"Dust Bunny" Review

 Bryan Fuller's name is associated with a string of beloved, borderline cult classic TV series such as Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies, American Gods, and Hannibal which he created over the past two decades, but it is only now that he crosses over in to movies with his directorial debut, Dust Bunny, a bonkers fantasy horror movie that completely tanked at the box office with less than $1M grossed, but will probably become a minor word-of-mouth cult classic when it hits streaming.

Aurora (Sophie Sloan) is a young girl who takes the whole "the floor is lava" thing to the extreme, pushing herself around the apartment on a large metal hippopotamus statue on wheels with a broom like an oar. She parkours on the furniture to get to her bed and sleeps on the fire escape outside her window because she's convinced there is a monster living under the floorboards that will eat her. She repeatedly tells her parents to stay off the floor and while they assure her there's nothing under the bed, one night there are horrible sounds and she awakes to an empty, trashed apartment, her parents gone. She seems oddly calm about it though.

One night while on the fire escape she noticed a neighbor - listed as Intriguing Neighbor on IMDB and 5B (as in the apartment number) on Wikipedia, played by Mads Mikkelsen - down the hall leaving and going off into the night, so the next night she follows him into Chinatown where she sees him kill a dragon. (Actually, a Chinese dragon parade thing with Triad soldiers inside it.) After her parents disappear, she steals a church collection plate to get money to hire 5B to kill the monster under her bed.

Naturally, he thinks this is ludicrous, but when a pair of assassins show up to kill the girl and are apparently eaten by something, he begins to wonder what's going on? He meets a woman, Laverne (Sigourney Weaver acting like Parker Posey), at a Chinese restaurant with a giant fish tank with a large shark in it and it's revealed she's involved and there are more killers on the way.

It's hard to synopsize Dust Bunny because it's less about the plot and mostly about the wild visual style. Before we started a user review on the screen stated, "A Roald Dahl story, written by a bag of cocaine, directed by Wes Anderson," and they're not far off. Others have evoked Tim Burton or described it as a mashup of Luc Besson's Leon: The Professional and Where the Wild Things Are. 

The production design of Jeremy Reed combines with Nicole Hirsch Whitaker's lush, moody cinematography - filmed in an unheard of 3:1 aspect ratio, even wider than that of epics like Ben-Hur or Quentin Taratino's The Hateful Eight which were shot in 2.76:1 - is the big selling point here. Fuller has always had an eye for visuals (Pushing Daisies' sunflowers get a callout at the end), but the story itself and its too-familiar elements like Mikkelsen's very quiet hitman echoing Jean Reno's Leon caused me to drift off in spots even though I wanted to study the visuals. In addition to the gorgeous visuals, the audio track is great for annoying your neighbors with your subwoofer as the titular bunny rumbles hard.

I've seen debate as to whether this is a kid-friendly horror film. There's no blood and the kills are more stylized than graphic and I don't recall anything that made it R-rating worthy (perhaps a few F-bombs too many), but I guess younger children who worry about monsters under their beds wouldn't benefit from watching a monster under a bed eating people.

I'm also not sure what the overall point was supposed to be; whether the bunny was a metaphorical or metaphysical monster. The final shot (not counting a brief mid-credits gag) also raises a question as to what the bunny is. There's also a weird moment where 5B states who the child welfare officer really is before she admits it herself that doesn't make sense how he'd know this.

But don't let my quibbles deter you from checking out Dust Bunny, a movie with far more going for it than its opaque and clearly difficult to marker title. Good performances and great style overcome the slight plot.

Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable/streaming.

"Bedazzled" Blu-ray Review

Previously reviewed here.

Score: 7/10. Catch it on cable. 

"Red One" 4K Review

 Less a movie then a massive business deal amongst long-running associates, Red One came out briefly in theaters where it disappointed commercially, except were were told that it didn't really matter because it was always heading for Amazon Prime so who cares how much it made? This was after a surprising amount of negative publicity concerning The Rock's Dwayne Johnson's prima donna behavior on set which allegedly added tens of millions to the production costs. This was especially ironic because of the beef that erupted between Rock & Furry Fastness kingpin Vin Diesel where Rock (it's less typing) called out lazy "candy-ass" behavior of Diesel on the production of 2017's The Fate of the Furious.

Then there's the stars and filmmakers involved: Director Jake Kasdan directed both of the Jumanji reboots starring the Rock. Writer Chris Morgan wrote every Furry Fastness movie from 3 (Tokyo Drift) through 8 (Fate of...) and the mediocre Hobbs & Shaw spinoff as well as Shazam! Fury of the Gods which co-starred Lucy Liu and whose first produced credit was 2004's Cellular which starred a pre-superhero Chris Evans. The story was by Hiram Garcia, producer of at least 16 previous Rock movies and TV shows.

 It's a tight group of creatives who have made a ton of money making mainstream popcorn entertainment, not that there's anything wrong with that. So why is Red One just another flat-feeling, made-for-streaming, forgotten-immediately-after-viewing piece of content like too much of what the Rock is putting out like the equally forgettable Red Notice for Netflix? (Quick: Who were the co-stars of that one? I'm not even asking what the plot was, just who the co-stars were when they've starred in their own vehicles which have made hundreds of millions of dollars. Give up? Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool) and Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman). See what I mean?)

 After a redundant prologue to set up that Jack O'Malley (Evans) was destined for the Naughty List as a kid, we meet him as he weasels his way into a university's seismology laboratory to attach a tap to the data lines. From stealing someone's coffee to a child's lollipop, he's all about himself. He's also a deadbeat non-parenting sperm donor to Dylan (Wesley Kimmel, nepo baby of unfunny crybaby Jimmy), whose mother, Olivia (Mary Elizabeth Ellis, It's Always Sunny), is a doctor who married some great guy who we never see and is unavailable, so Jack needs to pick him up from school. Apparently, this was some quick fling, but she's guilting him about not wanting to attend Dylan's school performances.

Meanwhile, we meet Rock's Callum Drift (what kind of name is that?), the head of Santa's (J.K. Simmons, being money as always) security detail. He's losing his faith in people being good and submits his resignation to Nick on Christmas Eve. But then Nick is kidnapped from the North Pole, so the race is on to find him in time to save Christmas.

The Director of MORA (Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority), the secret agency that enforces the peace treaty between mythological creatures and humans and isn't at all ripped-off from Hellboy's s Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (B.P.R.D.), Zoe Harlow (Liu), rightly figures that Jack supplied the data to find the North Pole's shield barrier (which is totally not ripped-off from the camouflage hiding Wakanda from the world in Black Panther), but realizes he didn't know what the data was for. Appealing to his mercenary sensibilities, she offers to double his money to help trace the path back to who initiated the caper leading to world-spanning hijinks.

The mastermind of the plot is Gryla (Kiernan Shipka, Mad Men), an Icelandic winter witch who was a former lover of Krampus (Kristopher Hivju, Game of Thrones, The Fate of the...oh look, another connection), who happens to be Nick's estranged brother which raises some unsettling questions considering Nick is a jacked human - no jolly round elf he - and Krampus is a 12-foot-tall goat-man, and whether he was involved. At first I thought Gryla was going to be some angry girl who didn't get the Barbie she wanted due to Shipka's youth and demeanor, but her actual plan is totally not ripped-off from Thanos to a degree.

 Will they rescue Nick in time to save Christmas because it's totally not a holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ unrelated to the secular commercial season that glommed onto it. Will Jack & Cal rediscover the Spirit of Christmas and will Jack begin to be a father to the teenager who another man has been raising as his own for years? Duh.

