Starring: Sharni Vinson,
Nicholas Tucci, Wendy Glenn, AJ Bowen, Joe Swanberg, Sarah Myers, Amy Seimetz,
Ti West, Rob Moran, Barbara Crampton, L.C. Holt, Simon Barrett, Lane Hughes,
Kate Lyn Sheil, Larry Fessenden
I was surprised with “You’re
Next”, because it had received pretty universally positive reviews. It doesn’t
deserve them. I can’t imagine what impressed so many reviewers who are often in
contention with the popular acceptance of horror movies. I suppose the fact
that the villains of this horror movie are fallible is a slightly different
take on this type of torture porn approach, but I felt the movie wasn’t really
sure what it had to say about anything.
Starring: Charlize Theron,
Patton Oswalt, Patrick Wilson, Elizabeth Reaser, Collette Wolfe
“Young Adult” is the movie
directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody that people didn’t watch.
The heroine of “Young Adult” is much harder to like than the heroine of “Juno”.
In many ways, this makes “Young Adult” a much more keen observation on human
behavior than their previous collaboration.
Directors: Marv Newland,
Alison Snowden, David Fine, Cordell Barker, Janet Perlman, Chris Hinton, Paul
Driessen, Jeff Chiba Stearns, Jonathan Ng, Malcolm Sutherland, and others
“Yellow Sticky Notes” brings
together 15 of Canada’s finest animators, including several Academy Award
Winners and Nominees, in a neat little animation challenge. The animators were
invited to “self reflect on one day of their lives using only a ‘to do’ list
and animated meditation.” The shorts films are presented as if doodled on… what
else? yellow sticky notes.
Writers: Alain Resnais,
Laurent Herbiert, Jean Anouilh (plays “Eurydice” and “Cher Antoine ou l’amour
raté”)
Starring: Pierre Arditi,
Sabine Azéma, Anne Consigny, Lambert Wilson, Mathieu Amalric, Hippolyte
Girardot, Anny Duperey, Michel Piccoli, Michel Vuillermoz, Denis Podalydés,
Andrrzej Seweryn, Vimala Pons, Jean-Noël Bruté, Gérard Lartigau, Michel Robin,
Jean-Chrétien Sibertin-Blanc
A story that was lost this past
weekend between the Spirit Awards, the Raspberries, the Oscars, and John
Travolta’s mispronunciations was the death of one of French cinema’s great
masters. Alain Resnais passed away Saturday, March 1. He was 91.
Starring: Neil Young, Ralph
Molina, Billy Talbot, Frank ‘Poncho’ Sampedro
I was informed yesterday that
“Year of the Horse”, Jim Jarmusch’s documentary on Neil Young & Crazy
Horse, has the distinction of holding the number one spot on Roger Ebert’s list
of the Worst Movies of 1997. That was saying quite a lot. Let’s look at some of
the other movies that were released in 1997—“Beverly Hills Ninja”, “Booty
Call”, “Jungle 2 Jungle”, “B.A.P.S.”, “Turbo: A Power Rangers Adventure”,
“Anaconda”, “8 Heads in a Duffle Bag”, “Father’s Day”, “Trial & Error”,
“Speed 2: Cruise Control” (which Ebert liked), “Batman & Robin”, “George of
the Jungle”, “Nothing to Lose”, “Spawn”, “Steel”, “Leave It To Beaver”, “Texas
Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation”, “Rocket Man”, “Starship Troopers”,
“Mortal Kombat: Annihilation”, “Alien: Resurrection”, “Flubber”, “Home Alone
3”, and “Mr. Magoo”. Not only is every one of those movies a better candidate for
“worst” of that particular year, but also “Year of the Horse” is actually a
very good representation of Neil Young’s Crazy Horse.
Writers: Chris Columbus, Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle (characters)
Starring: Nicholas Rowe,
Alan Cox, Sophie Ward, Anthony Higgins, Susan Fleetwood, Freddie Jones, Nigel
Stock, Roger Ashton-Griffiths, Earl Rhodes
Narrator: Michael Hordern
My Sherlock series continues
with Steven Spielberg’s mid-80s swipe at the iconic detective, “Young Sherlock
Holmes”. Not an actual adaptation of one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock
stories, this movie imagines a school-aged Sherlock and Watson meeting at more
developmental states for each of them. Meeting at a private academy, Sherlock
has yet to master the violin. When Watson asks him how long he’s been playing,
Sherlock confesses it’s been three whole days.
