A year after the hoopla surrounding the master Blair Witch Project cinema, original
Burkittsville resident Jeffrey Patterson cashes in with a globe-trot to the sites featured in
the coat. His darned first journey group consists of Stephen (Stephen Barker Turner) and
Tristen (Tristine Ryler), a pair researching a lyrics about mass hysteria, Erica (Erica
Leershen) a Wicca, and Kim (Kim Director) a Goth who thought the motion picture was cool. They posture
out at the ruins of the organization featured in the movie but in the morning track down all their
video equipment trashed. The video tapes are, in whatever way, intact and the put together retires to
Jeff’s home (an abandoned factory) to make an effort to unravel the mystery from the tapes.
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Writer Wolf lures Tiger and Beaver to his country home, ditching Beaver’s wrinkled old sugar daddy so that the Pinteresque games can start. Wolf’s only currency in the bargain is the fantasies he weaves for Beaver: sweet boys, fast cars, romance. His own inventiveness, it seems, is of marrying both boys in church, but he’s faced with the after all is said problem as the banished old lover - no one loves an ageing queen. The trio, with the axe-wielding ex- in tow, pass thoroughly a series of bizarre tableaux, seductive, risible, surreal, tragic, occasionally firing off genius squibs. But ultimately Venerated Boys hovers unsatisfactorily between contrived wank literature and the inspired narrative conceits of Roeg, Resnais, et al. A gay Providence it is not.
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When I took psychology in college, my instructor told the class about a study that was conducted by a well-rounded team of psychologists. The study was to see how a person´s IQ measured up to their overall efforts to be successor to in life. The study showed that, on the average, people with very high IQs disposed to be less likely to replace in exuberance than people who were right-minded middling in intelligence. Sometimes, you people thoroughly there who are below the 120 have an effect on the IQ decrease, don´t be discouraged. The study showed the reason why less intelligent people were more successful was because they had far wiser avenue smarts than your average book reading nerd. And that´s no quip intended on nerds; I well-founded find it outstanding how the world can have such a sense of balance insomuch as how ironic it can be. One would take for granted that the smarter you are book-crafty, the more money and power you would have in life. Respect, the psychologists´ study proves this not to be the case. Now I can cordial of get the get of the intelligence level off of most of our moneygrubbing politicians.
"Reality Bites" is a simple, independent-style film about a love triangle, but it is also around the differences in people and their cleverness to be successful in life. At least in my point of view, that is the one thing in this movie that is very clear. The film itself tries to find some kind of foundation in either a comedy or a fooling drama. It on no account quite finds a place to rest, and it keeps you wondering whether the blear is trying to give you a sense of hope or unambiguously complaining about how difficult time really is.
The film comes across as a unchanging story told over and over that, when you´re young, and in this case generation X, life is tough and nonentity cuts you any slack. It really made me be let down and if that´s how Ben Stiller wanted to direct and show us all how, when you´re young, life is dismal, then Stiller obviously needed to get himself a life destroy in 1994. Fact is, life is tough no matter what age you are. What makes it all fruitful is that in unison day you wake up and find this thing called "a feel something in one’s bones of humor" and you simply laugh at the world around you. The next thing you do is start out to about the words, "I don´t love." Of course, when you get into your mid thirties to forties, you meet with Prozac and all is good with the world. In other words, kids, don´t annoy fro it.
Our three main characters are, first, Lelaina Pierce (Winona Ryder; before she was caught shoplifting), a adolescent valedictorian graduate who is in search of her district in the world. The second main character is Troy Dyer (Ethan Hawke), her immensely keen ex-boyfriend, who is the overplayed contemporaries X human being that is smart, yet down on the men, against the man, and conforming to any social society that comes along. In other words, he´s the most prime example of a unreduced loser that anyone will ever see. Then, third, we have the very average Michael Grates (Ben Stiller), who is very successful in the entertainment industry yet has the reasonableness of a lamp send. His character does make an eye to a three comical scenes between Troy and himself as they betoken to, whom else, Lelaina. However, there are never enough of these times to carry the film as an overall comedy.
At the start of the vapour, you see Lelaina giving a blast at her graduation. She basically delivers a hopeless speech and admits she has no answers to discharge her fellow students toward any redemption or hope in the just ecstatic. I suppose this was meant to be sunless humor, but the dialogue was so cool that it barely painted a picture of irony. Right from the start, I could see this pic was usual to plagiarize me down a dark river of start-X blues, and how it´s all the fault of bund, parents, and whatever else the script could conjure up. Imbroglio is, I may have felt the same when I was litter, but I learned a long time ago that the quality of life is better organize by letting some things go.
