac before Rachel changes her mind, ordering her pilot to “Wait!” and running back into Farmer’s arms.  Of course, “The Bodyguard” the film is less memorable than “The Bodyguard” the soundtrack, which grossed over 400 million dollars worldwide and went platinum 17 times over.  Its crown jewel, “I Will Always Love You” spent an unprecedented 14 weeks at No. 1 in America (at one point, moving a million copies a week.)  It was actually Costner that suggested she cover Dolly Parton’s 1974 country ballad.  (He and Houston fought the record company to add the 45-second a cappella introduction.)   In the film, hearing it in the bar Farmer takes her to, she asks: “This is a cowboy song, huh?”  “Yeah,” Farmer replies.  She laughs into his shoulder, and confesses: “I mean, it’s so depressing.  Have you ever listened to the words?”  The two laugh.  “It’s one of those someone-is-always-leaving-somebody songs.”

In terms of the art-life overlap, it’s striking that though Houston, as Rachel, is surrounded by handlers, publicists, choreographers, family members, and, of course, her bodyguard, she’s still so vulnerable, her life imperiled.  “I’m here to keep you alive,” Farmer tells her.  One of the ironies of Houston’s turn in “The Bodyguard” is that, on-screen as well as off, she was in desperate need of a better protector and guardian angel.  In the end, I guess Houston’s biggest film has become one of those someone-is-always-leaving-somebody kind of movies.

Review: “Silent House”

11 Sunday Mar 2012

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“Who Can It Be Now?”

Grade: C+ (SKIP IT)

DREAM House. SAFE House.  FULL House’s Olsen twins and their kid sister Elizabeth whose Silent House is a mixed bag of a horror film and Elizabeth Olsen’s second major effort on screen (following last year’s “Martha Marcy May Maylene”).  There’s little doubt that Olsen’s star will continue to rise, but “Silent House” is hardly the film to pave the way: it’s a slow-burner that never quite ignites; it’s built on the hoariest of horror flick clichés – the haunted house – with an unspeakable crime at its center that’s scarier than any of the film’s few jumps and jolts.

As Sarah, Olsen is stranded inside a family vacation home already boarded-up and ready for sale.  She’s flanked by her father (Adam Trese) and uncle Peter (Eric Sheffer Stevens) who bicker in a jovial, brotherly way as Sarah packs up her childhood belongings and carries a lantern from room to room.  The creepiness of her Dad’s affect – is he looking out for his young daughter or looking down her low-cut shirt? – should tip any perspicacious viewer off to the film’s central trauma.  Sarah appears on edge and when something goes bump in the night, her father assures her: “Honey, it’s an old house.  They make noise.”  But this is a silent house, remember, and its worst memories are kept hush-hush.

The most noteworthy aspect of “Silent House” is its cinematography, particularly the moody aerial of Sarah perched on a rock by the water at the film’s opening.  Directed by Chris Kentis and Laura Lau, “Silent House” purports to be shot in real-time and in virtually one continuous close-up shot of Olsen’s panicked pallor.  (Here, it follows in the footsteps of the Uruguayan Spanish-language original, “La Casa Muda,” released in 2010).  Perhaps Kurt Cobain screeched it best back in 1991: “With the lights out, it’s less dangerous/Here we are now, entertain us.”  The lights are out in “Silent House,” and since its real horror can’t be fully known (nor shown), you’ll likely find yourself less than entertained.

Review: “Wanderlust”

01 Thursday Mar 2012

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“Tahini Green”

Review: B (RENT IT)

BELIEVE IT OR not, it’s been fourteen years since Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd first co-starred in “The Object of My Affection,” a bold rom-com (for its day) about a New Yorker named Nina who falls for her gay best friend George.  By now, Aniston and Rudd, two of the most prolific comic actors on screen, are masters of the straight face, that concealment of laughter and/or derision.  “Wanderlust” (directed by David Wain of “Role Models” and “Wet Hot American Summer”) is a reunion of sorts, both for Aniston and Rudd, as well as for members of the ‘90s-era MTV sketch troupe, The State, such as Kerri Kenney-Silver (“Reno 911”), Michael Ian Black and Joe Lo Truglio.  (Stay for the outtakes and see the actors lose it.)  This time around, Rudd plays it straight as the grounding force in a comedy about a hippie commune in north Georgia populated by kooks, yogis, and nudists.  Because Aniston delivers a comedy seemingly every full moon, her flicks are a bit like pistachios: only one in a batch is truly savory and “Wanderlust” is that flick, affectionately light-hearted and genuinely funny.

As George (again) and Linda, Rudd and Aniston are New Yorkers (again) struggling to make it in a city later defined by three things: “Stress. Blackberries.  Sleeping Pills.”  Wain’s comedy opens with the couple, perfectly matched as a pair of motor-mouth Manhattanites, buying what their realtor (Linda Lavin) calls a “microloft” in the West Village.  There’s barely room for them to lower their Murphy bed.  But George abruptly loses his job just as Linda’s pitch to HBO to buy her dead-serious documentary falls through.  A pregnant exec at HBO shoots down Linda’s project about penguins with testicular cancer, telling her: “We do violence and heartache.  But it’s sexy.”  Off the couple goes to visit George’s brother Rick (played by Ken Marino, also the film’s co-writer) and zombie-like wife (a scene-stealing Michaela Watkins) who tells Aniston at her fancy margarita mixer:  “I have a little Sky Mall problem.”  Their pathetic existence within a McMansion sends the couple back to the hippie commune, Elysium, which they stumbled upon only nights before.  They’re taken to the leader, Seth (an unshaven Paul Theroux), who waxes philosophic on veganism, anti-materialism, but when he sings the praises of free love and wife-swapping, it’s really Aniston he wants.

Apart from the commune’s patriarch (an unshaven and always likable Alan Alda), there are some great supporting cast members, namely Lauren Ambrose (“Six Feet Under”) and Malin Akerman (“Couple’s Retreat”), the latter of whom has her eyes on Rudd.  Elysium’s motto?  “We share everything here.”  Laughs aside – and there are plenty – “Wanderlust” is diagetically deranged: this urban couple is hardly the type to last long in a commune, even if it is an “intentional community” as Seth terms it, and the film goes on long after the thrill of “Wanderlust” is gone.  If drama’s pitfall is sentimentality, the death of any comedy is sheer stupidity and there are a few truly dumb moments in “Wanderlust,” especially the pep-talk Rudd gives himself before trying to even the score with Aniston-Theroux and bedding (but blowing it) with Akerman.  Much of the comedy also is a transparent opportunity to see Aniston in jean cut-offs, cowboy boots, and camisoles.  Call it (Bob) Marley and Me.  Neverthless, the couple’s choice between deadening conformity and free-spirited escapism rings true.