Even when the destination is a foregone conclusion, it's possible to make the trip entertaining and Red One simply doesn't deliver the presents. It feels rote and tired, beginning with Rock's performance. I don't know if the drama preceding it adversely colored my perception, but Rock has always excelled at knowing just what kind of movie he's in and delivering the performance that's needed. But not here. This is a phoned-in candy ass performance where it feels like he felt showing up was all that was needed without turning on the charm. And his "power" is the ability to shrink himself down to a 30-inch version of himself in a manner totally not ripped-off poorly from Ant-Man during fights.

Evans is equally lackluster as he recycles his same persona that he's used since ending his decade as Captain America, the fast-talking-saying-nothing chatterbox he's been in Knives Out, The Gray Man, Ghosted and Pain Hustlers. The range he used to have a decade ago in roles as varied as Snowpiercer, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Sunshine and Push as well as seven Captain America and Avengers films is still missing and he needs to find it again.

Kasdan's direction is adequate. He has experience with VFX-heavy genre movies from the Jumanjis (I saw the first one and like it; didn't see the second) and the VFX are top-notch and seamless, but the overall tone is dark, both visually and tonally. Why is the North Pole a dark Blade Runner-feeling world. OK, it's dark up there in the winter, but a magical kingdom run by a guy who can deliver presents to billions of people in one night can't light it up like Times Square?

But the story, especially with Jack's son is muddled by him not really being his father. It all feels like plot contrivance to get a treacly ending. Estranged parents are a common trope of Christmas movies, so why introduce this stepfather figure only to sideline him? It would've been better if he had no idea he had a kid or to have him be divorced from Olivia. (Why do I need to even be thinking about this?)

While Red One isn't a particularly bad movie, it's not a good movie. If feels like a project generated by ChatGPT to fill the schedules (and pockets) of a cozy group of makers and cast members who wanted something to do without really needing to tell this story out of passion. When even the disposable entertainment feels cheap, that's not good.

Since Amazon hides the Dolby Vision and Atmos audio behind their additional ad-free tier, the presentation was just HDR10 with 5.1 audio. It's nothing spectacular to show off your home theater setup with, so if you're just watching in HD, you're not missing much except more detail in the gloomy scenes.

Score: 5.5/10. Catch it on Amazon Prime.

"My Old Ass" 4K Review

Sometimes you're disappointed by a movie even when it's not actually that bad and that's the case with My Old Ass (bad title even in context), the second feature by actress-turned-writer/director Megan Park (The Secret Life of the American Teenager). What is being touted as a sci-fi comedy co-starring Aubrey Plaza is not remotely sci-fi and it's more a dramedy as my tags indicate. Due to the incorrect expectations set by the trailer and reviews, we went in expecting something it wasn't, not that it was bad. Let's get into it.

 Maisy Stella (TV's Nashville) stars as Elliott (no explanation for the male name), a newly 18-year-old girl from a rural Canadian town in lovely country with a lake. Her family owns a cranberry farm, she has a couple of gal pals - Ruthie (Maddie Ziegler) and Ro (Kerrice Brooks) - and a girlfriend, Chealsea (Alexandria Rivera), who we know nothing about other than they're always making out, two younger brothers (the youngest of which is obsessed with Saoirse Ronan because that's a thing that really happens), nice non-stupid parents, and she can't wait to get out of this podunk town and move to Toronto to start having a real life.

 While her family sits waiting with her birthday cake at home, she and her pals go camping on an island and drink tea made with a lot of hallucinogenic mushrooms. While her friends start tripping balls, Elliot doesn't feel anything until suddenly Aubrey Plaza appears next to her and announces that she is Elliot at age 39. (How the vanilla white Stella transforms into the Puerto Rican Plaza is never explained either.) Older Elliot is cagey about telling her about the future, but only lays down one firm recommendation: Avoid a boy named Chad.

Of course, Elliot almost immediately encounters a boy named Chad (Percy Hynes White, The Gifted) who is doing summer work on the family farm. And also of course the more she hangs out with Chad, the more she becomes attracted to her causing confusion about her being gay because straight kids in movies aren't a thing much these days. Compounding matters is that she can't reach Older Elliot (who left her phone number in Elliot's contacts as "My Old Ass" leading to many chats); she's stopped responding to her calls and texts leaving her to wonder what's so bad about Chad?

The fundamental "problem" with My Old Ass is that we went in expecting much more Plaza than it delivers. (We're on a bit of a kick with her lately, having watched Agatha All Along just because she was in that and also wasn't in it enough.) About halfway through the missus grumbled that "this is an Afterschool Special" and groused about the trailer being misleading. (She also found White not hot.) Semi-valid complaints, but what remains is still a nice modest dramedy about not taking life for granted & appreciating the times you get to have with family and friends.

Park sets a naturalistic tone in the girls conversations and performances which gets tripped up when Elliot spouts off woke blather which also makes one wonder how a movie where a gay teen goes straight got financed and the little brothers Ronan infatuation. But it also shows Elliot not being such a self-absorbed brat under her older self's influence. Stella's performance is fine, but Plaza sparks so much when she's there, her absence lowers the energy level.

As for the supposed sci-fi element, it's reminiscent of the underappreciated 2000 film Frequency which starred Jim Caviezel and Dennis Quaid as a son and father who communicate across 30 years via ham radio enhanced by aurora borealis and how they literally change the world with their actions, albeit on a micro scale. All we learn of the future is that salmon are extinct, people aren't allowed to have three kids, and there are air raid sirens going off, but Older Elliot doesn't seem too concerned. 

The film's ending is nice, but requires one final massive suspension of disbelief to accept what's happening. How this connection works isn't explained and perhaps is besides the point. My Old Ass is a pleasant enough coming-of-age story. Just adjust your expectations going in.

Score: 6/10. Catch it on Amazon Prime. 

"Damsel" 4K Review

If it's Friday it must be time for another Netflix Original Movie and this week's forgettable disposable reason why they're the most expensive service is Damsel, a fantasy movie starring Stranger Things girlboss Millie Bobby Brown as, well, a damsel in distress.

 Brown is Elodie, a poor girl from a frigid region scraping for food and firewood. One day, a proposal comes from the Queen of Aurea (Robin Wright, cuz she was The Princess Bride) for her to marry her son, Henry (Nick Robinson). The union would greatly help her people, so she heads to Aurea with her father, Lord Bayford (Ray Winstone, Beowulf), her stepmother (Angela Bassett), and younger sister Floria (Brooke Carter). Once there, they are ensconced in luxury and Elodie spends time with Henry and finds common interests.

Of course, anyone who's seen the trailer knows that this is all a ruse because after the wedding, they head to the mountains for a blood ritual surrounded by the partygoers from Eyes Wide Shut after which our damsel (roll credits!) is unceremoniously tossed into a pit where after crashing through various branches and vines to break her fall, ends up in a cave network within the mountain which is home to a dragon (voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo and her "smoked three packs a day beginning in kindergarten" voice) seeking to burninate her. Rude!

 Turns out the Royals (BTW, what ever happened to Lorde?) made a deal long ago that in exchange for not burninating their lands, each generation they would sacrifice three royal daughters and thus the blood ritual to make these peasant girls smell like royal blood. Fortunately, Eleven Elodie is a clever resourceful girl and with some convenient help from magic healing creatures and notes left by previous losing contestants on The Royal Bachelor, she is able to turn the tables on everyone. (No, this isn't a spoiler. What did you think was going to happen?)

 While predictable and disposable, I had an OK time with Damsel. Brown is acceptably capable without being too girlbossy and other than too much time spent getting on with the twist (which is in the trailer), it passes quickly. I've seen some nerd rager YouTubers lose their minds over this being a girlboss who don't need no man/men are ineffectual and weak feminist Mary Sue hatefest a la the M-She-U, but that seems more a need to keep the outrage clicks coming than genuine anger. The villain is the Queen, so what's the problem?

