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Teenage Paparazzo, The Last Exorcism, Lebanon and Hugh Hefner, Playboy Activist and Rebel

Volkmar Richter
Aug 27th, 2010

A good photo of a movie star looking good, bad or better yet silly is worth big money to the paparazzi who stalk celebrities. The man who plays Vincent Chase on TV investigates how they (including a very young one) do their work. In other films Hugh Hefner explains himself, an exorcist reveals his tricks and Avatar returns in all its 3D glory.

TEENAGE PAPARAZZO: This is a surprisingly thoughtful look at today’s obsession with celebrities, the “insane” world of Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Perez Hilton (no relation, it’s a made-up name) and many others. But not so much Matt Damon who says he’s too normal. They all talk in this lively documentary that turns in on itself like a well-tied knot. The film is made by Adrian Grenier who is a celebrity himself because he plays one in the hit TV show, Entourage. His subject is the mob of photographers, or paparazzi, who stalk the Brads and Britneys to feed images to the tabloids and magazines. But his particular point of entry is one who stood out in the pack, a 13-year-old boy named Austin Visschedyk. That’s him in the centre snapping pics of Adrian and Paris.  

 

Nanny McPhee, Mesrine, Joan Rivers and seven other new films open

Volkmar Richter
Aug 20th, 2010

The list of new films is long this week. There are 10 of them but Nanny McPhee Returns, written by and starring Emma Thompson, tops them all.  Even Joan Rivers and a notorious French bank robber who carried on in Quebec for a time fall short. 

NANNY McPHEE RETURNS: I was only mildly impressed by her first film, five years ago, but it made lots of money and I’m glad it did. It led to this second film which is in a word: wonderful.

Emma Thompson stars as the nanny with the facial wart, protruding tooth and no-nonsense attitude who uses magic to teach her lessons. That allows all manner of visual trickery that children will love. Pigs climbing trees? How about pigs in a synchronized water ballet? There’s also a baby elephant, a mischievous crow called Edelweiss, a cow and several goats that McPhee can choreograph at will. It helps create a charming, magical tone that’ll have you nostalgic for the classic films and books you encountered when you were young.

There are also serious issues in among the whimsy. The film deals with honor, courage, faith, loss through death, good vs. bad behavior and more, without moralizing and often with gentle humor. That’s a tribute to Emma Thompson in her other capacity. She wrote the script, again basing her character on the Nurse Matilda books, but this time writing an entirely original story.

Eat Pray Love, Scott Pilgrim vs The World, Animal Kingdom and Still Walking

Volkmar Richter
Aug 13th, 2010

This week we’ve got Julia Roberts on a woman’s tour of self-fulfillment, and Sylvester Stallone as a man’s man blowing things up or Michael Cera in video game action for the young crowd. Topping them all, though, are two films about family, one from Australia, the other from Japan.

EAT PRAY LOVE: The book has a huge cult following, mostly of women who claim to have been seduced by its charms. I don’t see the same powerful drive in the film, which is gorgeous to see, likeable in many ways but a bit low in passion. And yet that’s what’s supposed to be at it’s heart.

Julia Roberts plays Elizabeth Gilbert, the New York magazine writer who documented her attempts to bring zest back into her life. “I need to be unnerved,” she tells a lover before divorcing her husband and going travelling.  

Get Low, The Other Guys, Step Up 3D and a VIFF sneak peak

Volkmar Richter
Aug 6th, 2010

In Get Low, Robert Duvall  is a recluse who wants to hold a funeral before he dies. Bill Murray, of all people, sets it up.  Will Ferrell is back on track in his latest comedy The Other Guys and the screen sparks with dancers, bubbles, lasers and more in Step Up 3D.

GET LOW: Robert Duvall gives one of the best performances of his career. It’s sure to be mentioned during awards season and … in keeping with the spirit of this film … in his obituary. He plays an old-timer in Depression-era Tennessee who decides to stage a living funeral for himself. For 40 years he’s been a near-recluse on his land outside of town, driving intruders away with a shotgun and stirring up plenty of gossip. Now he wants folks to let him hear all those stories and will raffle off his 300 acres of timber as an incentive. He also needs to unburden himself of one very old secret. “It’s time for me to get low,” he says. This is one story about making amends and re-connecting that is not heavy and tortured. It’s low-key and warm-hearted; revealing character details at a leisurely pace.

Charlie St. Cloud, Dinner with Schmucks, Restrepo

Volkmar Richter
Jul 30th, 2010

That's Zac Efron up there sailing in British Columbia waters.  It's in his new movie Charlie St. Cloud filmed around here exactly one year ago. Young fans will swoon. Steve Carell's fans will enjoy his clueless antics in Dinner with Schmucks but will children lap up the second Cats and Dogs film? And is there enough Afghanistan in a new war film?
   


RESTREPO: This documentary takes you so close inside the Afghanistan war, you’re practically looking down the American soldiers’ rifle scopes with them. You feel their fear, their boredom and their zest for action. Great, but now, especially after the Wikileaks documents, we really need more. Context for instance. How the war is really going. How the soldiers feel about it. How it affects the Aghanis in the nearby villages. We get very little of that. The film  was made by Sebastian Junger (writer of The Perfect Storm) and cameraman Tim Hetherington. Five times over a 14-month period, they were embedded in a platoon fighting in the dangerous Korengal Valley. The title refers to the base camp, named after a popular comrade killed in action.

