Category: Film Review

Reviewed at the 2013 Twin Cities Film Festival

“How I Live Now” has no idea what type of movie it wants to be, so it
becomes them all. A scattered, meaningless war drama, the film comes
from director Kevin Macdonald, who’s made some impressive features (“One
Day in September,” “The Last King of Scotland”) and some duds (“The
Eagle”). He’s an interesting helmer who normally has a vision for his
efforts, but this one eludes him, to a degree where it begins to feel
more like punishment than suspense. “How I Live Now” isn’t a mess, but
it’s indirect, irritatingly so, wasting a tempting premise on half-baked
emotions and aimless moments of distress that should be far more
penetrating than they actually are.
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“Zaytoun” is often strong stuff, depicting acts of violence with a
merciless abruptness that triggers the requisite amount of shock. The
harshness of select scenes contrast intriguingly with the picture’s
overall gentle demeanor, depicting a wartime friendship between sworn
enemies, developed over time and through various acts of trust. We’ve
seen this type of story before, and the production doesn’t try to avoid
familiarity, offering the viewer a customary offering of feel-good
cinema set during a horrifying time of loss. The movie means well
enough, yet “Zaytoun” doesn’t do enough to upset expectations, trusting
in the power of warm orchestral strings and softening demeanors to coax
the viewer into a deceptive comfort zone.
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Reviewed at the 2013 Twin Cities Film Festival

The trouble with no-budget filmmaking is that productions often feel
they deserve a badge for completing a movie with limited funds. As
though there’s a participation ribbon to be collected just for showing
up. The comedy “Screwed” was made for $1,400, which sounds like a
laudable accomplishment until you see the feature, than it becomes
painfully clear that additional monetary lubrication was in order.
Amateurishly shot and assembled, while the clichéd screenplay saps the
last drop of promise from the picture, “Screwed” is a chore to sit
through, never landing a joke properly or seeing its oddball premise to
its natural conclusion.
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“The Fifth Estate” aspires to be a stirring investigative film
dissecting a combustible situation where truth is unfiltered,
participants unsecured, and the ultimate end game is hazy at best. For
this type of cinema to work, it needs a lead character who’s worth
following. He can be irredeemable and destructive, but has to retain a
depth of personality that rewards over two hours of screen time. I’m not
sure Julian Assange is worth the investment, at least not in the way
“The Fifth Estate” depicts him. A hopelessly dull picture concerning a
fiery situation of exposure and betrayal, the feature looks to dazzle
the viewer with aggressive acting and whip-crack globetrotting intrigue,
yet director Bill Condon feels like he’s dog paddling with material
that demands an emphatic front crawl.
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I believe most people understand the legendary talents and showmanship
of boxer Muhammad Ali. Less appreciated is his refusal to participate in
the Vietnam War during the height of his fighting career, putting his
entire life at risk to stand up for his principles, shaped during his
transition to the Muslim faith. Eschewing tales of boxing greatness to
inspect Ali as a man on a mission of self-preservation, director Bill
Siegel (“The Weather Underground”) finds a fascinating angle to explore,
detailing Ali’s war of words and legal tangles as he took on the U.S
Government, combative media types, and the court of public opinion to
stick up for his controversial beliefs.
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“Escape Plan” is the kind of film that’s very entertaining, providing
some bang for the buck, but it’s rarely fun in a throw down,
screen-go-boom type of way. A prison escape picture starring action
titans Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the feature has all
the opportunity in the world to go completely nuts, matching the
absurdity of the plot with a bit of directorial lunacy that keeps the
effort sufficiently lubed with pure escapism. Instead, “Escape Plan” is
merely serviceable with the rare moment of true inspiration, strangely
dialing down the potential for blast ‘em insanity to carry on coldly,
taking the mechanics of the titular scheme way too seriously.
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It’s difficult to treat “Carrie” too preciously. After all, the 1974
Stephen King novel has seen its fair share of screen incarnations,
including the itchy 1976 classic from director Brian De Palma, a 1999
sequel (“The Rage: Carrie 2”), and a 2002 television movie. That
Hollywood has renewed interest in the material makes perfect sense,
though this version is more of a remake than a fresh realization of
King’s original book. Playing it safe to appeal to a generation that
hasn’t been exposed to this tale of telekinetic woe, the new “Carrie” is
much like the old “Carrie,” only now the mayhem is more hard
drive-based than wonderfully, inventively practical.