As far as AV goes, the Dolby Vision presentation is bright, especially the golden carriage, and the cave scenes aren't too dim. The Atmos audio has some good bass notes like the dragon's voice and flames. Speaking of which, the way they portray the dragon breath as more of a napalm-like liquid fire than a gas flame was different and even more effective because if it sticks to you, you're burned.

Score: 6/10. Catch it on Netflix.

"Poor Things" 4K Review

The final film of this year's Oscars Death March (and the first time I've managed to see ALL the Best Picture nominees) is Yorgos Lanthimos's bonkers science fictiony fantasyish dark social comedy Poor Things which is the most original and outlandish movie of the year and makes Barbie look like a documentary about poverty and slums. It's nominated for 11 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Director, Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Production and Costume Design and it'd better win several of them.

Emma Stone stars as Bella Baxter, a young woman in Victorian London who seems to have the mentality of a toddler probably due to her "father", Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), whom she calls "God" for short, finding her freshly-dead body in the Thames after she committed suicide and removing her still-alive near-term baby and then transplanting the baby's brain into its mother's skull thus allowing him to observe the development of a new mind in a mature body. You could say he's a bit of a mad scientist.

He hires a student, Max (Ramy Youssef), from his medical school to be Bella's observer, documenting her development and when he detects affection between him and Bella, he suggests they marry to which Max agrees, basically selling his life into indentured servitude. The lawyer hired to draft the contract, Duncan (Mark Ruffalo), wonders who is the woman that a man would want to sign his life away for and prowls the house looking for her and once he finds her, decides he wants her for himself, luring her away. While Max is horrified that his fiancee is being let go, Godwin decides it will help her development.

So Bella and Duncan set off for Lisbon then a cruise ship to Greece with plenty of "furious jumping", Bella's term for sex as she had discovered her happy spot and wants it stimulated. A lot. A task Duncan is happy to oblige. But less suitable to him is her intellectual evolution as she encounters new ideas and begins reading philosophy. But because she still is still literally an infant in some ways, she makes poor decisions leading to destitution for the pair and after he abandons her, she ends up working in a Parisian brothel for a looooong time with plenty of scenes of her at work with her clients. 

While the underlying premise and commentary on how women weren't exactly allowed the most agency back in the bad old days is pretty standard stuff (oh no, the PATRIARCHY, Barbie Bella!), what makes that tangential is the world Lanthimos and company have constructed to tell the tale.

Clearly artificial and surreal, it feels like a cross between a Terry Gilliam and Luc Besson movie (The Fifth Element and Valerian and the City of 1000 Planets movies from the latter) with a dash of Wes Anderson and David Lynch on the side with fantastical cityscapes and impossible creatures like a dog with a goose's neck and head or a chicken body with a pig head. Filmed at times with extreme wide-angle and fisheye lenses, it looks out of this reality but without the digital fakeness many movies have despite using similar technology.

But the style wouldn't matter without rooting the bizarre proceedings in across the board excellent performances beginning with Emma Stone's completely committed and unabashed performance. From the way Bella's walk develops from a wobbling toddler's to a confident woman's without falling into pratfall and the way her mental and personality development arcs, it's a triumph of a performance and the only thing that will prevent her willing her 2nd Oscar is if the Academy decides to make an affirmative action choice for Lily Gladstone. And the way she puts her body forth, well then. Let's say that this isn't your typical "stripper who doesn't get naked" deal. Nope. (If you wanted more than the one nipple she exposed in The Favourite, you get it in all the suits of the deck here.)

At first I didn't dig Ruffalo's performance as the caddish Duncan, but as time went on and his bragadocious front was stripped away (no thanks to Bella's actions), he becomes a pitiable figure. If I was handing out the nominations, I would've given his to Dafoe's Godwin. Buried under a four-hours-in-the-makeup-chair mask of scars and latex, it would've been easy to play it as an amoral mad scientist. But as details of his horrifying upbringing as his father's experimental test bed are revealed, the pathos of a man bent to a path which leads to questionable wonders comes through.

While Poor Things could've benefited from being 20 minutes shorter and trimmed back some of the brothel stuff, it still excels at doing what few movies these days seem to have had much interest in delivering, taking the viewer to see people and places they've never seen before and that makes it one of the best films of the year and my second place vote for Best Picture.

Exit Note: While discussing the film with the missus, she said that there was no way the Oscars would go for such a bizarre and sexual freak show of a movie. Then I reminded her, "They gave Best Picture to a movie about a woman who f*cks the Creature from the Black Lagoon, so..." (That's The Shape of Water - aka Grinding Nemo - in case you don't get the reference.)

Score: 8.5/10. Catch it on cable. (It comes to Hulu on March 7)

"Dream Scenario" Review

Sometimes a movie has an intriguing germ of an idea, but not enough of that idea to tell a satisfactory story and the latest example of that sort of thing is A24's Dream Scenario which takes a very good, restrained Nicolas Cage performance and an intriguing premise about as far as it can go before wandering off lost in the woods because there is no real point to be made.

 Cage stars as Paul Matthews, a college biology professor for whom the term "nondescript" implies much more pizazz than he exhibits. He's got a wife, Janet (Julianne Nicholson, Mare of Easttown), and two teenage daughters, Hannah (Jessica Clement) and Sophie (Lily Bird) and lives in a very nice home, but his students don't really pay attention in class and he's feeling professionally disrespected, if not ripped off by a colleague who seems to be basing her work on his concepts. But being a dull man in an oversized parka with a fuzzy fur collar, who cares, right?

 Things get more interesting when he notices strangers looking at him more than seems called for even without the coat, but the reason isn't known until an old girlfriend of his, Claire (Marnie McPhail Diamond), approaches him and Janet after seeing a play, telling them that Paul as been appearing regularly in her dreams. She asks if she could write about this odd occurrence on her blog and he agrees, but wakes up shortly thereafter to have 100+ messages on FaceSpace from people who found his profile and shared that they too have been seeing him in their dreams.

Regardless of what the dreamer's scenario is - teeth falling out; being chased by a monster in a surreal landscape; trapped in an earthquake; holding a dying friend - the common element is that Paul appears, but says and does nothing and seems disconnected from the situation. Of course the media hops on this curiosity and Paul immediately goes viral.

However, sudden fame has its downsides as a mentally unbalanced man breaks into the family home and tries to kill the man from his dreams. Trying to make a produce stand out of these dreamy lemons, Paul takes a meeting with a branding marketing startup called Thoughts? run by Trent (Michael Cera, not at all like he used to be) who wants to use Paul's fame to influence dreamers into drinking Sprite. Paul wants a book deal, but for a hard science book, not some instant fame cash-in, so there's not much agreement to be found.

 After the meeting, he goes for drinks with Trent's assistant Molly (Dylan Gelula, who played Xanthippe, Jane Krakowski's hot surly daughter on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) who confides in him that she had a really hot sex dream with him and wants him to come over to reenact it. This goes about as well as you'd expect for a guy who wears that coat, but things in general take a very dark turn as the multitudes who have Paul in their dreams start to find him to be an increasingly hostile visitor and the backlash begins.

At the center of Dream Scenario is a very good performance from Cage who has been tinkering with the balance between paycheck gigs to actual acting roles lately with a wrongly Oscar-snubbed performance in Pig and his self-deprecating take on himself in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. With a male pattern baldness coif and those dad clothes, Cage's Paul is a decent, but weak man, who tries to ride out an increasingly bizarre situation that is wholly out of his control yet entirely not of his making. He didn't purposely intrude on people's dreams, he doesn't control what they experience, yet the whole world holds it against him.

There are several concepts that Norwegian writer-director-editor Kristoffer Borgli attempts to play with - the fleeting fickleness and shallowness vapidity of viral fame, the semi-emasculated condition of some men at the hands of conniving women, the way today's snowflake Zoomer generation can't cope with the slightest adversity - but he never plunges wholly into any of them with much teeth or gusto. If only he'd picked a topic nailed its absurdities.