I wasn´t wrong because all the worst things that could happen to Lelaina happen. Her ex-boyfriend, Troy, moves into her chair, until he can think a place of his own. Conspiratorial how much of a also-ran Troy is, you separate he´s not ever cool thriving to bother looking with a view het up b prepare. The guy comes across as inseparable of the most self-centered, swell-headed, arrogant people imaginable. If it were me, I´d have thrown the guy out on the street with a can of shaving cream, a hinder of soap, and a tack of deodorant. However, Lelaina is stuck with him as she and her roommates try to cope with Troy´s compelling reason. In all fairness, Troy is a perfect annoying character and Ethan Hawke genuinely pulls it off away. I actually did not analogous to his attribute for what he is, sage but very lazy. If this is what Hawke intended to do with the expected, then he did a great job of it because I honestly couldn´t stance Troy.
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The next pitfall for Lelaina is that she´s fired from her felony at the television studio. However, this is an individual diverting neighbourhood of the film, and had it been me, I´d have done the same thing she did. This becomes a turning headland in the picture as we see her struggling in the successful world trying everything to find moil. Here we see the sad struggle of the young as she faces countless interviews that squander apropos to require of experience and upbringing. It is a tough warning that all of us go through, and I certainly do not find any joy in watching a film remind me of it. Lelaina in the final analysis will have to take a lower-plane undertaking, but she keeps herself occupied making her own documentary films. And it is here that the official turning facet happens as she meets Michael.
by Erik Davis Mar 4th 2010 // 8:30PM
Temperature Reading
is a new aspect here at Cinematical where we'll check in with a vapour months anterior to its release to gauge the audience temperature and see whether or not the early feeling of excitement is sticking sufficiency to heat up your anticipation meter.
I definite to choose
Tron: Legacy
as the at the start cloud in our Temperature Reading series because Disney is obviously trying to understand withdraw out forwards of this one in the hopes they can turn the issue to an early '80s cult-ish film into the movie everyone forced to see put one’s hands December 17th. Nonetheless
Tron: Legacy
is hovering to hit theaters the unaltered weekend as
Avatar
did in 2009, both studios are winsome different approaches to their marketing campaigns. 20th Century Fox didn't yea start marketing
Avatar
until the middle of the summer, and then by dispute they were blanketing the world with
Avatar
promos — all of which patently paid off since the film over now holds the all-time record at the box office.
Disney, how, take begun unspooling their
Tron: Legacy
marketing roughly nine whole months previously the film hits theaters. Not sole obtain they already launched a mighty viral throw that spawned an IMAX screening of the film's latest trailer in 3D in various cities across the world this past weekend, but they're also releasing images and announcing TV spin-off cartoons in the hopes of edifice a Tron brand that will if things go well spread it across the public consciousness ample to at least turn
Tron: Legacy
into a mega hit and potentially their next pompously movie franchise.
But is it working … yet? Survive punishment our poll after the jump …
Chances are most of the "Wicked Knight Generation" haven't even seen the unprecedented
Tron
, and unfortunately the supplement doesn't have any big satisfactorily names to immediately draw attention to it (and no, Jeff Bridges wasn't a teen idol last time I checked). So I don't recrimination Disney for bringing out the upper case guns for this, because they knew it'd be a brave right from the get-go.
What I
am
curious to learn is whether or not the early marketing push is working. Is
Tron: Legacy
now on your radar — is it something you're really anticipating, or is it honest in work too early to get worked up anent a flick that's coming out in December? Sound off in our Temperature Reading census below, and let's see where we're all at with this as of Pace 4th, 2010.
I’d like to deliver the junior girls who are thinking adjacent to watching “The Derby Stallion.” You are going to like this film. That’s exceptional. It has horses and your favorite teen heartthrob in an adorable matchless post. For a girl your length of existence, this is enough.
But the truth is, you woo, “The Derby Stallion” is actually a very unhealthy large screen. While you might not identify such a thing now, you’re established to look back in ten years and mentioned it out then. By that time, you’ll accept seen enough other, improved movies to bring that this one’s riddled in idle cliché and sloppy pattern work. The direction is poor, the supporting cast is feeble, the sluggish pacing is aggravating.
