Author: BO

Toiling away in television for most of his career, “Towelhead” returns writer/director Alan Ball to the big screen, his first effort since winning the Academy Award for his 1999 screenplay, “American Beauty.” I’ll say this about Ball: the man loves his sexual discomfort. A domestic drama marked by every possible form of abuse, “Towelhead” is a familiar playground for Ball and his obsession with suburban decay, but remains sharply realized by the cast, who turn pure ugliness into an exhaustive psychological obstacle course.

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With this impressive collection of actresses and production duties handled by the renowned Diane English, it’s a crushing disappointment to find the latest update of the famed play “The Women” a defanged, broad ode to one-dimensional empowerment. The performances shine, but the rest of this mediocre travelogue of feminine foibles is given the blunt-force treatment, draining the material of deserved big-screen acidity.

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I always enjoy a filmmaker looking to air out his big screen love now and again. It keeps the filmography interesting, while revealing a passion perhaps unnoticed in previous directorial attempts. “Sukiyaki Western Django” is controversial filmmaker Takashi Miike’s valentine to the 1966 spaghetti western “Django,” not to mention the scads of copycats that followed. It’s a ferocious, pleasingly absurd orchestration of violence and warped tough guy posturing, offering Miike a reprieve from his traditional dreary imports. It’s a big, giant cluster of gunfights, mythmaking, and method acting, but it’s a distinctive distraction.

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There was a time not long ago when a Nicolas Cage film would command swirling industry buzz, a spellbinding marketing push, and demand the most prestigious spot at the area multiplex to placate the stampeding masses. Today, Cage is relegated to movies that barely make a splash on the pop culture canvas, are released over one of the worst weekends to unload a feature film, and are held from the greasy grasp of movie critics out of sheer panic that word of dispiriting quality would be unleashed prematurely. This is not the Nicolas Cage I used to adore, and “Bangkok Dangerous” is not the type of dreck the once mighty prince of strange should be wasting his time with.

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Holden Caulfield syndrome is given poignant, unexpected psychosexual touches in David Mackenzie’s “Mister Foe” (“Hallam Foe” outside of America). An engrossing, provocative drama, the feature sniffs out just the right level of lurid behavior to keep the viewer in concert with the mounting domestic woes. It’s a feature of unpredicted, and quite thrilling, discomfort.

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One of the most legendary, exalted cult films of the 1980s finally finds its way to DVD, after years of underground presentations, random cable airings, and bootleg proliferation. It’s a picture that’s credited as one of the founding mothers of the “riot grrl” movement, inspiring the likes of Courtney Love to go out into the world and challenge the misogynistic carnival of rock music, empowering the minority feminine perspective. It’s also a feature that befuddled a studio, rising up from the ashes of blatant corporate indifference to become a defining snapshot of an era, challenging the masses to find the feature and experience a piece of art held back purposefully from view.  

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In all my years of critiquing movies, I’ve never come across a more hot potato title than “Heckler.” Ostensibly a documentary regarding the bruised feelings of entertainment folk who suffer verbal excrement flung from the great unwashed masses, “Heckler” instead reveals itself to be an attack piece on critics and their general befuddling uselessness.

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The first and last laudable element of “College” is the spirited opening title sequence. Skillfully mixing high school iconography with contractually-obligated acknowledgments, the opener, designed by director Deb Hagan, is an inventive, bouncy way to start off the picture. From there, the movie falls right into the toilet. Willfully or accidentally is up to the viewer.

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Oh, it’s been a weary road for “Babylon A.D.” Not only has the film been handed a lousy late-August release date, had its original R-rated intent chopped to fit constrictive PG-13 requirements, and touts Vin Diesel as its star, but the director, Mathieu Kassovitz, disowned the movie during a hissy fit interview this past week. Now there’s a picture with some astonishing bad luck. Frankly, it doesn’t deserve such a public meltdown. It’s not a solid feature, but “Babylon” is far from the total disgrace media reports would have us all believe.