It doesn't help that when the dreams stop and the concept of a gizmo which allows people to enter other's dreams - BOUNDARIES, ANYONE?!? - which becomes just another influencer marketing racket (hot on the heels of the latest South Park episode mocking this), it all fizzles out into a underdeveloped last movement which reveals that Borgli had a good idea, but that idea just couldn't prop up a satisfying feature-length narrative. (It's like so many Saturday Night Live sketches which just trail off because they can't write a button for it.)

Just as with Netflix's Leave The World Behind a few weeks ago which stretched a Twilight Zone episode's premise over a 400% longer runtime, Dream Scenario also feels like it would've been a good Twilight Zone episode in the 45-minute-long range. As it is, it's not a nightmare but just a dream that ends just as it could've gotten good.

Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable/streaming.

"Bedazzled" Blu-ray Review

 As the back half of our Brendan Fraser double-feature after Encino Man we popped in the barebones Blu-ray of Bedazzled, the 2000 remake of a 1967 Peter Cook-Dudley Moore film which comedy snobs swear by, but I (along with most people) haven't seen. But, hoo boy, I've seen the heck out of this version for two reasons: Elizabeth Hurley.

 Fraser plays Elliot, a walking advertisement for why some dorks deserve to be alone and miserable (and I say this as a lifelong dork). Absolutely inept and a desperate try-hard, his co-workers can't stand him and his attempts to glom onto their activities. He pines for Alison (Frances O'Connor) who works at his San Francisco tech company, but doesn't know he exists even after he makes a sad attempt to strike up a conversation at a bar.  

After striking out, he mutters to himself, "I'd give anything to have that girl in my life," and that is the cue for the Devil (Hurley) to make her presence known to Elliot and to offer him a simple bargain: Seven wishes in exchange for his soul. Elliot is initially reluctant, but with little going for him in his life and desperate to be with his dream girl, he signs and wishes that he be married to Alison and to be a very rich and powerful man.

 The Devil grants his wish, but as with all subsequent wishes, Elliot discovers that the Devil has used any vagaries in the wish to insert whammies which make the wish meaningless beginning with Elliot discovering Alison hates him, is cheating on him, and he is a Colombian drug kingpin that competitors want to kill. Whoopsie! Hijnks ensue!

 What Bedazzled does best is give Fraser plenty of room to play as he transforms into each of his wish personnas while giving Elliot an arc as he matures from the loser he was to the better-balanced man he becomes. It also works by giving Hurley a great showcase to.....hang on, a quick side note.....

Hey, Hugh Grant. Yeah, you, Hugh. One question as asked by Jay Leno: WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?!?!?!?? Dude, really?

OK, where was I? Oh yeah, for some reason Hurley has made over 25 movies and for 99% of movie watchers, the only two they could name are Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery and Bedazzled which is odd considering how good she is at combining a knowing plummy English elegance packed into an absolute smoke show of a bod which gets showcased quite well in various sexy outfits here. This Devil is having a ball being bad.

All of which makes Elliot's obsession with Alison kind of odd to me as she's reasonably attractive, but nothing you'd stay up all night trying to Google every detail or photo you could find over. Now Hurley, ow chihuaua! If I was Elliot, I'd say, "Keep the other six wishes. I just need the one where I am your personal love slave forever." (That she looks just as hot now at 57 years old, constantly posting thirst trap bikini photos on Instagram implies either a picture in an attic somewhere or her own deal with the Devil.)

While Fraser is fun and Hurley gets the nethers a'tingling, the letdown on why this isn't one for the ages is due to a somewhat bland script by director Harold Ramis (Groundhog Day, Ghostbusters, Analyze This), Peter Tolan (Rescue Me, The Larry Sanders Show), and Larry Gelbart (M*A*S*H, Tootsie) which doesn't really reach for the laughs and relies on Fraser and Hurley - have I mentioned how hawt she is? - to bring it to life.

 On the Blu-ray technical front, the transfer is clean if somewhat lacking in contrast (maybe I'm too used to 4K HDR content these days) and the audio is serviceable, but nothing special. Surprisingly, there are absolutely zero extras on the disc, not even a trailer. The DVD release had two commentary tracks and a handful of featurettes, so bad form, Anchor Bay!

Pleasantly amusing with a versatile performance from Brendan Fraser and muy caliente hotness and sass from Elizabeth Hurley, Bedazzled is worth a watch, but this Blu-ray doesn't rate a buy.

Score: 7/10. Catch it on cable.

"Slumberland" 4K Review

 As the culture wars poison everything that used to be fun in the world, the disconnect between what critics and the unwashed masses enjoy or dislike seems to be growing farther apart as movies that critics applaud because they tickle their woke spots have vastly more negative ratings from viewers (who are dismissed as "toxic trolls review bombing out of bigotry"; the all-purpose excuse for bad movies these days) and vice versa as critics hate on movies for the crime of just being entertaining and the rabble enjoy being entertained.

Such as it goes with this weekend's Big Netflix Movie, Slumberland, starring Jason Momoa in a family-friendly adaptation of the classic comic Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, which I haven't read and whose critic fans really hate this movie for not being as good as. Looking now, post viewing, I see it's showing a 35% Rotten Tomatoes score from critics an 88% from fans. Since there's no political aspect to it, those excuses don't fly - it's just that critics are jaded miserable folks who want every movie to be kale? Pretty much. ("Aren't you a critic, Dirk?" you may ask? Shut up and read.) Since the missus loves her some Momo, I was roped into watching it, too.

 Slumberland opens with a prologue introducing us to Nemo (Marlow Barkley) who lives with her father, Peter (Kyle Chandler), in a lighthouse. He is a kind man who dotes on his daughter, telling her fantastical bedtime stories of his wild outlaw adventures in his younger single days with a partner named Flip, so you know he's not long for this world and movie and, yep, that emergency call he went out on the boat for during a storm kills him.

Since Nemo's mother died when she was a baby (because this always works for Disney), her sole relative is her uncle Philip (Chris O'Dowd), a wealthy doorknob salesman who has a nice large apartment that is sterile and cold-feeling. He was long-estranged from his brother (for reasons that are explained over time) and very awkward about this new responsibility - he has to Google "how to raise a child" - but he enrolls her in a posh prep school and genuinely tries to caretake her. 

Sad and lonely in this new life, Nemo falls asleep one night and is awakened when her stuffed pig, named Pig (because creativity is dead), comes to life as does her bed which smashes out her high window and walks her down the street (to the notice of no one) and then swims her to the lighthouse. (She seems weirdly chill about the whole situation, too.)

Upon arrival, she finds the lighthouse ransacked and discovers Flip (Momoa, playing it like a kiddie version of Beetlejuice), a wild satyr-like fellow with ram's horns and twitchy ears and feet, who is searching for a map of the world of dreams where he hopes to find magic pearls that can grant wishes. He demands she give it to him, but she has no idea what he's talking about. Luckily, the next night Pig unearths the map from a storage box from the lighthouse and she returns to Slumberland demanding to team up with Flip on the quest so she can get a pearl to bring back her father.

 So the odd couple proceed to trek through other people's fantastical CGI-enhanced dreams, seeking doors to the next dream that leads to their goal, all while being chased by "dream cop" (because calling them Dream Police would require paying Cheap Trick) Agent Green (Weruche Opia in a giant Pam Grier Afro wig) who wants to lock up Flip for general miscreant behavior.

 While a tad long at two hours even, Slumberland is an enjoyable fantasy lark filled with bright visuals, some occasionally above-average humor, and anchored by good performances from its three leads. Barkley avoids the annoying precocious brat trap; O'Dowd balances his deeply repressed psyche and eventual evolution (though I figured out his twist long before the movie got around to it); and Momoa is clearly having a blast as Flip with his dad bod gut and wacky antics.