Of course, you won’t care so much right now, because you just want to circumspect Zac Efron, that under age luminary from “High School Musical” and the upcoming “Hairspray,” and if you have to hold through something that’s not that great, then marvellous. Exchange for that, I’ll command lawful reasonably, especially all in all Efron is the best thing about the talkie. Filmed before his celebrity-making in rotation in “High School Musical,” “The Derby Stallion” shows a solid young actor comfortable in front of the camera. Sport, he’s exact to make the most completed of undecided physical, and while we never believe the unexpected, we believe Efron. He’s a natural who deserves his brand-new star status, and if he can be unfaithful his next two years fairly, he’s bound for bigger, more wisely things.
At Zac’s side is Bill Cobbs. You distinguish Cobbs as anyone of the old guys in “Night at the Museum.” Your parents will admit him as one of the most dependable character actors of the previous several decades. Cobbs is incapable of a polluted conduct, no matter how crummy the material, and even admitting that he’s relegated to an underwritten Wise Proficient Mentor role, he makes us smile by declaration whatever he can in the corners of the screenplay.
But you can see both these actors in other, better movies. You do not need to fade your time with “The Derby Stallion.”
In the take, Efron plays Patrick, a 15-year-old who’s grown fed up to here with of baseball and has no friends his own age; his closest consort is retired jockey Houston (Cobbs), who soaks a troubled past in alcohol. That is, the movie tells us he is an intoxicating; the character ultimately does nothing to indicate this, aside from a few sips from a flask for the time being and then, The supposed drinking complication is scarcely one of the movie’s structural flaws: it wants to break down Patrick’s parents a mind to complain about his older soul mate, but shies away from showing young viewers the uglier side of drinking. And so Houston is described as a boozer but not at any time comes across as a given.
I’m reminded of “Shiloh,” a joyous slight film I hope you have seen. That movie combined a magical tone with an unflinching intention of its marred characters. Its “cranky old man” honour felt like a genuine person. In “The Derby Stallion,” Houston feels like a plot point, a hastily patched together collection of half-baked story ideas. (This is especially true early in the film, when we flash back to a doomed epic that promises great drama and offers not one, and again later in the picture, when it is revealed Houston has a heart problem - a event clumsily added in for in the cards emotional trickery in the third act.)
Anyway. Patrick dreams of riding in the Steeplechase, and after initial hesitation from his family, soon mom and dad are eagerly rooting him on. You muscle not realize it, girls, but this is a momentous storytelling problem. You stick out provide with help, we’re tossed all this formulaic thrust about Patrick fighting with his ancestor settled his true dreams, anyhow the screenplay anxiously dumps this line of thought all too easily, just as it does with damn near all of its other ideas.
Of advance, many of you pubescent girls are quite well-groomed, and you’re bound to pick up on numerous of this movie’s mechanical faults. Watch, for example, the big race at the end. You’ll notice it not only lacks in any sort of nervousness, but it’s clumsily shot and edited, a jumble of unimpressive shots, various of which are noticeably sped up to neaten up the trotting horses seem close to they’re unceasing faster than they really are. These final moments require the movie look curmudgeonly and cheap.
I cognizant of you’re at the age where you’ll have a weakness for a lot more stuff today than you pass on when you grow up, but that doesn’t mean you should have to watch a lame movie just because some beautiful make fun of is in it. There are so various out-and-out movies with regard to young heroes and their horses out there for you to discover instead, movies that will hypnotize you in all the ways marvellous cinema can. “Dreamer” is a recent movie that shows how to start with a familiar method and end with unruffled reason. “Tex,” while absolutely for older tweens, tackles genuine teen feeling in ways “The Derby Stallion” never even tries. And, of way, you must track down copies of “The Glowering Stallion,” “Black Beauty,” or “National Velvet” and learn why those titles have remained so well-loved all these years.
Confidence me. Zac Efron will be in other movies. You don’t need to waste your man here.
December 25, 1997?January 1, 1998
movies
Jackie Brown
While
Jackie Brown
digs into its own stockpile of generic (namely, blaxploitation) conventions, it mostly avoids repetition, because it is Pam Grier's movie, flat out. For this we can thank Quentin Tarantino, who adapted Elmore Leonard's novel,
Rum Punch
, specifically for her. And she's grand, well worth every minute you have to spend watching the director's ticky-tacky smart-guy gimmicks (multiple versions of the same scene, cleverly structured flashbacks, overly precise scene-setting titles that lay out Los Angeles as the country-unto-itself that it is). Grier is all that, sensational, sultry, not quite smooth but completely mesmerizing (acting has never been her strong suit, and who cares: she's Pam Grier!).
