“Wild Target” is a feature that causes extreme discomfort. It’s not an especially hideous action comedy, merely one that wastes a colossal amount of thespian skill on uninspired material, tumbling through 90 minutes of screentime without achieving any laughs or thrills, leaving a group of marvelous actors to twist in the wind, waiting for punchlines that never arrive. It’s all such a shame.
It started with a bang and it ends with a whimper. Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy” comes to a substandard close with “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest,” a lifeless, talky series wrap up that induces more of a sense of submission than finality, stumbling through a complicated terrain of exposition without a desirable wallop of blistering suspense. Instead, the film naps, leaning on intricate plotting and established characterizations to generate inspiration.
Being quoted on a DVD or BD cover is flattering. Some critics have made it a living. In my world, the act of being quoted is a rare event, occurring every blue moon or so, usually when there’s no other review for the studio to pick from. This past month brought three such occasions to my doorstep.
The starkness of “Winter’s Bone” provides an immediate sensation of ache that comes to define the draining viewing experience. This is a bitter, stone-faced picture, with emotional explosions pushed down to the quiver of eyes and flaring of nostrils. For director Debra Granik, it’s familiar territory, having captured the intimate ravages of drug addiction in her 2004 feature, “Down to the Bone.” However, “Winter’s Bone” widens her scope, capturing a rural community of addicts, liars, brutes, and innocents caught in a web of poverty and crushing familial loyalty.
I wasn’t much of a fan of the 2009 no-budget blockbuster, “Paranormal Activity.” A film cursed with abysmal acting and shallow scares, the picture nevertheless enchanted a nation of horror fans, rocketing a movie made for little money to blinding box office glory. And why not? Genre fans were starved for something with a little crude fright to it, devouring a movie that wasn’t concerned with torture or schlocky theatrics. It wasn’t innovative, but it was a pure event, finding itself in the right place at the right time. Paramount Pictures, eager to pounce on a phenomenon they stumbled ass-backwards into, ordered up a sequel in a hurry. A year later, we have “Paranormal Activity 2,” a prequel of sorts that flattens the initial burst of surprise into irksome retread.
The idea behind the drama “Down Terrace” is to lure the audience in gradually, constructing a deceptively commonplace depiction of dysfunction within a family of criminals that meticulously, glacially spirals out of control. The architecture of the feature is incredible, slithering around troubled characters desperate to contain domestic control. However, the madness doesn’t provide much of an electric charge until very late in the game, making the first two acts of the picture an incredible test of endurance for anyone not utterly devoted to the throttled fury of British kitchen sink dramas.
Holding tight to his instincts, director Clint Eastwood has fashioned a relentlessly low-key discussion of heavenly mysteries with “Hereafter.” Shunning a grandly scaled march into the unknown, Eastwood sticks to what he knows best: soft approach, acoustic scoring, and introspective performances. Those weaned on “The Ghost Whisperer” or “The Dead Zone” will be greeted with a particular absence of zeal, but fans keyed into Eastwood’s gentle past work might be more inclined to sit back and allow the filmmaker to find his own way, even if that means a few melodramatic rough patches and a bizarrely pat ending.
Reduced to front lawn kitsch or John Waters-approved tomfoolery, achieving legitimacy has been a difficult journey for the pink flamingo. “The Crimson Wing” is a charming Disneynature documentary looking to restore some regality back to species, capturing a year in the life of the African lesser flamingo as it rises from egg to adult, fighting to avoid horrific threats from nature’s various predators along the way.
The unstoppable remake train pulls up to “Night of the Demons,” originally a 1988 fright film that managed some unexpected box office business, spawning two sequels and a feeling of great unease whenever actress Linnea Quigley and a tube of lipstick were in the same room together. As worthless reheats go, this update has a few sparkling ideas and some serious eye-candy for a cast, at least attempting to give superfans a slightly modified ride on the “Demons” express.
When Johnny Knoxville first began this “Jackass” odyssey, he was a twentysomthing twerp with a big dream of self-destruction. In 2010, Knoxville’s kissing 40 years of age, his temples are graying, and his hands seem permanently fixed to his genitals, fully aware of the invitation an uncovered crotch brings around this crew. Where did the time go? The greatest television series MTV ever produced is back for a third and presumably last feature installment, bringing with it the gimmick of 3D to shove the sickening and the bruised into the lap of the audience. The boys are older now, few are wiser, but they still put on one helluva show. And if you like fecal matter, I mean love the stuff, this sequel is the “Avatar” of poop-smeared extravaganzas.
“Red” is like boarding a sinfully designed roller coaster that keeps breaking down during the frantic ride. It’s a blazing actioner with a marvelous cast, but it retains a woeful sense of kinetic movement, jutting back and forth between static dialogue scenes and hyper-stylized confrontations. It’s enough to make a viewer seasick, or perhaps a little bored between the sprays of bullets. But that’s where the old-fashioned shine of star power comes in the save the day, keeping the picture partially awake as director Robert Schwentke plots out his meticulous plan of attack.
“Conviction” won’t win any awards for originality, but it offers a direct blast of drama that carries the clichés farther than expected. Based on the true story of Betty Anne Waters, the feature certainly has its movie-of-the-week inclinations, but the overall communication of loyalty and resolve permits the film a soulfulness that scrubs away the suffocating familiarity. Stoutly acted and confidently directed, “Conviction” is an aptly titled motion picture.
“You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger” marks the 40th motion picture for writer/director Woody Allen. It’s wonderful to see the filmmaker step up with a new picture every year, but when he misses, Allen knocks himself to the ground. “Dark Stranger” represents one of the more myopic screenplays he’s ever churned out, stopping time with a film that isn’t a comedy and barely registers as a drama. I’d call it a tragedy, but the only ones truly suffering will be the paying audience, forced to endure Allen’s umpteenth variation on the false comfort provided by marriage.
It’s tough to avoid coming across as a Grinch while writing a disapproving review of the documentary “Waiting for ‘Superman.’” Yet, when I exited the theater after 100 leisurely minutes of dripping sincerity, I felt nothing. There was no anger, no sense of hope. Just a mild tremor of disgust and a wave of suspicion. This is the type of movie that should galvanize a nation, urging the population to rise up and change the system. Instead, “Waiting” seeks a good cry and some cuddling time as it charts the erosion of the United States of America.
The best part of “Lost Boys: The Thirst” has to be that it isn’t “Lost Boys: The Tribe,” a putrid DTV sequel released in 2008 that did a masterful job tarnishing the legacy of the original, and much beloved, Joel Schumacher film from 1987. Though nobody explicitly asked for it, outside of Corey Feldman’s agent, the plague continues in this second sequel, which is a lighter, brighter, more cartoon take on the vampire-hunting premise, but still lacks the flavorful horror-comedy ingredients that made the first picture such an enduring classic.
BRIAN ORNDORF 