Lock, Stock, and Two Film Geeks

It’s not often on Lock, Stock, and Two Film Geeks that we discuss the biggest movies of the week, but I’m going to do it this week.  I wish it was because I felt really passionately about it, that it was some work of art worth presenting to the masses.  Unfortunately, this is not the case with Alice in Wonderland.  I’m reviewing the new live action Tim Burton interpretation of this children’s story mostly because, well, I saw the film.  Actually, this is the most I’ve ever wanted to have a notepad and pen with me in the theater, I had quite a few thoughts, and hopefully most of them will make it to the page.  As I mentioned in Taking Stock, our weekly column about the films coming out this weekend, I wasn’t too hyped up about this movie, citing being tired of the “Tim Burton redoes a children’s movie in his style” thing.  And I was about right, I got major Charlie and the Chocolate Factory vibes, amongst many other films that I’ll try and list throughout the review.  Overall there’s things to like here, but even despite my relatively low expectations, I was still disappointed with this film. Continue reading

Un Prophete, France/s entry to the Academy’s Best Foreign Film category, has been compared to The Godfather, a comparison that many will think presumptuous, undeserved or euro-centric.  Though the film’s protagonist is no Michael Corleone, the rise of the film’s titular character is just as majestic and engaging as his Seventies, American counterpart.

Malik El Djebena (Tahar Rahim) is a nineteen-year-old Beur (formal term for an Arab immigrant in France) living on the streets of France when he is arrested and given a six-year sentence.  He has no family, no friends in or outside of prison and is illiterate.  Needless to say, he has all the odds stacked against him.

Continue reading

Let’s just be clear from the start.  It’s not often these days that a film causes me to constantly think to myself, This is so awesome. But sitting in a darkened theater, watching Shutter Island, the latest from Martin Scorsese and Leonardo Di Caprio, that is exactly what I was thinking.  Martin Scorsese is a master of the medium, so this is certainly no surprise, but seldom has his work been this much fun.  Not only does this film pay homage to the greats of the thriller genre while fleshing itself as a full-fledged entry itself, but it’s also an example of some of the finest filmmaking execution I’ve seen in some time.

As always, I’ll stay brief with my synopsis.  Di Caprio plays Teddy Daniels, a federal marshal who, alongside his partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) goes to an island to investigate the disappearance of a patient from a highly secure mental institution for the criminally insane.  And let the eerie events ensue. Continue reading

Works of great cinematic art are a funny thing.  Often, they are the result of a brilliant script, fantastic direction and solid performances by able actors.  Sometimes, however, greatness can be achieved entirely by accident, or in spite of itself.  Such is the curious case of The Room.
Continue reading

As someone who tries to keep up on important filmmakers, both within my wheelhouse and outside it, I’d read quite a bit about Pedro Almodóvar.  Unfortunately, since my viewing of Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! in college was cancelled, I’ve never actually had the pleasure of seeing one of his films.  That changed this week, when I finally got the chance to sit down and watch Volver on beautiful blu-ray.  This is a film that’s been sitting in my queue for ages, so the big question is: was it worth the wait?  And should I have pushed it up sooner?

Volver, for those unaware, and I’m sure there are many, is the Spanish film from 2006 that got Penélope Cruz her first Oscar nomination.  It’s one of those films that to explain the plot too heavily can hurt some of the surprise, so I’ll try and be brief.  Volver is first and foremost a story about multiple generations of family, particularly woman, and how they relate to each other and deal with their problems.  The central characters are Penelope Cruz’s Raimunda, her teenage daughter Paula, and her sister Sole.  There’s a slight supernatural/mysterious element thrown into the mix as well because after the death of Raimunda and Sole’s aunt, their dead mother begins “appearing” to Sole. Continue reading

Where does evil come from?  A complex question with a number of debatable answers, no doubt, but in Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, the answer is simple: home sweet home.