Writers: Gene Wilder, Mel
Brooks, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (novel “Frankenstein”)
Starring: Gene Wilder, Peter
Boyle, Marty Feldman, Teri Garr, Cloris Leachman, Kenneth Mars, Gene Hackman
Now, my recent screening of
Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein” wasn’t exactly witnessed under ideal conditions.
It was queued up for our family’s New Year’s Eve festivities. While much of the
family enjoys playing cards all night, I’m not one for cards much. So I
generally draw kids watch. Which gave me a good amount of time to watch most of
the movie, since most of the kids are at ages where they watch themselves, but
there were some incidents that pulled me away. So I think any in depth analysis
should really wait for a proper screening. This time all I have to say is…
Starring: Emily Blunt, Mark
Duplass, Rosemarie DeWitt, Mike Birbiglia
Lynn Shelton’s “Your
Sister’s Sister” is one of those pleasant little gems that can often be found
in the independent cinema scene. It has a plot the could almost be something
like a Nancy Meyers rom com, but with younger actors and one little detail that
just doesn’t fit into mainstream ideas. It’s charming and heartfelt, and I
would recommend it ahead of 95% of Hollywood’s rom coms.
Starring: Michael Laurino,
Anessa Ramsey, Alex Draper, Cassidy Freeman, Clark Freeman, Tara Giordano, Sam
Elmore, Laura Heisler, Lee Wilkof
As a horror aficionado, I
have a pretty strong heart for these types of movies, but “YellowBrickRoad”
filled me with a sense of utter hopelessness. I believe that’s what they were
going for, and they get there in a way that masks just how low budget this
feature is. This is a horror movie for the horror fan looking for something
that he can’t get out of just any old horror flick.
Starring: Charlize Theron,
Patton Oswalt, Patrick Wilson, Elizabeth Reaser, Collette Wolfe
Screenwriter Diablo Cody
seems to have a knack for telling it how it is. Whether she’s using the
hyper-elevated hipster speech that fueled the charm behind “Juno”, or if she’s
being a little more down to Earth with her sad character study of a high school
witch returning to her hometown years later to reclaim the man who once was
hers in “Young Adult”, Cody never strays from the hard facts about people.
Warner Bros. Pictures presents a film directed by Eric Brevig. Written by Jeffrey Ventimila & Joshua Sternin and Brad Copeland. Based on characters created by William Hanna, Joseph Barbera and Ed Benedict. Running time: 80 min. Rated PG (for some mild rude humor).
I’m going to be honest right up front. “Yogi Bear” was not made for me. First, it was made for kids, plain and simple. As an adult, I can’t hope to get out of it what a kid will. Second, I never liked Yogi Bear, even when I was a kid.
That being said, “Yogi Bear” isn’t a good movie. It may not be as bad as others made in the same vein, like “Alvin and the Chipmunks”. I really don’t know. It’s hard to tell. It seemed to entertain my two boys well enough. Better for them than many movies that are certainly of higher quality. For an adult, it’s hard to get around the ridiculousness of its premise, which is an element that children really don’t care about. The plot is just a machination to set up silly sight gags. The humor just isn’t good enough for me to recommend it.
The events take us to Jellystone Park where Ranger Smith (Tom Cavanagh, the television show “Ed”) runs a fairly small nature preserve that happens to be the home of Yogi Bear (voiced by Dan Aykroyd, “Ghostbusters”), who makes it his living mission to steal “pic-i-nic” baskets from the few campers that visit the place. Yogi has a sidekick bear named Boo Boo (voiced by Justin Timberlake, “The Social Network”), who seems to understand that Yogi’s plots to get his hands on picnic baskets are absurd, but goes along with them anyway.
A threat comes about when Mayor Brown (Andrew Daly, HBO’s “Eastbound & Down”) decides to close Jellystone and sell logging rights for its trees to balance the city’s budget, which is in the hole due to his personal spending of city money. Brown is running for the State Senate, so he will stop at nothing to balance the budget. He makes an absurd deal with Smith that if Smith can bring in $25,000 of revenue within a week, he’ll abandon the sale of the park. He enlists Smith’s inept cohort, Ranger Jones (T.J. Miller, “How to Train Your Dragon”), to thwart any plans Smith comes up with to raise the money. It’s always a good idea to get incompetents to help with your nefarious schemes.
Meanwhile, a nature documentarian named Rachel (Anna Faris, “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”) comes to Jellystone to film bears in their natural habitat. She’s aware of Jellystone’s unique bear residents and wishes to use them for her hidden cameras. That’s because they wear ties and hats and things in which you can hide a camera, unlike other animals. Of course, Rachel’s presence offers a romantic interest for Ranger Smith, because every movie about a talking bear needs human romance.