Director Francis Lawrence (The Hunger Games sequels, I Am Legend, Constantine) brings visual panache and whimsy to proceedings and manages to balance the elements of grief, adventure, comedy, and sadness without getting too kiddie, too adult, too dark and scary, or too slight and silly. Glancing at other reviews, it appears other critics wanted it to be more like The Sandman than Candyland, because heaven forbid children get a break from having liberal doom, gloom, misery, and confusion pounded into them.

 While Slumberland is likely for many to be another one of Netflix's endless parade of streamed and forgotten movies like that one with The Rock and Deadpool and Wonder Woman doing something or the other one from the Avengers directors with Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling trying to kill each other for some reason which cost over $400 million combined to produce, it's a fine enough escape from the sad realities of the world today to a place made for mindless fun. 

For the home theater enthusiast, it's a good showcase of Dolby Vision and Atmos audio which really make the colors pop and the milieu aurally surround you from all directions. Netflix sucks because they're the only service that limits 4K content to their most expensive ($20) plan when every other service includes it gratis, but at least you can see what you're paying for.

Score: 7/10. Watch it.

"Gretel & Hansel" Review

The Brothers Grimm fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel has been told many times in many forms since its publication in 1812, most recently in the campy action-horror take of 2013's Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters where the grown-up siblings are butt-kicking witch hunters for hire. But the tale takes a bit of a twist in its latest incarnation, the title-flipped and moody Gretel & Hansel.

Set in an unspecified Medieval time and place, this take begins with the telling of a little girl born in a village who took ill as a baby. The father took her to an enchantress who removed the illness, but gave the power of foresight to the girl. While the villagers initially liked having a seer in their midst, she started to use her power to kill, including her father, which earned her a trip to the woods to be abandoned and become a fairy tale.

Then we meet Gretel (Sophia Lillis, IT, I Am Not Okay With This) and Hansel (newcomer Sam Leaky) as they go to seek employment with a wealthy landowner who seems more interested in Gretel's virginity than other skills. They flee back home to their mother, who in her poverty and madness banishes them to go find someplace else to live and fend for themselves, which could be difficult for children who look to be about 14 and 8.

After a run-in with some unexplained ghoul from which they're saved by a huntsman, he gives them directions to where they may find work and home a couple days away. Along the way they encounter a home deep in the woods. Starving, they peer in the windows and see a great feast on the table and let themselves in, soon making the acquaintance of an old woman (Alice Krige, the Borg Queen from Star Trek: First Contact) who anyone familiar with the story isn't what she appears.

The new angle Gretel & Hansel takes is to focus on Gretel's incipient witchcraft powers, which the Witch encourages her to develop, offering her access to her grimoire. While Hansel enjoys the good food which mysteriously appears and playing at cutting down trees, Gretel is suspicious and as her powers grow, she becomes concerned about what that could do to her; will they make her evil?

It's a common knock on films that they're style over substance and unfortunately that's what makes Gretel & Hansel difficult to recommend. On the plus side, it looks amazing. Director Oz Perkins and cinematographer Galo Olivares (in only his 2nd feature, he's definitely one to watch) immediately set a lush, rich, moody tone of a bleak world painted in colored light. The compositions feel like cousins to Kubrick or Bergman films and there's a very European vibe though Perkins is American and Olivares is Mexican.

The performances are also fine; Lillis is definitely on a tear and was only 16 when this was filmed. But the plot itself is extremely thin and unsubstantial and when the reveals occur, they actually confuse more than clarify. Despite a brief 87-minute run time, it still feels slack, empty, and not particularly scary while lovely to look at. I'm not sure if they were trying to make some feminist statement about how women in Medieval times weren't exactly equals, because if there was a little boy killing people in his village, he probably would've found himself dumped in the woods, too.

Overall, Gretel & Hansel is a meandering trip through the woods with no particular destination in mind despite being a fine scenic trip.

Score: 5/10. Catch it on cable.

"Holy Motors" Review

Critics suck. (Yes, I appreciate the irony of that sentence.) When Holy Motors topped many critics' Best of 2012 lists, I noticed something odd: While many did the usual orgasmic rhapsodizing about how amazeballs it was, almost no one was discussing the plot. I finally called out one such critic in the comments and his mealy-mouthed reply was the usual chin-stroking about how it was blah-blah-woof-woof; it just turns into the adults in Charlie Brown cartoons at that point. While flicking through Netflix's virtual shelves trying to agree on a movie with the girlfriend, it came up and so we decided to see what the hoohaw was about.

Short Version: It's weird.

Longer Version: It's weeeeeeeeeeiiiirrrrrd.

You can look at the trailer below (which for some dumb reason spoils the very end of the movie, not that it matters) it looks like a surreal miasma of nutsy crazoid WTFery, but it barely scratches the surface of the trip (both meanings) we take with director Leos Carax and star Denis Lavant who plays Mr. Oscar, an actor(?) chauffeured around Paris on "assignments" which involve him stepping out in a variety if guises. First he's an elderly woman begging on the street then he's a motion capture performer busting out ninja moves before simulating sex with a contortionist then it gets weeeeeeiiiirrrrrd in a segment involving Eva Mendes as a model. (According to Wikipedia, this character originated in Carax and Lavant's segment from the omnibus film Tokyo! - I have this DVD, so I'll have to backtrack) which leads to more odd, oddly banal, banally weird, crazy pants huh, and then super-weird and head-scratching. Don't ask me what it means; I suspect a lost bet was involved with this production.

If you're someone who likes tight plots and snappy dialog, keep on moving. But if you're someone who doesn't care if movies are so open to interpretation as to have nearly no inherent meaning, then Holy Motors may just be your cuppa. There is no denying that it's unlike pretty much anything else you'll see this or any year. Whether it makes sense or means anything will be up to the viewer to decide as no assembly instructions were included.

Score: 5/10. Catch it on cable. (Netflix has it.)

"Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters" Review

When you see a title like Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, you can safely assume it isn't a documentary. As the trailer lays out...



...Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton) are witch hunters with a distinctly anachronistic manner about them as they battle witchy doings of a coven led by Famke Janssen. The fight sequences have a visceral Hong Kong flavor with lots of bone-crushing pounding going on. Side plots involved Hansel and a pretty girl with a secret and Gretel and a troll enslaved by the witches add variety, but there are little in the way of big surprises overall. It's a good-looking and decently entertaining popcorn flick that's worth watching if you come upon it.

Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable. (It's currently on Amazon Prime.)

"The Prestige" Blu-Ray Review

Made in between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan's 2007 film about dueling Victorian-era magicians, The Prestige, seems to be mostly forgotten despite it starring Batman, Wolverine, Black Widow, Alfred and Ziggy Stardust. Perhaps it was because the title didn't convey what it was about unlike The Illusionist, which came out a year earlier and is also similarly sorta forgotten despite being a good film itself.

Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale are up-and-coming magicians and friends who are torn apart when a stage accident kills Jackman's wife setting off an escalating series of tit-for-tat attacks that lead to more death and misery for the participants. Bale's act features an illusion called The Transported Man which obsesses Jackman as to how it's done and when Bale thwarts his version, he heads to Colorado Springs where Nikola Tesla (David Bowie with one of cinema's greatest entrances) is making scientific magic and makes the apparatus for Jackman with the cryptic admonition about whether he's considered the cost of the thing. Jackman thinks he's referring to the price tag; he isn't.