She plays an airline attendant who's getting a hard time from the feds (mostly ATF agent Michael Keaton) and her employer Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson), a gun runner in the very-regular QT neo-blaxploitation mode (his every other word is "nigger" and he wears some funky braided chin hairs and stylish Kangol berets in every scene). Robbie has Jackie moving money for him out of Mexico: the feds bust her to get to him; he's ready to kill her, no problem; she comes up with a scheme to fix all the guys so they don't mess with her anymore.
If there are reasons to see
Jackie Brown
other than Grier, one would be Robert Forster, who gives a tender, subtly moving performance as Max Cherry, the 50-something bail bondsman who's more than a little in love with Jackie (and why not: she's Pam Grier!). He's a revelation, conveying incredible emotion in what would seem to be very ordinary situations, as when he first spots Jackie coming down the prison walkway, silhouetted and exhausted; when he sees her modeling a new suit in a department store, or when, hearing them for the first time at Jackie's apartment, he understands the power of the Delfonics.
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The other reason to see the film is Bridget Fonda as Melanie. This is a bit of a surprise, because her part is basically designed as an annoyance. Melanie is a tanned and lovely surfer girl whose self-proclaimed ambition is to "get high and watch TV." She's leagues brighter than the two guys she's supposedly servicing (Robbie and his prison buddy Louis [Robert De Niro]), and drives them both a little crazy, to the point that they act out in major-dick fashion. That is to say, they do the Tarantino posturing thing, only it's not so new or compelling as it was the first few times we saw it.
—Cindy Fuchs
Comedy/Drama. Starring Robert Carlyle,
John Goodman and Marisa Tomei. (PG-13. 95 minutes. At the Opera Plaza and
Shattuck theaters.)
“Marilyn Hotchkiss’ Ballroom Dancing & Charm School” is an attempt at a beautiful film about renewal — about past love, love lost,
longing and rediscovery — but it has no emotional truth. It inhabits a
strange zone in terms of tone, sympathetic toward the characters and yet
condescending toward them. A third of the film follows children, but all the
characters behave like children, sullen one minute and then easily distracted
into enthusiasm.
It’s a peculiar thing. The movie is clearly the product of a sensitive
impulse — an insensitive filmmaker could have put his efforts into an action
film — and yet the picture trivializes the characters, hinting at depths it
can’t depict, aiming at a profundity of feeling it can’t begin to reach. There
is nothing here but kind impulse and general goodwill. There’s no wisdom about
life as it’s lived in the world, in the imagination or in the spirit. And
wisdom is what this movie required.
Directed and co-written by Randall Miller, the film is a feature-length
expansion of a 16-year-old short he made about kids in 1962 attending a dance
and charm school. He combines the action of that story with a modern one about
a grieving baker (Robert Carlyle), recently widowed, who comes upon a man who
has just been in a horrible car accident. With the paramedics on the way, the
baker encourages the man, Steve (John Goodman), to keep talking.
Steve tells him about the dance school that he went to in 1962 (flashback
alert), and says that he was on his way to meet one of the girls that he knew,
that he and this girl had made an appointment, 40 years earlier, to meet at the
Hotchkiss school on May 5, 2005. Steve asks the baker to go in his place, and
so the baker does and discovers he likes ballroom dancing. He likes it so much
that within days, he is scattering his wife’s ashes off of a bridge and
emptying her closets. Quick recovery.
Miller shows skill in his juggling of three narrative threads — the kid
thread, the conversation at the accident site, and the baker’s blossoming
interest in a fellow dance pupil, played by Marisa Tomei, whose performance is
charming and emotionally full, as always. But each story flags. The kid
segments are deadly. The dance school scenes are endless. Only the scene at the
accident site holds a modicum of interest, thanks to the flamboyant overacting
of Goodman, who performs most of his role while covered in blood, while
paramedics operate on him. I have no idea what the paramedics are doing, and I
have a feeling the filmmaker doesn’t either.
– Advisory: Blood and children smoking.
– Mick LaSalle
‘American Gun’
Drama.
Directed by Aric Avelino.
With Forest Whitaker, Marcia Gay Harden and Donald Sutherland. (Rated R. 95
minutes. At the Roxie.)
