by Dean | May 31, 2011 | General
Cover of Scream Trilogy - Boxed Set
Scream 4 (2011) has Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell) returning to the town of Woodsboro only to start witnessing, darn it, a new crop of brutal murders at the hands of “Ghost Face”. The story here is stupid and there is so much carnage it gets tedious, but that doesn’t mean Wes Craven’s film is a loser. To me, it’s gruesomely entertaining and intermittently clever, as witness the doings at the teenagers’ horror-movie marathon. And if you don’t like the offensive publicist played by Alison Brie, well, screenwriter Kevin Williamson has no sympathy for her, that’s for sure.
Scream 4 is a deliberately self-aware horror flick (as was the first Scream; I didn’t see the other two), but self-awareness and graphic violence is not a good combination. There’s a certain cheapness about it.
One review I read declares that Craven’s movie has something to say. I disagree. It has nothing to say. It’s just there to entertain. Indeed, I’m glad there is absolutely nothing political about it.
by Dean | May 23, 2011 | General
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
The Judd Apatow-produced Bridesmaids (2011) is a dandy comedy finally marred by sentimentality and the repulsiveness of the character played by Melissa McCarthy. Oh, and there’s also Kristen Wiig’s mugging as she enacts Annie, a nigh fortyish woman whose life goes to pot now that her bakery has gone out of business and her best friend (Maya Rudolph) is engaged to be married. Annie, you see, has neither husband nor actual boyfriend.
It would be unfair, however, to ignore the ardor in Wiig’s acting. She believes in what she’s doing; she ain’t lazy.
Bridesmaids is raunchy but not excessively so. And a great deal of it is certifiably funny, albeit Apatow can’t help imposing the most pointless scatology on the film in order to attract nasty-minded male viewers. Karina Longworth in The Village Voice knows there’s a rub here: “Comedy of humiliation is one thing; a fat lady shitting in a sink is another.” (The lady in the sink is Melissa McCarthy.)
Skillfully directed by Paul Feig, penned by Wiig and Annie Mumolo, the picture works pretty well as a middlebrow adult farce until its last 15 minutes. Then it’s chick-flick time.
Question: Did Wiig write the scene in which her character has her breast fondled by Jon Hamm?
by Dean | May 3, 2011 | General
Image via Wikipedia
Xavier Beauvois’s Of Gods and Men (2010) tells the true story of several French monks in Algeria who were taken hostage and later murdered by Muslim terrorists. (It happened in 1996.) Two of the eight of them escaped.
The monks are very admirable, truly Christian men living among and ministering to the rural Algerian people. Indeed, they are First World men helping folks–Muslims–living in a Third World area. If the film has a fault, it is that the monks are practically without fault. Christians come off looking very good here (although I dislike the abbot’s use of the expression Inshu’Allah [“God willing”]). Of Gods and Men is not terribly hard on anybody, however: the Muslims too are usually sympathetic characters. In some measure even a bloodthirsty Islamist called Ali Fayattia (Farid Larbi) is.
Lambert Wilson provides the abbot, Brother Christian, with intelligence and, like the other French Caucasian actors, a true spiritual dimension, a convincing devoutness. Beautiful but not lush, the film is visually rich.
Des Hommes et Des Dieux is a French picture with English subtitles.
by Dean | Apr 25, 2011 | General
The playwright Kenneth Lonergan has written and directed the 2000 You Can Count on Me, a decent motion picture about a brother-and-sister relationship. Pleasant Sammy (Laura Linney) is a churchgoing small-town resident who works at a bank and is a single mother. Her brother Terry (Mark Ruffalo) is a cordial if somewhat neurotic drifter, occasionally in trouble with the law, now paying a visit to Sammy and her 8-year-old son. Since the two have long been orphaned, Sammy more or less wants to cling to Terry, her only sibling, and is troubled when she doesn’t hear from him. Now, however, she is troubled by his ordinary irresponsibility, especially with respect to her son. For one thing, he fails to pick him up from school on a rainy day. Sammy, even so, unexpectedly turns into a moral wretch by practically abandoning a dating partner and carrying on sexually with her new, and married, boss at the bank (Matthew Broderick). When she summons her pastor, Father Ron (Lonergan), to counsel the ne’er-do-well Terry, she is attempting to hide from her own need for spiritual service.
But such a thing can only be short-lived. Sammy herself seeks counsel. But Father Ron is a Protestant softie who offers theological wimpiness. He is not quite what the adulterous Sammy needs, although he is right to put the following question to Terry: Do you believe your life is important in the scheme of things? Apparently he does, but will he ever behave in a way that confirms this view? The movie is resolution-less, which is rather too bad. It’s not about to try to answer any questions. What it does try for, here and there, is a certain tidiness which is better left alone, even though–happily–it little mars the picture. You Can Count on Me is a winner.
Lonergan’s script makes sense and its dialogue shines. Linney and Ruffalo never make a misstep , though Rory Culkin, as Sammy’s son Rudy, is uninteresting. As for Broderick, he is, I think, what John Simon called him in his review of the stage musical The Producers: “endearingly artful.” Like many other American flicks, the movie is a bit too foul-mouthed but–bravo–it’s certainly far from foul. Count on it.
by Dean | Apr 19, 2011 | General
Image by ElvertBarnes via Flickr
I need to see Atlas Shrugged, Part 1 (2011) a second time before I can make a suitable judgment about it. I believe it to be weak in many ways, but as a motion picture it’s also unique and possibly acceptable. (I have no interest in reading the Ayn Rand novel.)
“The business man is only tolerable so long as his gains can be held to bear some relation to what, roughly and in some sense, his activities have contributed to society.” So wrote Lord Keynes, and the U.S. government in Atlas Shrugged, Part 1 must be espousing this view and seeing American businessmen as not contributing enough to society. Hence it has turned to an anti-business crackdown.
I’ll see the film again much later, on DVD.