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After winning an Academy Award for 2007’s “Juno,” her first produced
screenplay, writer Diablo Cody has finally graduated to the director’s
chair with “Paradise.” In the interim, she flirted with horror
(“Jennifer’s Body”) and achieved greatness with dark comedy (“Young
Adult”), yet the saucy stuff doesn’t appeal to Cody for her helming
debut. “Paradise” doesn’t play it safe but it does play it soft, pulling
the teeth out of a fascinating story that concerns the rejection of
religion and a brush with death, trying to pass the endeavor off as a
feel-good movie about life and love. The sentiment doesn’t adhere, but
the simplicity of the picture is agreeable, with Cody refusing to make
the film laborious just to add weight.
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“Chinese Zodiac” is reportedly Jackie Chan’s swan song to massive action
comedies, the type that tear up the screen with slapstick of enormous
scope while celebrating the star’s inability to be killed by stunts of
his own design. If this is truly the final bow for Chan’s cartoon
persona (after all, he’s turning 60 next year), “Chinese Zodiac” is an
appropriate note to end on. Teeming with Chan’s customary choreographed
hellraising, the picture is routine but captivating in its widescreen
craftsmanship, with Chan the director making Chan the star look like a
superhero as the story smashes through all manner of infiltration and
escape while trying to impart an important lesson on the raiding of
history.
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“A.C.O.D.” (“Adult Children of Divorce”) has all the ingredients for a
rollicking comedy concerning the battlefield of troubled relationships.
It offers a familiar but promising premise and features a cast of
profoundly funny people eager to tickle the audience. Sadly, the movie
just doesn’t lift off the ground, burdened by disappointing direction
and crummy editing, which never finds the ideal timing this type of
venture deserves. “A.C.O.D.” has a few moments that shine, but the rest
is shockingly leaden and clumsy, feeling around for a heart it hasn’t
earned and for laughs that seldom arrive.
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The documentary “Money for Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve” wasn’t
planning on a collapse of government when it was originally assembled,
but talk about primo release timing. Issued during a tempestuous era
where leaders willingly turn their backs on their constituents and
America’s financial future appears impossibly bleak, the picture looks
to dissect some of the country’s more pressing monetary woes, hoping to
give the average viewer a working knowledge of a complex system that
basically steers the future of the nation. There are times when the
movie seems expressly built for economists, yet there’s enough visual
hand-holding in “Money for Nothing” to make its behemoth target
understandable in a rudimentary way.
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If all went according to plan, “Dark Blood” would’ve been released in
1994, and we would be coming up on its 20th anniversary. But something
went horribly wrong during the film’s shoot, with star River Phoenix
dying from a drug overdose in 1993, leaving the picture with 80% of its
scenes completed. Shelved and forgotten, “Dark Blood” was left as a
curiosity, leaving fans of Phoenix to wonder what exactly was left
behind, possibly displaying the actor in an unfavorable light. Facing
his own medical crisis 15 years after production was halted, director
George Sluizer decided to rebuild the movie as a way of confronting
unfinished business, finally bringing the feature to the public in
semi-finished form.
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“Blue Caprice” is a chilling account of the two men involved in the 2002
Beltway sniper attacks. Its truthfulness is never precisely understood,
but its dramatic interests are cleanly observed, making the movie less
about the cold, hard facts of the case and more about the damaged
perspectives that motivated such senseless murders. It’s a spare picture
without the reassurance of details, but director Alexandre Moors
conjures an impressively unsettling mood, observing a seemingly mundane
connection between two lost souls gradually corrupted by violent
thoughts and overt manipulation, leading to devastating actions that
shook the nation over a decade ago.
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Developing into an unlikely franchise, the “Machete” series appears to
only be warming up with “Machete Kills,” the second installment in the
saga of this scowling Mexican superhero. Brimming with all types of
over-the-top antics and ultraviolence, the follow-up matches relatively
well with its 2010 forefather, with director Robert Rodriguez increasing
his customary insanity as he forges a genre-smashing path to yet
another adventure, teased at both the beginning and end of “Machete
Kills.” Viewing this wacky universe of weaponry, villains, and doomsday
as his personal “Star Wars” saga, Rodriguez leans even harder into the
absurdity of it all, stuffing the feature with characters and
catastrophes. The fun is infectious, even when the movie becomes winded
due to all the superfluous business the helmer insists is necessary.