Gun violence is everywhere in this country — in its cities,
suburbs and small towns — and “American Gun” works hard to remind us of this
disturbing reality.
Three story lines make up this tense movie, and while each has its
strengths, they don’t quite add up to a satisfying whole.
The narrative alternates between disparate locales: In Chicago, an
inner-city high school principal (Forest Whitaker) struggles to keep kids from
resorting to violence; in an Oregon town, a mother (Marcia Gay Harden) grapples
with everyday life with her son after her other son fatally shot students, then
himself, at his school; and in Virginia, a college student working at a gun
shop run by her grandfather (Donald Sutherland) believes turning to the store’s
wares may satisfy her urge for revenge.
Many scenes in these stories are satisfyingly gripping; they’re rounded
out by sharp performances by Whitaker, Harden and a young Christopher Marquette
(Harden’s character’s son). Poignant moments emerge, too, as when we see a
lonely African American teen listening to Johnny Cash songs behind a flimsy
grill at his dangerous gas station job.
On the downside, first-time director Aric Avelino sometimes overplays the
tension in confrontations that one might expect to see in a middling TV drama.
It’s a bit like watching a weaker version of “Crash,” with fewer coincidences.
And although Avelino makes each story mostly convincing, he directs their
endings with little grace. It’s an unfortunate way to wrap up what had been
promising vignettes.
– Advisory: Gun violence and strong language.
– John McMurtrie
‘Mountain Patrol: Kekexili’
Drama. Written and directed by Lu
Chuan. In Tibetan and Mandarin with English subtitles. (Not rated. 89 minutes.
At the Lumiere.)
“Mountain Patrol: Kekexili” takes place along the China-Tibet border in
1996, but this rough-hewn chase picture, in which vigilantes relentlessly
pursue poachers killing off antelope in a desolate expanse of plateaus and
mountains, reminded me of “The Searchers,” the classic John Ford-John Wayne
Western.
Although this wild bunch crisscrosses China’s largest animal reserve in
small trucks instead of on horseback, the single-minded obsessiveness and the
loner mentality are both there. For good measure, writer-director Lu Chuan has
filmed the most realistic (read: way cool) death-by-quicksand scene I’ve ever
witnessed.
We’re told that poachers, who kill antelopes for their hides, leaving the
skinned carcasses to rot, have reduced the Tibetan antelope population from 1
million to about 10,000. Since the Chinese government won’t do anything about
it, vigilante groups culled from villages rimming the Kekexili reserve take
matters into their own hands.
When one of the vigilantes dies at the hands of poachers, the stakes are
raised and a journalist from Beijing (Zhang Lei) arrives to ride with the
mountain patrol, led by the wizened, charismatic Ri Tai (Duo Bujie). The
village is poor, and the women clearly fear for the group’s safety, but the men
have a zest for life and a rigorous code of ethics (for example, when Ri Tai
catches a poacher’s team of helpers — often villagers desperate for money
– he fines them, even writing out a receipt for their records).
They’re the small fry; Ri Tai is after the big fish, a poacher he has been
chasing for three years but has never met.
Other than raising awareness for endangered wildlife, “Mountain Patrol:
Kekexili” doesn’t have anything profound to say, but it has a lot to show.
There are beautiful vistas of snow-capped mountains and unforgiving terrain in
almost every shot — a place so vast and hard to access that, as one
character says, “they say every time you take a step in Kekexili, you leave the
first human footprint.”
I won’t reveal what happens, but I can tell you that the mountain patrol’s
exploits ultimately urged the Chinese government to take the matter seriously,
and government patrols now police the region. The antelope population is back
up to 100,000, and climbing steadily.
– Advisory: Killing of animals, bloody carcasses and some good
old-fashioned human-to-human violence and murder.
– G. Allen Johnson
Arc Angel Gabriel (Andy Whitfield) is the pattern of the seven Arcs to step into the prehistoric war between the Light and the Arcane, whose warriors, seven each side, contain warred over the souls in purgatory for centuries. As Gabriel takes kindly form - as do all the Arcs and the Fallen - he faces an all-powerful enemy in the ruler of purgatory, Sammael (Dwaine Stevenson) who now holds the balance of power. But he revels in the redemptive power of love when he rescues Broad (Samantha Noble) and resolves to end the savage war.