Now, this whole set up is what really gets me. Everyone is sure that Yogi’s antics are what will bring down any of Smith’s plans to bring in the money on time. Smith’s grand plan is a fireworks show for the park’s 100th anniversary. Really?! Fireworks?! Really? Even though this horribly unimaginative attraction looks like it’s going to work; Yogi, certainly enough, destroys the fireworks display. But, all is not lost. Rachel has captured images of an endangered animal in Jellystone. This means the park can be saved from destruction if Smith can find the animal before Brown does. Really?! Is all that necessary? Or am I the only one who thinks having a talking bear in residence would attract a great deal of revenue and warrant saving his natural habitat from destruction? I’m just saying.
Now, I don’t expect these questions to occur to the film’s target audience members, kids ten and under; but it might give me more hope for our future if they did. There’s a great deal for young children to enjoy here. There’re some effective physical humor gags, mostly performed by the CGI characters. Unfortunately, there’s really not anything else to be gleaned from this thinly plotted clunker. While the kids may laugh at Yogi getting yet another wedgie, their parents will only find suffering here. You’d be better off to please all parties by watching one of the clever and enlightening films that Pixar has produced of late. You’ll fear less for our future.
Carl Allen: Jim Carrey Allison: Zooey Deschanel Peter: Bradley Cooper Nick: John Michael Higgins Norman: Rhys Darby Rooney: Danny Masterson Lucy: Sasha Alexander Tillie: Fionnula Flanagan Terrence Bundley: Terence Stamp
Warner Bros. presents a film directed by Peyton Reed. Written by Nicholas Stoller and Jarrad Paul & Andrew Mogel. Based on the book by Danny Wallace. Running time: 104 min. Rated PG-13 (for crude sexual humor, language and brief nudity).
I’m not much of a conversationalist. Nor am I much of a drinker. However, if you get me drunk, you can’t shut me up. The first time I ever got drunk I was with my best friend since first grade. As the sun was just beginning to peak over the horizon that early morning, that friend leaned on my shoulder—getting too close in the way that drunk people do when their sense of personal space is just a little fuzzy—and said, “Dude, you were so damn funny tonight!” Now had the two of us or the other two friends we were with been sober on that long night of laughter, perhaps we wouldn’t have found ourselves so humorous. But we had a hell of a time that night.
Jim Carrey makes me think of spending a drunken night with a couple of really close friends—people who would laugh at things that no one else would understand. That’s what Jim Carrey’s antics are like. If you aren’t drunk with the same unadulterated verve for life as he is, he might come off like some obnoxious drunken stranger. But if you’re there on the same level with him, he’s the funniest inside joke you ever had on a drunken binge with your best friends.
In “Yes Man” Carrey is once again given free reign to bump and bound off the wall with his particular brand of absurd physical humor in a premise that seems designed only for that specific purpose. Carrey is Carl Allen, a man still suffering from a three-year-old break up. In that time he has become reclusive and unwilling to wrench himself from the rut of non-commitment his life has fallen into. He doesn’t go out with friends. He has the same dead end job. He ignores every call he receives on his cell phone. The most social activity he has in his life is wandering the new release aisle of his local video store. Hasn’t he heard of Netflix?
Carl runs into an old friend (John Michael Higgins, “Fred Claus”) who can see he’s in a bad place and talks him into attending a self-help seminar. At the seminar, guru Terrence (Terence Stamp, “Wanted”) makes a covenant with Carl the he must say “Yes” to any request he is confronted with. Soon Carl is ordering a wife over the internet, taking guitar and flying lessons, learning to speak Korean, and agreeing to any crazy thing that a world full of strange people can come up with.
This is Carrey’s movie from credits to credits. Almost all the other performers are just there as props and set dressing for Carrey’s antics. His two best friends, Peter (Bradley Cooper, “Midnight Meat Train”) and Rooney (Danny Masterson, “The ‘70’s Show”), are ever present. Peter’s impending marriage has a little to do with Carl’s decision to attend the seminar, but mostly they only exist to react to his seemingly insane actions or to place him within insane situations.
Even Carrey’s love interest has no real story arch of her own; but as played by Zooey Deschanel (“Elf”), Allison is that sort of free spirit—which only exist in Hollywood screenplays—that anyone could fall in love with. The two Meet Cute after Carl performs his first act of Yeshood by giving a homeless person a ride to a remote park at night. What at first looks to be a perfect debunking example against the power of “Yes,” turns into the primary reason Carl decides to ascribe to the covenant. Allison is the best thing to happen to him since his ex left him, and because his first “yes” lead directly to meeting her, he becomes a true believer.