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William Shakespeare’s immortal play of melodramatic love, “Romeo &
Juliet,” has been brought to cinemas on numerous occasions, dating back
to the year 1900. The catnip charms of tragedy are easy to spot,
wallowing in swoon and sacrifice, but to resurrect these tired words for
the screen requires imagination, someone willing to color outside the
lines. Think Baz Luhrmann’s delightfully bonkers take on the material in
1996, where he turned the world of Verona into a hellish smear of MTV
aesthetics. For this new version of “Romeo & Juliet,” screenwriter
Julian Fellowes has decided to discard much of the Bard’s original text,
using his own version of Shakespearean sophistication to mastermind an
unusual take on the everlasting play. It’s a baffling choice, but one
with potential, eventually smothered by a glacial pace and a few
ridiculous performances.
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“Ass Backwards” opens with a shot of urine streaming down a concrete
sidewalk. Eventually, it’s revealed the waste product belongs to our two
leads, who are seen squatting in the distance. It’s not exactly a
welcome image, but it does sum up the “Ass Backwards” viewing experience
accurately, with the leading ladies, June Diane Raphael and Casey
Wilson, gradually pissing away their charm on this disjointed comedy,
which struggles to reach a pitch of absurdity while laboring through
exhausted screenwriting cliches and good, old-fashioned bad ideas. The
pee turns out to be more of a warning shot than a pass at gross-out
comedy.
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“CBGB” isn’t truly about the daily business of the iconic New York City
club. The focus of the film is more on the establishment’s owner, Hilly
Kristal, and his struggles to pay the bills as popularity of the place
exploded during the 1970s. I suppose audiences wouldn’t show up to movie
titled “Hilly Kristal,” so we have “CBGB,” which is bound to disappoint
admirers of punk history and NYC culture (the picture was shot in
Georgia), with director Randall Miller turning the whole big bang of
music into a comic book experience that thickly underlines every move it
makes. Unenlightening and overworked, the effort turns the raw energy
of a movement into a Saturday morning cartoon, counting on a soundtrack
of classics to carry the viewing experience.
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2013 has become the year of the music studio documentary. Previously,
there was Dave Grohl’s magnificent “Sound City,” which detailed the life
and times of a L.A. studio that played a key role in the musical
landscape of the 1970s and ‘80s. Now we have “Muscle Shoals,” a far more
subdued journey into an Alabama hit factory that found its most fertile
creative period in the 1960s. The soulfulness of the Muscle Shoals
sound and surroundings is readily apparent from the opening minutes, and
director Greg Camalier does an admirable job rifling through
interpersonal conflicts and band breakthroughs in this engaging look at a
little known corner of musical history.
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“The Citizen” is an earnest movie, to a point where it almost reaches
self-parody. It’s an immigration story set during the turbulent years
after 9/11, using that open wound in American history to explore the
nature of citizenship and bigotry. As well-intentioned as it is, “The
Citizen” is a clumsy feature, electing a broad approach for a complex
subject, breaking down the particulars of hate and suspicion into
bite-sized nuggets of moralizing, ideal for easy digestion. Although
satisfactorily performed, the picture is such a pedestrian effort, it’s
impossible to take seriously, diluting the troubles of the world to
fashion the easiest sit possible.
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Director Paul Greengrass makes one type of movie, but he does it very
well. Electing a documentary-style approach to works of fact (“Bloody
Sunday,” “Flight 93”) and fiction (“The Bourne Supremacy,” “The Bourne
Ultimatum”), Greengrass embraces a cinematic intensity that’s often
overpowering to watch, with specific use of shaky-cam to thrust viewers
into the heat of the moment. “Captain Phillips” plays directly into the
helmer’s wheelhouse, offering a true story that makes extensive use of
personal perspective and tight procedural timing. It’s a riveting
picture, but one that seems like a safe choice for Greengrass, presented
in a way that’s familiar to those already intimate with his work. Nails
will be chewed, armrests will be gripped, but “Captain Phillips” feels
like a rehash in its cold-blooded details.
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