Viewer Discretion Advised: 21 April, 2007

By
/ 19 April 2007

You’d never know that Spring was just around the corner – that lousy groundhog. Baseball has had several of its opening week games postponed or relocated due to snow, and a nasty Nor’easter tore through the upper half of the US, causing damage – and a few deaths – along the way. If the showers we’ve seen this April are any indication, May’s gonna be overgrown with floral facets. Perhaps we can all dry off with a weekend in front of the idiot box. There’s some fresh fare there, including a hilarious satire on a very strange subject, a dumb gearhead actioner, another failed drama from a former directorial god, and a wicked little indie effort. Toss in the typical outsider and non-Tinsel Town odds and ends and you’ve got plenty to keep you couch bound and (somewhat) happy. And before you know it, it will be time to complain about the heat. Let’s begin with the weekend of 21 April’s best bet:

Premiere Pick

Thank You For Smoking

It’s a highly unorthodox premise – especially for a comedy. A cutthroat tobacco lobbyist – played by pseudo star Aaron Eckhart – spends his days shilling for cigarettes while trying to connect to his distant 12 year old son. Not your normal laugh riot. But it’s obvious that some small amount of funny business filmmaking rubbed off onto Jason Reitman from his famous father, Ivan. After a series of well received comic shorts, this first attempt at a feature was a clear critical success. While many will still have massive problems with the subject matter – after all, when was the last time anyone considered smoking to be socially acceptable, let alone worth joking about. But thanks to the wonderful source material (Christopher Buckley’s book remains highly regarded) and an inherent way with wit, Reitman’s debut marks the beginning of a potentially profitable stint behind the lens – both commercially and comically. (21 April, Cinemax, 10PM EST)

Additional Choices

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

Same premise, same storyline, different locale. For this third go around in the FF franchise, our pissed off pre-adult heroes head to Japan, where drifting is all the rage. Apparently, this means kids destroy their brakes and alignment by purposefully fishtailing their back tires. Peachy! As an aside, beware of those earworm masters The Teriyaki Boys. Their hideous theme song plays throughout this derivative action pic. (21 April, HBO, 8PM EST)

Find Me Guilty

Sidney Lumet wants to return to the courtroom drama with this movie about a mobster who decides to defend himself during an important trial. Sadly, he brings along a toupee sprouting Vin Diesel to play his lead. Things only grow more groan inducing from there. While many praised both the ‘Pacifier’ and his performance, this is no Verdict or Serpico. In fact, it’s barely worth comparing to Lumet’s other concrete credits. (21 April, Starz, 9PM EST)

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Edmund

Turn off the Tudors marathon for a moment and switch the dial over to this William H. Macy tour de force. Playing a man who finds his life unraveling over one long, intolerance filled night, Macy is magnificent, channeling all the rage and rejection of the title character. Even more amazing is who’s behind the camera. Casting fictional horror aside for the moment, Re-Animator‘s Stuart Gordon steps up to deliver his own look at NYC as Hell. (21 April, ShowTOO, 10PM EST)

Indie Pick

We Jam Econo: The Story of The Minutemen

Thanks to DVD, and in some small ways, the success of Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock, the documentary has finally come of age as viable commercial cinema. Even better, filmmakers are finding that even the most obscure subject can reap remarkable artistic benefits. Take this amazing movie about the seminal ’80s post-proto punk band The Minutemen. Thanks to a wealth of astonishing performance footage, some rare group interviews and present day chat ups with the remaining members, we learn how three disaffected youths from San Pedro, California became an unmatched rock and roll force. With the death of leader D. Boon hanging over every frame (he died tragically in an auto accident in ’85), there is a meaningful melancholia attached to discovering how powerful and potent this musical maelstrom once was. Thanks to director Tim Irwin, and the magic of the digital format, his story has been perfectly preserved for generations to discover and appreciate. (23 April, Sundance, 9PM EST)

Additional Choices

Magnolia

For his follow-up to Boogie Nights, writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson forged this heartfelt homage to idol Robert Altman and his multifaceted masterpiece Short Cuts. Instead of channeling Raymond Chandler, however, PTA went biblical with his tale of several solemn individuals whose lives intersect in strange, almost spiritual ways. Featuring one of Tom Cruise’s best performances and similarly classic turns by Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, and Thomas regular John C. Reilly, this epic exploration of human emotion stands as one of the ’90s great films. (21 April, IFC, 11PM EST)

Dancer in the Dark

The musical doesn’t seem like the best genre to fit within director Lars Von Trier’s Dogma ’95 ideal, but somehow, the crazed Danish director makes it work. With Icelandic muse Bjork in the lead, this depression era drama about a foreign factory worker who thinks that America is all one big Hollywood movie mixes unbelievable hardship with sudden bursts of song. Some will find this film frustrating and obtuse. Others will simply appreciate Von Trier’s attempt to reinvent the filmic format. (23 April, IFC, 2:30PM EST)

Let’s Rock Again

With the passing of Joe Strummer from a heart attack in 2002 (he was just 50!) any hopes that the punk rock rebels The Clash would ever reunite were dashed forever. Thanks to documentarian Dick Rude, this one hour love letter to the fabled frontman catches up with his solo career, and the unbridled joy he had when performing. It’s just a shame he didn’t live to see the full impact of his legacy. Luckily, his music will remain with us forever. (26 April, Sundance, 10AM EST)

Outsider Option

Plan Nine from Outer Space/ Bride of the Monster

Ed Wood gets a bum rap these days. After years of perpetuating the myth that he is the worse director in the world (thank you very much, Medved brothers), DVD has really helped rehabilitate his status. After a double dose of Dr. Uwe Boll or a retrospective of Raja Gosnell’s crappy canon, our main man in angora looks like a flipping genius. Indeed, many mistake Wood’s wonky way with narrative and script as something to savage. But he’s so innocent in his incompetence, so fully ensconced in his errors that it comes across as visionary, not vile. Now, thanks to the random Rob Zombie-ing of TCM’s Underground, two of the masters amazing mess-terpieces are available for sampling. While Plan 9 is the more noted of the two, Bride of the Monster has its own calculated cool. Together, they tell a decidedly different story about who Ed Wood was, both as an artist and a misrepresented legend. (21 April, Turner Movie Classics, 2AM EST)

Additional Choices

Priest

Rife with scandal the moment it was released, this look at the hypocritical conceit that exists between religion and reality doesn’t follow the standard storyline. Instead of pedophilia, this movie mocks the traditional vow of celibacy, and how harmful it is to both individuals and their faith. The title character, a cleric torn between the Lord and his gay lover, illustrates all these points in passionate, perplexing form. (23 April, Indieplex, 11:15PM EST)

Rope

It’s often considered one of Hitchcock’s failed experiments, a standard murder mystery made up of a series of four to ten minute “continuous takes”. Entire scenes were filmed without edits, meaning camera movement and angles had to be carefully choreographed around the acting of the cast. For this reason, many find the movie mannered and obvious. But if you can ignore the stylization, you’ll be rewarded with another of the Master of Suspense’s visionary wonders. (25 April, Retroplex, 6:35PM EST)

The Solid Gold Cadillac

Poor Judy Holiday. She was a classic city gal trading on her metropolitan moxie to bring a level of intelligence and strength to the basic dumb blond roles she was given. Sadly, her death from breast cancer at the age of 43 kept her legacy from fully developing. Still, the Tony and Oscar winning actress is very good in this corporate comedy, a typical late ’50s laugher about bumbling big businessmen and the outrages of industry. What makes this a passion pit presentation is a real head scratcher. (26 April, Drive-In Classics, Canada, 9PM EST)
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