I'd forgotten how out-of-hand things got in their war in the years since first seeing it. It's also a profoundly different experience watching it a second time as you realize that from the very first frames the Nolans (Christopher and his co-writing brother Jonathan, whose Person of Interest is a really cool TV show) are foreshadowing everything. Just as The Sixth Sense and The Usual Suspects read differently upon their second viewing, so it is with The Prestige and that extends beyond the big reveal at the very end. It can get a little too cute with the flashback structure revolving around encoded diaries, but overall The Prestige earns its applause.

The Blu-ray's image is nice and sharp, but there are very few extras - just 20 minutes of light behind-the-scenes discussion of the themes. There's no commentary. For some reason you can't stop the disc from the menu screen. I had to punch into a scene to be able to stop. Weird.

Score: 8.5/10. Buy it.

"Metallica: Through The Never" IMAX 3D Experience Review

I was a latecomer to Metallica, starting to listen to them after hearing everyone raving about Master of Puppets (I was ahead of herds who hopped on with "One" and "Enter Sandman"), but their post-Black Album material hasn't interested me which means I've been ambivalent about them for over 20 years. I saw them on their ...And Justice For All and Black Album tours and they were great shows, but I haven't even watched my DVD of Some Kind of Monster and I've had it a few years.

So when I heard they were releasing Metallica: Through The Never, a 3D IMAX Experience concert film, my pulse remained unchanged. I read a review that was laudatory and while it moved the interest needle a hair, I wasn't sure I'd go to the screening until an hour before its start time because it was a bit of a drive and I was still meh at the prospect.

Hoo boy, I'm glad I went.

After Avatar, Hollywood when on a rampage seeking to make (and mostly convert) movies to 3D in order to cash in on the higher ticket prices and many of these movies have been shoddy, half-assed in their composition and conversion, and as a result the share of tickets sold in 3D are declining. They did it to themselves, but if there is something that could make a good testimonial to how useful 3D can be, it's Metallica: Through The Never.

Director Nimrod Antel (Predators) gets the cameras right into the band's faces and cleverly shot five shows allowing for intercutting between nights in order to get the best shots. (I figured this out quickly when a Steadicam operator with his massive Cameron-Pace 3D camera rig - which is TWO cameras with a prism - would be visible shooting close-ups in long shots only to disappear from his position when cutting to another angle with that spot in view.) The depth and clarity is stunning and frankly better than a front-row seat would provide. The audio is immaculate and the band is on fire throughout. Unless you have a really awesome home theater, anyone not seeing this in a proper theater isn't getting the full effect.

Using a dopey "story" frame involving a roadie named Trip (Dane DeHaan from Chronicle and the new Harry Osbourne in The Amazing Spider-Man 2) on a mission to retrieve a bag from an out-of-gas truck in a deserted nameless city (it's Vancouver) overrun by bizarre denizens and monsters, what the film is mostly (thankfully) is a condensed version of a headbanging show by the band as they perform 16 songs, all but three from their good era (i.e. Kill 'Em All through Black Album), as if even they realize they've sucked for a long time.

DeHaan is good in a thankless, meaningless role - he's going to be a big star and looking like a young, darker Leonardo DiCaprio doesn't hurt - able to convey Trip's trip (heh) without dialog. All the dumb narration in this trailer below is NOT in the movie; he has literally one word of dialog.

Frankly, I don't know what Metallica bothered with the "story" part because they're the stars of their show and the abrupt ending - it's only 93 minutes long with credits - startled the audience who clearly wanted more, having already had "Wherever I May Roam" truncated down to just its intro. Weak.

If you're a lapsed Metallica fan like me, revisit your bygone youth at the theater. While the IMAX ticket prices are premium, it's definitely cheaper than what you'd pay to see the band live and you wouldn't have as good a view.

Metallica: Through The Never opens Sept. 27 in IMAX theaters and regular theaters Oct. 3.

Score: 9/10. Catch a matinee in 3D. If you're a fan, spring for the full price IMAX ticket.

"Life of Pi" Review

Ang Lee has had a semi-cursed career despite his great success. First he was robbed over Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (losing to Gladiator); then he face-planted with the disastrous Gumby, I mean Hulk (two words: hulk dogs); then he wins Best Director for Brokeback Mountain while the Best Picture Oscar went to the toxic and despicable Crash (the liberal guilt trip one, not the David Cronenberg car fetish freak show). Now he's being bruited as a likely winner again for Best Director since Argo is the heavy favorite to win the top prize, but since Ben Affleck wasn't nominated, they may pity price Lee again for Life of Pi, the movie I'd vote for out of the this year's batch I've seen. (At this time I have seen Django Unchained yet and I'm skipping Amour.)

If you've seen the trailers or heard anything about it, you know that Life of Pi is about a young man who is left lost at sea with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker (the back story on that is cute) after the ship carrying his family and the animals from their zoo as they emigrated from India to Canada sinks in a violent storm. What the trailers and PR haven't really mentioned is the deeply spiritual tale being told. The first act of the movie covers with a light touch Pi's sampling of the Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam, while his father encourages him to focus on reason (i.e. science) instead of unknowable god(s). People get the heebie-jeebies about religion in their entertainment, but it's not bludgeoning and it's really, REALLY important about what happens at the end.

Since the story is told to a writer by an older Pi, the matter of if he's going to survive his ordeal is never in doubt. Where some controversy has erupted is in what happens in the last 15 minutes which calls into question everything we've been shown for the past hour-plus. I'd heard many people were turned-off or felt betrayed by the ending, but it worked for me in a way the howlingly overrated Beasts of the Southern Wild didn't because its question about how people believe (or not) in God (capital G) neatly dovetail with my views on the subject. (See below if you're interested.) The way everything we've been shown gets flipped and reconsidered - and how we react - doesn't pull the rug out from under the viewer as much as tests whether they were paying attention to the setup and the implicit themes it was laying out.

Even if you don't buy into the religious aspect of Life of Pi, it's a sumptuous visual feast of surreal beauty and beautiful menace as an army of special effects wizards spent over 18 months in post-production taking the footage of Suraj Sharma on an empty boat in a wave tank and turning it into an ocean that's alternately raging and placid and creating a digital tiger so realistic that the only real giveaway that it's not real is that there's no way a real tiger could've been trained to do so many things it's required to do like be seasick or emaciated from starvation. (If you've already seen it or don't care about spoilers, look below the trailer.) It's remarkable and should earn Rhythm and Hues a Best Visual Effects Oscar in two days, which will be bittersweet because they entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy recently and will likely be dissolved, a victim of doing business in California with its punishing taxes. Pity.

Life of Pi has been somewhat of a sleeper hit around the world and it was a big risk for the studio to back because putting down $125 million to make a movie with no stars and isn't obviously about special effects and whose subject is the nature of belief in God; it takes a leap of...you know. While it'd be a stunning upset to actually win Best Picture, if I had a vote, it probably would've earned it.

Score: 8/10. Rent the Blu-ray.






And now it's time for Theology With Dirk...

I believe in God and that He created the Universe and all the stuff on Earth. (No, He didn't do it 6000 years ago, like the stereotypical "Sky Man believer" gets painted by the atheist media as believing; this ball has been rolling a looooooong time.) The arrogant a-hole atheists (alliteration!) prefer the Big Bang Theory despite the big problem that their all-holy 2nd Law of Thermodynamics doesn't explain where the seed matter for the Universe came from. Steven Hawking jumped his wheelchair over the shark when he torched his credibility claiming that the original matter simply came into being. WTF?!? It just happened? Oh, yes, that is certainly more plausible than an omnipotent Creator who made everything and then vacated the premises much like Dr. Manhattan at the end of Watchmen.