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After “Date Movie,” “Epic Movie,” and January’s “Meet the Spartans,” writer/directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer have willingly positioned themselves as artistic pariahs. They abuse the art of parody to craft wickedly loathsome pop culture spoofs, forging actual effort to razz their subjects, only reiterating absurdity. And man oh man, do teenagers ever flock to these vile, willfully unfunny concoctions. But how can you blame them? I’m sure a night ignoring the screen to text-message friends and giggle at fart jokes is far more appealing than Scrabble with mom and dad.

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“Ballet Shoes” takes a kindly, impassioned view of the hungry heart, as seen through the eyes of women left to their own devices once abandoned by their loved ones. It’s a caloric helping of melodrama, but it’s rendered effective by the exceptional performances and observant direction by the vastly talented Sandra Goldbacher.

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We can thank Jason Bourne for making the multiplex a safe haven for men who dabble in the practices of both good and evil. Without Bourne, there would never be a film like “Traitor,” a snappy global terrorism thriller that faithfully dissects the exquisite torture of the clouded conscience.

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Any film that opens with a comical beheading and electrocution deserves at least some praise, however faint it may be. A follow-up to the unleashed lunacy of 2006’s “Another Gay Movie,” “Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild” takes this improbable franchise even further into comedic dementia, eager to top the original picture in pure knockout vulgarity. I’d say it’s a photo finish.

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While I won’t pray at the altar of the 1975 cult film “Death Race 2000,” I definitely enjoyed its satiric spit-take on outrageous violence and media-fed bloodlust. It was an innovative and enormously entertaining exploitation picture, blessed with a brain to compliment the body count. The remake takes everything that was imaginative about the original feature and reduces it to an ear-splitting energy drink commercial, topped off with some of the worst filmmaking decisions to be found at the multiplex this year. Yes, that’s right: Hollywood has allowed Paul W.S. Anderson to make another movie.

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Not only is Anna Faris one of the more brightly gifted comediennes working today, she’s some sort of miracle worker. How else can one explain the ability to sit through something that emerged from Fred Wolf and not have the urge to run screaming from the theater? That Anna Faris is amazing.

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Watching Steve Coogan overact is like being pummeled bloody with a pillowcase packed tightly with frozen oranges. When he’s given carte blanche to eat up the frame, Coogan can be aggravating to behold, and “Hamlet 2” is always eager to let the British comic set the tone. It results in a thoroughly disheartening farce that doesn’t believe a joke is funny until it’s been indicated into fine dust.

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Perhaps the most brilliant decision the producers of “The Longshots” made was to hold director Fred Durst’s credit from reveal until the end of the film, to minimize assured slack-jawed disbelief. The guy who gifted the world “Nookie” is making movies these days, and much like the music he created with band Limp Bizkit, Durst’s cinematic sensibilities are hackneyed, tiresome, and lack sorely needed rehearsal.

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It’s been a long time since the conceit of a train odyssey was used to backdrop a psychological thriller. Typically associated with cutting Hitchcockian overtones, filmmaker Brad Anderson looks to return a touch of discomfort back into the genre with “Transsiberian,” a glacial but easily consumed thriller played out in mysterious, remorseless locations.

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A pox, a pox I say, on the house of the individual who first told Rainn Wilson he was a funny man. For the inconsiderate moose that decided to open their trap and inspire this actor, I wish them the same discomfort I suffered while watching Wilson’s first starring effort, “The Rocker.”

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(Warning: This review contains nudity!)

Imagine a randy, ridiculous Monty Python film with the famous troupe on vacation, replaced with Hayden Christensen, Mischa Barton, and a half-asleep Tim Roth. It’s not a pretty picture, and “Virgin Territory” is a constant reminder that delicate tone and comedic heft should be placed in the assured hands of professionals, not handsome, young, marketable stars of dubious ability.

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