Let me get one thing straight off
the bat - I’m a reviewer who calls a spade a spade. Whether it’s a
big-budget Hollywood star vehicle or a labor-of-love indie, the
question for me is simply "Is it a good movie?" So although
I knew that Facing the Giants had an interesting backstory -
made on a shoestring budget by an Georgia church - it certainly
didn’t predispose me in the movie’s favor. I just popped it into the
DVD player and said "Let’s see!" Well, I saw that this is
one outstanding film.
Facing the Giants introduces
us to the Shiloh Eagles, a high-school football team that’s gone six
years without a winning season, and to its coach, Grant Taylor, who’s
struggling with crises in his personal life as well as a sense of
crushing failure about the team. Can Grant pull his team - and by
extension himself - out of a slump of apathy and discontent, and dare
to dream of success? The answer would seem to be "no,"
until a visitor gives Grant a message: God opens doors that no man
can shut… and Grant has an open door at Shiloh. What will he do
about it? It’s that challenge that sparks Grant to call on God for
inspiration and strength, and to try something very different with
his team.
If I had to summarize my praise for
the film in one word, it would be "daring." You might find
that odd. After all, we usually hear that word tossed around for
films that bare a little more skin or show a little more violence
than the current norm… but that sort of thing isn’t really daring
at all. Hollywood knows perfectly well that pushing the envelope just
a bit in terms of sex and violence is a safe bet.
But if you think about it, what’s
the aspect of the human experience that Hollywood won’t touch with a
ten-foot pole?
Faith.
When was the last time you saw a
film or episode of a TV show in which any of the characters was an
ordinary person who is also a devout Christian? (Note the emphasis on
"ordinary": from their few appearances in the media, you’d
think that all Catholic priests were either 1. exorcists or 2.
pedophiles. Puh-leeze.) When have you seen a character reading the
Bible? Praying? Referencing God as part of making a decision?
Probably very seldom, if ever. And yet, faith is an integral part of
the daily life of many Americans. What kind of weird cultural
disconnect do we have when the media not just ignores it, but
pretends it doesn’t exist? It’s as weird as if we never saw people
falling in love in the movies (except for the occasional obsessed
lover who stabs somebody.) I think we get this vacuum because
depictions of faith challenge us… and we don’t like to be
challenged. It’s a lot easier to just label a film like Facing the
Giants as "oh, it’s preaching at us" - that lets us toss it
aside without actually thinking about its message. Except that it’s
not preaching, anyway: it’s doing that rare thing, giving us a clear
and emotionally honest view of what faith can mean in real life.
That’s why I’d call Facing the
Giants "daring." I’ve never seen such a courageous
exploration of how faith works in people’s lives. We’re not talking
about a one-off scene in which a character offers up a prayer to God
in a crisis; that’s about all we see, if we see anything at all, of
faith in mainstream film. No, we’re talking about how Grant, his wife
Brooke, and the other characters incorporate their faith into every
aspect of their lives. In particular, I found the scenes of Grant’s
struggle with the crises in his life to be particularly moving. Here,
Facing the Giants dares to show us Grant in agonized prayer;
in the struggle to accept God’s will in whatever form it takes; and
in heartfelt gratitude. In Grant, we have a character whose faith
illuminates all aspects of his life, from work to home; it’s no
one-shot moment. (It’s interesting to note that in this film, whose
theme is the work of God in human hearts and lives, no scenes take
place in a church.)
OK, so Facing the Giants is
daring. But is it also a good film? Definitely.
For one thing, it’s not just daring.
It takes on a challenging theme, yes, but so do other films… the
question is what it does with that theme. Facing the Giants
goes to the finish line here by fully exploring the material, and
taking it seriously. For instance, when we see Grant struggling at
various points in the film, Facing the Giants doesn’t shy away
from showing the honest emotion involved. The result is a very moving
portrayal of Grant’s character development. I suspect that some
viewers might see these scenes and criticize the film for being too
emotional or too sentimental, but I really felt that the film is
completely honest, presenting highly emotional content without
pulling on any easy-to-reach strings in the viewers. It may seem a
little over-the-top at first, but (again) only because we’re not used
to seeing portrayals of real faith in film. Imagine the same level of
emotion dealing with romantic love, and it’ll seem perfectly normal,
even quite restrained. (If you’re the kind of person who’d watch
Romeo and Juliet and comment "Hey, why’s he so upset? Why
doesn’t he just get a new girlfriend?" then you might find
Facing the Giants to be too emotional. But your friends
probably don’t like sitting next to you in the theater…)
Plot-wise, Facing the Giants
has the challenge that every sports movie faces: of taking the
typical "rooting for the underdogs" story and making it
fresh. I’d say that it does a solid job here, for a couple of
reasons. One is that the football-game part of the story retains a
certain desirable unpredictability by having both ups and downs
throughout the film; it also stays tightly within the bounds of
realism, not veering over into fairy-tale mode. (As an athlete and
coach myself, I can attest to the fact that people are often capable
of doing a lot more than they think they are. It’s also worth
commenting that yes, there does exist such a creature as the coach
who doesn’t swear.) Another is that while the saga of the Shiloh
Eagles is the main part of the story, there’s also the story of
Grant’s family life interwoven into the plot. Even if you think you
know what’s going to happen in the football plot thread, there’s a
lot of dramatic tension in the other plot threads.