Salt and L’Affaire Farewell both feature Russian spies. Solitary Man and I Am Love both have characters straying off course.

Volkmar Richter
Jul 23rd, 2010

Your choices comes in two’s this week. You can watch Angelina Jolie’s take on Russian spies in Salt or get far more accurate  in L’Affaire Farewell. You can watch Tilda Swinton or Michael Douglas show off their best acting and their wandering moral compass in I Am Love or Solitary Man.     

 

 

SALT: A few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have given this film any credence at all. Then the news broke. A Russian spy ring was discovered operating in the United States. This film has that, and more. Sleeper agents hiding in the U.S. ready to strike when ordered. Atomic weapons will be used, millions will die and, as one character proclaims, “Russia will rise from the ashes.”  Wild fiction, bad take on reality. The Soviet Union has been gone for 21 years and this film is trying to start the cold war all over again. It even blames the Soviets for killing Kennedy. Odd to see Angelina Jolie, a United Nations envoy in her other life, involved in something like this.

 

Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, plus music and Brazilian films

Volkmar Richter
Jul 16th, 2010

Life gets strange and tilted in the mysterious Inception. It gets very modern in The Kids Are All Right. But The Sorcerer’s Apprentice has to look way back for inspiration. While you’re at it, check out what’s doing at the VanCity Theatre.  

INCEPTION: If you can make it through the first 15-20 minutes, you'll be OK. They're the most elusive in this intricate enigma of a movie. Leonardo DiCaprio comes to on a beach. He steals from a safe, but did he get blank pages or confidential documents? He's in somebody else’s dream, but it starts collapsing. Is it a dream with in a dream and how can he conduct himself when he’s in there? In fact, how did he get in there? Christopher Nolan did this to us once before with his mysterious Memento before making the straightforward super hit The Dark Knight. In a second act he goes overboard with exposition and then finally gets to the heart of this thriller, an intricately planned heist, of sorts.

The Girl Who Played with Fire, Despicable Me, Wild Grass

Volkmar Richter
Jul 9th, 2010

The second film in the blockbuster Millenium series is here. Lisbeth Salander is accused of murder and we learn her back story. Drunkard brothers and stalking romantics feature in two other imported films while there are big animated laughs in Despicable Me.

 

THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE: This second film in the trilogy was originally made for television, so don’t expect another one as great as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. There’s less tension, there’s less sense of discovery drawing you in and the pace and editing are not as crisp. Also, the limitations of the novels, entertaining as they are, become more apparent with improbabilities and coincidence. Still, it’s another good yarn told here, one that again takes us down into some grimy depths of Swedish society. This time it’s the sex trade worked by women imported from Eastern Europe and run by Russian gangsters. (The third film will show how the trade reaches up into high levels of government).

 

Twilight #3 is big, the newly restored Metropolis is bigger and Cyrus is oddball fun

Volkmar Richter
Jul 2nd, 2010

The news and the hype have been non-stop about these two. He’s a vampire. She’s ready. The third Twilight film heats up the romance. Meanwhile Cyrus has a major attachment to his mother, Metropolis returns with 25 lost minutes restored and The Last Airbender gets ponderous.

 

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE: It’s the third in the series and Bella finally decides between the cool vampire and the hot werewolf to be her boyfriend. It takes her the whole film, with lots of back and forth, and in a  temperature-raising first, passionate kisses with each of them. She (Kristen Stewart) practically offers herself to Edward (Robert Pattinson) but he turns out to be a proponent of abstinence. That’s him with her among the flowers above, where she quotes Robert Frost on desire: “I hold with those who favor fire.”

 

Winter’s Bone outclasses the big guys, Tom Cruise, Adam Sandler, Coco and Igor

Volkmar Richter
Jun 25th, 2010

 

What did Jennifer Lawrence get this week that Tom Cruise and Adam Sandler didn’t? Great reviews for her work in Winter’s Bone. Also read about Coco and Igor, a Broken Social Scene concert film and a batch of other movie events coming this week.   

WINTER’S BONE: Don’t miss this one, partly because you’re bound to hear much more about it come award season (it has already won two big ones at Sundance) and mostly because it is one of the two or three best films of the year so far. It’s bleak and occasionally harrowing but with such a strong pulse of real life that it’s not only watchable but thoroughly riveting. The setting is southern Missouri, the Ozark Mountains, the land of hillbillies and old timey music, an image  recalled in a brief musical interlude with Marideth Sisco, a retired journalist and student of the local culture, leading a group of guitar, banjo and fiddle players at a house party. That image is shattered though by the story here. Jennifer Lawrence plays a teenager caring for two siblings and an invalid mother but searching for her father. He had put up the family home for bail on a drug charge and then disappeared. The quest brings us scenes of rural poverty, family loyalty, a code of silence and a drug culture based on cooking and using methamphetamine. The film feels absolutely authentic.

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