Director Peyton Reed continues his streak of producing romantic comedies that are more interested in turning out laughs than true insight into the natures of men and women. But after his last outing—2006’s “The Break Up”—it’s nice to see a relationship of positives versus the one of negatives presented in that movie.
It’s a shame screenwriters Nicholas Stoller, Jarrad Paul, and Andrew Mogel felt the need to conform with Hollywood standards by providing a false crisis at the end of the movie that puts the lovers in jeopardy through their own ignorance. But the relationship, like everything else beyond Carrey himself, is really just background here. The only reason to see this movie is to see Carrey doing what he does best—freaking out in ways the rest of us only can imagine when we’re drunk. But if you think Carrey is the type of happy drunk you’d find funny rather than obnoxious, then you probably will like to hanging out with him in this movie.
HBO Films presents a film written and directed by Darrell James Roodt. Running time: 96 min. Rated R (for pervasive strong violence).
Yesterday is one of those films that inspires critics to write proclamations about it like, “a celebration of life” and “a beautiful, touching human experience”; and while those phrases obviously do come to mind (since I wrote them here for you to read); such clichés are really beneath a film this delicate and beautiful. Yesterday also has the distinction of being the first ever Zulu language film to be nominated or even submitted for the Foriegn Language Academy Award, and while this is also notable enough for me to mention in the first paragraph of my review of it, it is also something that loses its importance under the pleasure of viewing the film itself.
Yesterday tells the story of a mother and daughter. The mother is named Yesterday (Leleti Khumalo, Sarafina!), the daughter Beauty (Lihle Mvelase). They live in the small village of Rooihoek in South Africa’s Zululand. Yesterday’s husband (Kenneth Khambula, I Dreamed of Africa) is a mine worker in Johannesburg and lives away from home most of the time.
Life in Rooihoek is hard for these families without fathers (most of the men work in the mines). It is harder for outsiders in the village. Yesterday was an outsider before her marriage and it took many years for her to be accepted as one of the townspeople. Yesterday befriends a teacher (Harriet Lenabe, Hotel Rwanda) who comes to the town looking for work and finds an opening. Beauty is a year away from being old enough for school, and Yesterday is very excited for her daughter for the opportunity to go to school she never had herself.
Yesterday falls ill and must go to see a doctor in a town that is over a two hour walk away. When she arrives, the line to see the sole doctor is long; and she is turned away until the following Tuesday, when the doctor will return. It takes several weeks before Yesterday can see the doctor (Camilla Walker), who eventually informs her of the disease she suffers from. I am reluctant to reveal what is wrong with Yesterday, as then it becomes yet another notable facet of the film that distracts from its simple beauty. Yesterday’s illness is very important to the film and what it is about, but I will leave that to the viewer to discover.
What impressed me first about this important work were the beautiful landscapes in this harsh African wilderness. The Dark Continent is often depicted as a dirty, restrictive place, where life is oppressive and there is little joy. The world shown here by director Darrell James Roodt (Sarafina!, Cry, the Beloved Country) is one that is full of beauty and has a complete spectrum of life’s emotion. The photography and lighting by cinematographer Michael Brierley (Second Skin) captures a beauty that feeds the meaning and emotional power behind the story, yet still shows what a beautiful world it is in which these people live their lives of triumph and tragedy.
Yesterday finds herself in between two worlds. One that holds modern disease and medicine, and the industry in which her husband must make their living; and that of the village where witch doctors still practice the healing of its own, and any nonconformity is viewed as an affront against the community. Through all this Yesterday keeps her chin up with a lofty spirit. She lives only for her daughter and Beauty’s entrance into school becomes a goal for Yesterday to live for. Even her husband offers her no empathy; but when he needs her, she is there. Yesterday gives to all in her life the strength of all that she feels came before her, and so she is a hero beyond aspirations.
It is hard to write of this film and not take an exalted tone, but that is really where a film of Yesterday’s simple power belongs. It never received a true theatrical release in this country, only appearing at a scattering of film festivals, and premieres this month on HBO. An early 2006 DVD release is planned; and it is a film that should not be missed.
Once again the MPAA ratings board has pulled an atrocious play on nonsensical judgment with award of an R rating for this picture. Not only is the rating abusive to the gentle and educational nature of the film, but their reasoning behind it makes less sense than any they have ever cited before. I feel ashamed even reporting it. “For pervasive strong violence.” There is a scene of domestic violence in the film. One scene. Less than a minute in length. And the violence is actually obscured by the setting, it occurs off screen essentially. Very tastefully done. I have no clue of where they culled the descriptor “pervasive”. Aghast am I.
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