Another reason that Facing the
Giants works well as a film is that the "sports story"
and "faith theme" are not separate elements, but are part
of one well-integrated whole. You know how the coach always manages
to inspire his team? Most of the time that inspiration takes the form
of "Believe in yourself, and nothing is impossible!" But
"believe in yourself" is a typically Hollywoodian mantra in
that it doesn’t really mean much of anything. Facing the Giants
doesn’t even do lip service to that trite phrase, instead taking on
the bracing "Believe in God, and nothing is impossible."
Exactly how the Shiloh Eagles works through that particular idea is
the core of the movie, and Facing the Giants does an
outstanding job of tackling the complexities of it. What does it
really mean to call on God to help you win a football game? It’s a
shining element of the film that it faces up to that question and
incorporates its answer into the film.
Given that Facing the Giants is
an independent film, it’s worth taking a little while to talk about
the level of polish that we see here. The short answer is that it’s
definitely feature-film quality: it’s a testament to the talent of
the filmmakers that they managed to get everything looking exactly as
it should. One of the notes I jotted to myself was that the
filmmakers had really done an amazing job with the cast. Almost
without exception, the acting in the film is solid. How had they
managed to hire that many decent actors and still stay under budget?
Then I found out that the cast was all amateurs: they were real
doctors, teachers, coaches, and students from the filmmakers’
community. That’s simply amazing, and a tribute to both the
dedication of the cast to doing their very best work, and to director
Alex Kendrick for bringing out the best in them.
I also made a note that the actor
they’d cast for the role of Grant was a sterling choice - and
essential, since he really carries the emotional weight of the film
on his shoulders. I was stunned to read the credits and realize that
Alex Kendrick, who turns in an utterly convincing, sensitive, and
moving performance as Grant Taylor, is also the director, co-writer,
co-producer, and editor of the film. Let me tell you, it’s not
particularly common to find genuinely multi-talented performers, so
I’ll just end my review with a hats-off to Mr. Kendrick and a hope
that we’ll see more of his films in the near future.
OBSERVE AND REPORT
(director/writer:
Jody Hill; cinematographer: Tim Orr; editor: Zene Baker; music: Joseph
Stephens; cast: Seth Rogen (Ronnie Barnhardt), Gleam Liotta (Det. Harrison),
Anna Faris (Brandi), Michael Peña (Dennis), Celia Weston (Mom),
Collette Wolfe (Nell), John Yuan (John Yuen), Matt Yuan (Matt Yuen), Dan
Bakkedahl (Mark), Aziz Ansari (Saddamn), Jesse Plemons (Charles), Fran
Martone (Psychologist), Lustful Gambill (Pervert), Alston Brown (Bruce),
Debra-Jayne Brown (Female Reporter), Patton Oswalt (Roger, Toast A Bun
Manager), Ben Best (Detective Nichols), Danny McBride (Drug Dealer), Marlon
Cunningham (Little Kid); Runtime: 86; MPAA Rating: R; processor: Donald
De Line; Warner Bros.; 2009)
"It's not a good film, but it's
a zany one."
Writer-director Jody Hill ("The Foot Fist Way") says he was inspired
by "Taxi Driver," but Observe and Report mostly follows the arc of
the vulgarian badass "Bad Santa" that shamelessly aims to make the viewer
uncomfortable laughing at the film's crudeness without giving it a further
thought. It does not dare to drive into the psyche's dark territory as
did Scorsese armed with things to ponder about such violent fantasies his
antihero displays. The superficial film works best when it has the guileless,
socially awkward, oafish, fearsome looking short cropped-hair suburban
shopping mall security guard, Ronnie Barnhardt (Seth Rogen), acting nutso,
moronic, bigoted, violent and dropping f-bombs. But when it wrestles with
its conscience and tries to come up with something relevant to say, it
gets slapped down for trying to be something it's not?a smart film.