The point is that WE ARE HERE DESPITE THE EVIDENCE. Neither the Coke (Big Bang) or Pepsi (God) theories of creation/Creation work if you're honest about it, so I've long thought that people just pick the story that allows them to sleep better at night. Atheists claim to be about reason over faith, but when you examine the dogmas and rituals they follow, it becomes clear that they're just as religious, if not more so, than the "Sky Man believers" they sneer at; all they've done is kick out God from their secular church. I think most religious people understand that there's a proof deficit in their belief structure, but if there was 110% solid evidence for God, then it wouldn't be called a "faith" would it? The spin at the end of the movie requires you to make a choice of your own and that's a bold, but rewarding risk taken.

"Beasts of the Southern Wild" Review

One of the big shockers of this year's Academy Awards nominations was the quartet of nods (Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Actress) for Beasts of the Southern Wild, a little indie flick that took Cannes by storm. But the bigger shock is watching it with the knowledge that it's been showered with all the accolades because all I kept thinking was,"Are they high? This is a Best Picture?"

Beasts is the very slight and extremely aimless story about a little girl named Hushpuppy (an adorable Quvenzhané Wallis, who was 6 years old when this was filmed and is the youngest Best Actress nominee ever now at 9) living in conditions that can be fairly described as being several notches below squalor in the Gulf Coast podunk of The Bathtub (between Bedroom Heights and Beyondville?) with her erratic, troubled father; mom is dead, of course. Then there is a scene of revelry with the ethnically-mixed neighbors (old white people?), some talk of ancient monsters and melting ice caps, a storm which floods the 'Tub out of existence, shouting, dynamite, road trip (over water) on a magic boat filled with chicken biscuit wrappers to a floating dream brothel, death, the end. Or something like that. I think. Oh, there's a lot of shellfish. I'm allergic to the things, so I'd starve if I was in this movie.

I've been getting annoyed - OK, more annoyed - lately about the overhype of movies whose main trait is that they're "different" from the mainstream, homogenized pap excreted by the Hollywood pablum factory and if I was someone who was forced to sit through every rom-com and Adam Sandler movie as part of a critic gig, I'd probably be prone to moisten myself with joy at something, anything, that seems original. But while critics losing their minds is one thing, what's the Academy's excuse?

My problems began right off with director Benh Zeitlin - who is a 30-year-old white guy from Queens, in case you were wondering - and his jittery camera work. Hey, kids, it's not selling out to put the camera on sticks from time to time. It had a feel of what I imagine a Terrance Malick movie to be like (I've seen negative reviews that confirm this) and my constant internal monologue only shifted from saying, "What the heck is this about?" at the end when I was asking, "What the heck was that all about?!?" From wondering why social workers weren't interested in an effectively orphaned girl living on cat food stew to why being rescued from their inundated hovels was anathema to the locals to what the deal is with the giant horned magical beasts that apparently came from thawing glaciers and showed up on the bayou to...well, I don't rightly know. I guess global warming? (They don't look like ManBearPigs.)

Beasts has a lot of mood and detail like the boat made of a pickup truck bed lashed to pickle barrels, but very little characterization. I think part of the appeal to those who've bought into this thing is the utterly alien landscape of Bathtub. If you live in comfy urban surroundings, the exotic landscape and mystical pretensions must seem more spiritual than a Swamp People and Hillbilly Handfishing marathon, but in reality it's just elucidating why everyone hates white people. (The piece linked below has even harsher thoughts on the subject.)

Whether through selective editing and rigorous commands or some actually talent, Wallis is effective as Hushpuppy, never annoying, but never totally compelling; then again, there's little in the way of character to play. My girlfriend texted me that she should win the Oscar. She is incorrect in this judgement.

If I'd watched Beasts of the Southern Wild a couple of weeks ago, I may have had a mildly more favorable reaction to it. However, if its going to be playing with the big boys in the big show, we've got to judge it in that context and it's simply not good enough. Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow have every right to feel chapped that they got snubbed here.

Score: 3/10. Skip it.





This Film Drunk beatdown of the movie aligns closely to my thoughts, so since someone saved me the typing, here's some snips:

As an MGMT video, Beasts of the Southern Wild is pretty good. It’s got soaring music, pretty cinematography, fantastical imagery that borrows heavily from Where the Wild Things Are, an impossibly cute little girl, and deep south swamp locations exotic to urbanized yankees like me (“look, crawdaddies! Isn’t that a funny word, Brent? ‘Crawdaddies?’”). But if you can see past the craft, this tale of deep south swamp hobos and feral children that eat cat food has all the depth of one of those Levis slam poetry commercials. I thought we weren’t supposed to fall for the Magic Negro and the Noble Savage anymore? Yet here it is, a whole movie full of them, plus folksy Cajuns who can’t open their mouths without homespun crypticisms aw shucksing their way out.

Hushpuppy’s daddy...lives amongst a band of fellow rascals who don’t need jobs or money or possessions, because why bother with that when you can just dig in the dirt and get drunk and eat crabs with your hands all day? (It sounds great, I admit) The whole first half of the film is basically that scene in Titanic where Rose leaves her stuffy old first class soirée so Jack can show her some real fun down in steerage, where Irishmen and negroes drink frosty brews and dance jigs to lively flute music. OH MY GOD, YOU GUYS, POVERTY IS SO MUCH FUN! WHY HAVEN’T WE COME DOWN HERE BEFORE?!

You could argue that what happens next in Beasts of the Southern Wild de-glamorizes the life of the mud-poor have-nots, but the scene where Hushpuppy’s daddy and his band of primitivist troglodytes lead a cargo-cult raid on the evil levee that keeps their swamp flooded and the city dry (can someone check the science on this, please?) makes the implication pretty clear: Society = hollow, inevitable. Swamp people = romantic, doomed.

When you live in the city and you buy your meat wrapped in cellophane and styrofoam, it’s a pleasant fantasy to believe that people who sleep in the dirt and gut their own dinners are possessed of a spiritual richness that you’ve always felt deep down you’re somehow lacking. It’s also a really old fantasy. Like, REALLY old.

Also, call me cynical, but watching po’ black characters deliberately misuse words and grammar in folksy phrases written by white people (“cavemens,” for example) feels hokey at best and offensive at worst. Keep in mind, I knew nothing about the filmmakers before I watched this film. It just reeked of theater kid fantasy, and I’ve seen enough Hurricane Katrina narratives written by liberal arts students in New York to recognize this as one. Art students be lovin’ Katrina narratives like fictional Cajuns love crawdads, you all.

 Go read it all.

"Hugo" Blu-ray Review

We have got to stop pity-f*cking Martin Scorsese. Yes, it's a tragedy that his greatest work was snubbed by the Academy in his prime, but after tossing him a bone with The Departed, there seems to have been an overcompensation of praise for dreck like Shutter Island and the exquisitely-designed, but wonderless Hugo. Let's be honest: If his name wasn't in the credits, neither of these works would've been acclaimed and/or nominated.

Hugo is the story of a little orphaned boy named Jimmy (j/k) who lives in the walls of a Paris train station in 1931, filling his days by winding and maintaining all the clocks and subsisting by pilfering food and clock parts to repair a mysterious automaton his father was repairing when he died. Hugo constantly needs to artfully dodge station inspector Borat, I mean Sacha Baron Cohen (attempting an Inspector Clouseau vibe, not very well), and Ben Kingsley, a toy shop owner who knows Hugo's been nicking clock parts from his shop. Hugo meets Hit Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz), the ward of Ghandi who conveniently has a key part - as in a key proper - to the mysterious robot.

The fundamental problem with Hugo is that Scorsese is ill-suited for the children's movie tone he's going for. In the extras it's revealed that one of his primary reasons for making it was that he had a 12-year-old daughter who hadn't seen any of his movies because they're all hardcore R-rated flicks for grown-ups, but I can't imagine a child being engaged by the slow plotting which wanders without much forward motion until it diverts into a paean to revolutionary filmmaker Georges Méliès who has an easy-to-spot-waaaaaaay-early connection to the story. Much of the overpraise has been because of these parts and about the "magic of the movies" but it simply didn't feel magical to me; it's the Marty Effect in action. Another tonal problem is Borat's shown chasing down the orphans in his train station and handing them over to the police as the villain, but there are several vignettes of him trying to ask flower girl Emily Mortimer out. Which is he - heavy or bumbling loverboy?

