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For the weekend beginning 28 March, here are the films in focus:
Stop-Loss [rating: 5]
...more of an artillery based Abercrombie and Fitch road trip than a concise character study.
The War in Iraq remains a tricky cinematic situation. Over the last few months, there’s been a myriad of motion pictures that have decided that the best way to interpret the conflict is to make the soldiery a kind of indirect villain. Instead of celebrating the bravery and duty of these incredible young men and women, they’ve turned the political/policy elements of the conflict into a means to murderous, madmen ends. No matter the theater – foreign or domestic, religious or military – it’s nothing but the worst of our fears made very, very human. Kimberley Peirce’s Stop-Loss wants to buck this trend. It hopes to illustrate the Bush Administration’s ridiculous reenlistment strategy, a revolving door that keeps haggard and harried defense forces in harms way long after their effectiveness has waned. But instead of getting to the heart of the matter, it mines the middle of the road for a series of clichéd contrivances. read full review…
Run, Fat Boy, Run [rating: 5]
For all its faults however, this is a romantic comedy that works - if just barely.
Romantic comedies are, by their very nature, saddled with two completely different sets of motion picture hurdles. First, the story needs to be quixotic, dealing with the emotional bond between two typically star-crossed individuals. If the chemistry or the charisma is not there, part of the filmic formula fails. Then there is the humor. While not needing to be outrageous or riotous, there should be a fairly consistent level of laughs. Both of these prerequisite issues come to bear when discussing the Simon Pegg vehicle Run, Fat Boy, Run. Directed by ex-Friend David Schwimmer and co-written by The State‘s Michael Ian Black, what we have is an attempt to turns a sullen London slacker into a lovable determined dreamer. The movie only gets part of this right. read full review…
Chapter 27 [rating: 5]
In fact, the real problems with Chapter 27 is it vagueness. Everyone here - Leto, Lohan, Friedlander - leaves us in the lurch, and nothing Schaefer does can save our confusion.
For an entire generation, the death of John Lennon resonates more clearly than the assassination of President Kennedy or the suicide of Kurt Cobain. As the peace and politics voice of arguably the most important musical act of the 20th century - The Beatles - the iconic man with the sad/sweet gaze paid a substantial price for his undeniable megafame. While returning to his home in New York’s swanky Dakota building on a December evening, a mentally unbalanced young man named Mark David Chapman pumped five bullets into his back. As he lay bleeding, a ruptured aorta sealing his fate, his killer pulled out a copy of J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, silently reading until the police came. read full review…
Married Life [rating: 4]
There will definitely be an audience for this kind of slow burn situational potboiler, but for many, there will be too much stagnancy and not enough sizzle
Marriage might just be the perfect cinematic allegory. You can infer so many differing metaphoric elements in the dissection of why men and women marry - and sometimes separate - that the permutations appear endless. There’s the emotional facet, the sexual supposition, the commitment and loyalty facets, and of course, the scandal ridden and adulterous angles. Together with an equal array of stylistic approaches, we wind up with a veritable cornucopia of combinations, a wealth of possibilities linked invariably to the age old notion of vows taken and knots tied. So why is it that Ira Sachs period piece drama, Married Life, is so downright flat? Could it be that this filmmaker has finally found the one cinematic category - the noir-tinged whodunit - that defies matrimony’s easy explanations and illustrations? read full review…
Other Releases - In Brief
21 [rating: 4]
There is an inherently interesting story to be told about a group of Asian MIT students who used a complex card counting scheme to take Las Vegas blackjack tables for large amounts of cash. How that narrative translated into 21 – complete with several Caucasian leads – stands as just one of the film’s many mysteries. Based on the best-selling non-fiction book by Ben Mezrich, this real life thriller becomes a mediocre mainstream effort in the hands of Legally Blonde director Robert Luketic. It’s not just the confused plotting that undermines our interest. The cast, including Jim Burgess as our money desperate lead, Kevin Spacey as the group mastermind, and Kate Bosworth as the mandatory eye candy, seem hemmed in by unavoidable elements outside the narrative, from the Mensa mentality set up to the gaudy neon glitz of the Sin City sequences. There’s also a weird ethical malaise that celebrates materialism for the sake of common sense. While it’s understandable that a Harvard Medical School bound student would do anything to get the $300K he needs for tuition, such a nefarious enterprise seems contradictory to everyone’s collective IQ. Add in Laurence Fishburne as a no nonsense casino security expert, and you’ve got something that should be better. Instead, it tries to stand pat and fails to beat the house.