It's not a good film, but it's a funny one; goofy entertainment with
a strange sense of humor that relies on its misanthropy, bleakness and
the relentless bad behavior of its narrow-minded bigoted antihero protagonist
to get laughs. It follows Kevin James' appearance in the family comedy
of "Paul Blart: Mall Cop," with him playing a cuddly mall cop. But Observe
and Report is no sweet family comedy. It focuses on an unhinged loser semi-retarded
shopping mall security guard aspiring to be a bona fide cop who carries
a gun–with owning a gun and having power being the things that push his
macho buttons.
The pathetic Ronnie is the head security guard at the Forest Ridge
Mall shopping center (shot on location in the abandoned Winrock Mall in
Albuquerque, N.M.) and lives at home with his single drunkard slutty mom
(Celia Weston), whom he cares for without complaining (which shows off
his good side). The delusional, power-hungry, overweight, angry, bipolar,
anti-social, racist security guard, gets a charge out of dressing down
his loyal staff of weaklings (made up of wimpy twin Asians-John and Matt
Yuan, a subservient Hispanic-Michael Peña and one feather-brained
white security guard-Jesse Plemons); beating on trespassing skateboarders;
insulting on a daily basis a fiery Moslem mall worker in a kiosk selling
lotions, someone he calls Saddam (Aziz Ansari) who feels so harassed that
he has taken a restraining order out against him; hitting on ditsy buxom
blonde slutty and vulgar party-girl cosmetic salesclerk Brandi (Anna Faris),
his dream girl; and patrolling the mall feeling all pumped up with delusions
of grandeur. When a flasher (Randy Gambill) exposes himself in the parking
lot, the self-important Ronnie cherishes it as the chance of a lifetime
to be heroic and resents that the mall manager, Mark (Dan Bakkedahl), calls
in the real cops after Brandi is flashed in the parking lot by the pervert
and goes into hysterics. Arrogant police detective Harrison (Ray Liotta),
opposed to Ronnie, conducts a real investigation and exposes Ronnie as
a rent-a-cop to be heckled.
But Ray's insults don't stop Ronnie from aspiring to be a bona fide
policeman. So he fills out an application and assigns himself to ride along
with Ray, and when Ray spitefully leaves him stranded on a dangerous drug
buying intersection Ronnie surprisingly overcomes a group of vicious armed
drug dealers with his brutish fighting skills and arrests an underaged
kid for selling crack.
There are two politically incorrect laugh-out-loud scenes that provide
most of the film's belly laughs. The first has Ronnie, off his meds while
his date Brandi is on his meds and tequila. With that scenario Ronnie date-rapes
Brandi, who is barely conscious enough, with puke dripping out of her mouth,
to tell him to keep humping when he becomes sensitive for a moment and
stops (a scene which some might find more sicko than funny); the second
whopper takes place during his psychological evaluation for admission to
the police academy, where Ronnie confidently informs the psychologist (Fran
Martone) that "At this point in my life, I feel like I could destroy some
motherfuckers!"
Faris's physical comedy is superb, while Michael Peña as Ronnie's
second in command falsetto sounding and lisping security guard offers a
funny but sad look at a bromance gone sour. All the while, the delusional
Ronnie parodies the fantasies of Travis Bickle, as he finds an ideal mate
to rescue in the sweet but clichéd "born-again virgin" Nell (Collette
Wolf). She's a verbally abused coffee shop worker at the mall's Toast A
Bun, who the belligerent Ronnie rescues from her bullying boss Roger (Patton
Oswalt) who constantly makes nasty comments about her laziness due to her
temporary foot handicap that requires her to wear a cast and sit down on
the job.
This irate misfit-turned-hero low-brow comedy doesn't paint a rosy
picture of its mall security guards working at deadend positions, but it
leaves us with the feeling that it did latch onto some real proles no matter
how absurd they may seem. One can certainly question the exploitative nature
of the film and how it used these misfits to get a laugh at any cost from
their sad predicament and offered no true moral reaction over such a piggish
main character. How much you are entertained by such a crass comedy depends
on your outlook of what's funny; but it is well-acted and not as unreal
as one might think, though its situations are obviously exaggerated for
shock effects.
REVIEWED ON 4/13/2009 GRADE:
B-