The material simply doesn't fit Scorsese, just like when James Cameron tried to channel Steven Spielberg's knack for wonder with the alien aspects of The Abyss. I tell people who've never seen it before, "When Ed Harris defuses the nuke, stop the movie; it's done. If you keep watching, you'll just wonder WTF?" for a reason - Cameron, for all his brilliance simply can't pull of glowing jellyfish aliens of super-superior nature. A marital breakup drama AND a heavy metal actioner about a Navy SEAL (literally) cracking under pressure? Hell yeahs! But the E.T. stuff? Nope.

As unsatisfying as I found Hugo's story, it is a visual feast. I didn't see it in 3D, but this is a good reason to buy Blu-rays and large TVs. The colors and details are lush and the obviously digitally enhanced environments actually contribute to the dreamlike quality of the film. Anyone who watches this and still doesn't appreciate the benefits of six times the resolution of DVD needs their eyes checked.

My girlfriend wondered if Georges Méliès was a real person - which was a bit of a shock - but all I had to do is switch to the featurette about him which shows a bunch of clips from his films and details how the depiction of him in the film was true-to-life. I found myself wishing they'd made a straight-up movie about him and skipped all the claptrap about the kid. There are also interesting featurettes about real automatons, the making-of the film, and how one of the special effects sequences was done. What's missing is a more extensive look at the use of digital sets and FX to create the world. This video was part of an item on Wired and there is zero reason it shouldn't have been included on the disc.

 

Sumptuous on the eyes, but empty in the head and heart, Hugo is well-intentioned, but falls like a shaken souffle. 

Score: 4/10. Rent the Blu-ray.

"(Tim Burton's) Alice in Wonderland" Blu-ray Review

My review for the theatrical release is here and it stands; this review covers the Blu-ray.

After our beloved PimpVision® - a 51" Sony RPTV - blew its convergence circuits two weeks ago to the day, it was time to upgrade and we ultimately went with a 60" Sharp LED set which arrived today and after some calibration looks downright snazzy. After checking out some bits and pieces of Avatar, it was time to christen it with a movie and since the lion's share of Blu-rays were at home we cracked open the Blu-ray of Alice in Wonderland. We'd seen it in 3D at the show and frankly this is the first time we properly saw it. Without having to contend with the blurry image that fast action and post-conversion brings to the tea party, details we'd totally missed before like monkeys being used as candelabras in the Red Queen's castle were noticed. It looks great. On the extras front, it's a little lightweight, but generally informative especially on the special effects front where you can marvel at how little in the way of actual sets were built. There's a whole lot of green to be seen.

If you liked the movie, definitely pick up the Blu-ray.

"Midnight In Paris" Review

Woody Allen had the biggest hit of his career with the winsome Midnight in Paris, a winsome fantasia about nostalgia and artistic angst.

Owen Wilson has the Woody surrogate role as a successful Hollywood screenwriter on vacation in Paris with his shallow harpy of a fiance (Rachel McAdams) and her rich parents. He's struggling with writing a novel about a man who works in a "nostalgia shop" selling vintage knick-knacks. One night, while lost trying to find his way back to the hotel, he is picked up by a classic motor car and when he gets out, he finds himself in the 1920s, hanging out with F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston, Loki from Thor, and Allison Pill, the drummer of Sex Bob-omb in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), Cole Porter, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali (Adrien Brody), and many more. If you're an art or literature buff, it's a hoot. During his return visits, he is beguiled by Marion Cotillard because, well, she's Marion Cotillard and, unlike McAdams, she's not a grating beyatch.

I had a hard time getting into Midnight in Paris at first because of the typical Woody dialog in which everyone sounds like Woody - all hyper-literate and unrelated to natural vocal cadences. However, when Wilson starts time-tripping it mellows out and becomes a nice ride. It's been compared to his 1985 classic, The Purple Rose of Cairo, in it's conceit of impossible co-mingling but this isn't as good because the modern "reality" is clearly so deficient to the Roaring Twenties, but Woody addresses this in an insight late in the picture.

Woody will be turning 76 in a few days and he'd probably benefit from cutting back from his annual release schedule in favor of alternating years because for every little gem like Midnight in Paris or 2008's Vicki Cristina Barcelona - I still need to catch up with 2005's Match Point (are you noticing the pattern here?) - he's had twice as many facepalms that are watering down his legacy. (He will burn in Hell for Annie Hall winning over Star Wars, though.)

My girlfriend actually liked Midnight in Paris more than I did because she appreciated some of the references more than I did. (I had to pause the movie and have a lengthy riff involving a Jean-Paul Sartre play explained to me. Sue me; I went to public school.) It's not profound, but it is a nice light treat and worth a look.

Score: 6/10. Rent it.

This trailer is TERRIBLE! It focuses on the worst part - the modern day stuff - and consigns the magic to a few quick flashes. It's a miracle anyone wanted to see this movie based on what's here.

"Sucker Punch (Extended Cut)" Review

The extended cut of Zach Snyder's interesting mess Sucker Punch is online ahead of next week's Blu-ray release. Being an impatient fellow and wanting to see if it was a drastic enough change to warrant rushing out and buying it immediately, I checked it out. Does the additional 18 minutes make Sucker Punch a great movie? No, but they certainly do a lot to punch up the action and somewhat fix the bumps in the theatrical cut.

Rather than rehash the whole plot and review (which can be viewed here) I'm just going to run thru the major differences:

• The opening scene where Baby Doll accidentally kills her sister is clearer because she shoots TWICE; the second time winging her stepfather's arm making it more logical that she hit her sister.

• The "Love Is The Drug" number glimpsed in the end credits (it's still there, too) is shown as a splashy montage early on illustrating the operation of the club/brothel. We see bits of the other girls' dances (which was a glaring omission based on the press at its release) and it eases us into the milieu better.

• The WWI battle scenes are much longer, including cool shots of Jamie Chung's pink bunny mecha, Vanessa Hudgens wasting legions of steampunk soldiers, and much more brutal trench warfare. This was apparently cut to get a PG-13 rating, but it really beefs up the badass babe ratio and should've been left in.

• The dragon castle sequence has more killing and trademark SnyderVision® (I just made that up!) camera speedramping, giving Rocket and Sweet Pea some good moments. All the extended battle stuff gives the other girls moments to shine; the theatrical cut was weaker for their removal.

• Finally, there is a scene with Jon Hamm's High Roller character which somewhat explains his reaction to what Baby Doll did as he did his work.

I noticed a few other odd bits and pieces of business, but nothing drastic.

The fundamental head-scratcher of the movie - what the heck happened and what was real? - isn't really resolved, but in the Cinefex magazine discussing the FX work of the film, such as this...



...being ENTIRELY CGI(!), Snyder mentions that the whole fantasy aspect is based on the structure of a short story I've never heard of called An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge in which a man imagines a whole life in the time it takes to be hanged. While it's interesting that he was using a conceit that's been used successfully before, I'd wager that 99.44% of the people who saw Sucker Punch had no knowledge of the story and the validity of a narrative based on a dying man's final imaginings, so they were left in the cold as far as comprehending what happened. Ironically, Snyder somewhat failed by OVERestimating the education of his audience, not by pandering or dumbing down his story. Too bad.

While the Extended Cut doesn't totally elevate Sucker Punch into unqualified success territory, it is an improvement and I'll be getting the Blu-ray with even more interest in the extras. This is the cut I'll be watching in the future.

Score: 8/10. At least rent the Blu-ray.