Continue reading

When a literary classic is adapted, particularly a children’s book with plentiful illustrations, there can be a lot of demand for the film to live up to the memories of our childhood, both in tone and quality.  No, this article will not be about Where the Wild Things are, though the film was a favorite of mine this year.  Instead I’m going to take a look at the children’s book adaptation that many viewers thought they would hate after seeing the previews, and see how it really turned out first hand.  How did Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs really turn out?

In talking to friends, there seems to be a lot of misconceptions about this film.  The fact that the visual style was such a departure from the book’s illustrations was certainly jarring upon first seeing the trailers, and it’s comedic/slapstick tone also seemed to counter the more serious, storytelling mood of the book.  While both of these things do in fact different greatly from, it is not out of disrespect to the material.  Instead what the filmmakers have decided to do is create something entirely different, using the plot of the book simply as a launching point or logline for the kind of film they wanted to make. Continue reading

Bromance; a twentieth century term that describes the rambunctious platonic relationship between a man and “his boys.”  Although there have always been jokes about the borderline homoeroticism inherent to bromance, no one has ever presented it in the way writer/director Lynn Shelton has in Humpday.

Just as married couple Ben (Mark Duplass) and Anne (Alycia Delmore) call it a night, Ben’s old college friend Andrew (Josh Leonard) shows up unannounced.  Although the two revel in their shared past, its clear that both men are in two entirely different places and have little in common; Ben has settled into a suburban life complete with house, white picket fence, and the intention of raising a family, while Andrew has been living life on the road a la Kerouac as a wandering bohemian artist.

While out at a party, Ben and Andrew begin to drunkenly discuss Hump Fest, a local event in which amateurs submit artsy pornographic videos, and come up with the idea of videotaping themselves having sex with each other, as the idea of two heterosexual men engaged in homosexual activity is particularly edgy.  The next day, both men continue discussing the idea and become obsessed with it for different reasons; Andrew wants to finally see an artistic idea through to completion, and Ben wants to rebel against his own vanilla temperament that accompanies suburban living. Continue reading

After seeing the film Inglourious Basterds, I found I had a craving for more films focused on antagonizing the Nazis.  As such, I thought it would be great to spotlight a recent film that many people missed, Valkyrie, and possibly compare it to Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece a bit as well.  Valkyrie, the collaboration between Bryan Singer and Tom Cruise, was meant to be Bryan Singer’s small film but became a bigger budget spectacle once Cruise became attached.  Turned off by the lack of accents (I’ll get to this later, don’t worry), many people didn’t end up seeing this movie, and it’s considered to be a box office failure.  But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not worth a rental.  Let’s take a look at it.

For a while I thought Bryan Singer could do no wrong.  First, he was responsible for the first two X-Men films, which at the time were among my favorite comic book adaptations ever made.  Then I went back and looked at his previous work, which of course included the classic The Usual Suspects and the lesser known gem Apt Pupil.  And let’s not forget he helped create and was very involved with one of my favorite shows, House.  While I hadn’t seen everything he’d done, everything I’d gotten a hold of seemed to be good.  I was disappointed when he left the X-Men series to do Superman Returns, but wasn’t as disappointed with the actual product as many were.  I think he achieved what he was trying to do, and it was overall an enjoyable film, just not really the film I wanted to see out of Singer or Superman. Continue reading

Films that are visually stunning tend to be explosion-ridden action vehicles or art house yarns with little content to support its surreal imagery.  A Single Man rises above and beyond expectations due to Tom Ford’s artistic vision and Colin Firth’s complex, emotional performance.

As a very successful fashion designer, there was probably a lot of cynicism towards Tom Ford’s decision to try his hand at directing A Single Man.  Granted, it would look pretty, but, not unlike photo spreads and fashion shows, the actors would be as lithe and well dressed as they were devoid of all human emotion, and the story would be lost behind glitz, glamour and Dolce and Gabgana.  Who would have thought the A Single Man would emerge as one of the fines films of the year?

Continue reading