There are so many new films this week, I haven’t been able to catch them all. There’s Daniel Craig in a western, Werner Herzog in a cave in 3D, Steve Coogan having dinner, a chimp treated like a human being, Smurfs in New York and three artists encountering tragedy.
Here’s the whole list.
Cowboys & Aliens 2 stars
The Trip 3 1/2
Project Nim 4
Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3 1/2
The Smurfs 2 1/2
Trust 3 1/2
Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune 4
Beautiful Darling 3
I Am Secretly an Important Man 2 1/2
Crazy, Stupid Love --
The Drummond Will --
COWBOYS & ALIENS: Some critics predicted this might be a guilty pleasure, “wry but spry” or at worst, an interesting train wreck. It is none of those. This movie is a bore. That’s after a promising start as Daniel Craig wakes up with a metal device on his wrist, a wound on his side and no memory. He wanders into a town called Absolution, which suggests we’re in for an allegory with a Biblical subtext. No such thing develops. The story, from a graphic novel, a comic book if you will, is all surface with no wider meaning. It’s simply a chance to put two genres together as a novelty.
Stock western characters (Harrison Ford as a gruff rancher, Paul Dano as his crazy-wild son, Sam Rockwell as a meek shopkeeper) suffer attacks by flying machines from outer space. Some are taken away into a mother ship for experiments by slimy creatures who apparently are really after gold. Olivia Wilde is also an alien, although she is on the cowboy side in this story. It makes little sense, because not much is explained, and there’s little tension although you get lots of noisy action. Quite a few horror movies have been set in the old west. This one shows why mash-ups of sci fi and the western are almost never done. (Oakridge, Rio, Scotiabank, suburban theatres) 2 out of 5
THE TRIP: Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are together again with director Michael Winterbottom for this big helping of apparently improvised wit served up absolutely dry and hilarious. Last time, 6 years ago, they made the Tristam Shandy movie which included a very funny scene in which the two comedians tried to outdo each other with their Al Pacino impressions. There at it again. This time they add Richard Burton, Anthony Hopkins, Christopher Lee (“Come come Mr. Bond. You enjoy killing as much as I do”) and most notably Michael Caine (“You were only supposed to blow the doors off”.)
Ostensibly they’re touring Northern England to review restaurants which brings us a bit of local scenery and a lot of back and forth banter (and needling) over dinner. Brydon is ever cheerful. Coogan always looks a little concerned, appropriately so because he’s on the phone now and then to his American agent or his girlfriend and not hearing much that’s encouraging from them. It’s fiction but also a riff on his real life and career. In his dreams, Ben Stiller is anxious to work with him but a newspaper prints a vile headline about him. The humor is biting, understated and ironic. The movie is low-key and a bit choppy, understandably so since it’s edited down from a six-part BBC-TV series. (5th Avenue Cinemas) 3 ½ out of 5
PROJECT NIM: This is real science as high drama—and tragedy. Curiosity drives an experiment but hubris undoes it. Or maybe it was a hard bit of reality. In 1973, a new-born chimp was forcibly taken from its mother and put with a human mother, to raise like one of her own. Nim, as he was called, might add a new spin to the nature-nurture debate and if he was taught sign language might be able to communicate his thoughts. That was the hypothesis of a Columbia University professor but that was not the result.
Nim was breastfed, smoked marijuana, shifted homes and families, was taken on by other teachers, appeared on magazine covers, on Sesame Street and in a David Suzuki TV segment. His language skills, though, seem to have developed not much more than your cat asking for food or to be let outside. And like a puppy that starts off cute, Nim grew big and found the wild animal within. When he took to attacking his teachers, the experiment was called off and his story took some even more dramatic turns. All this is told in remarkably detailed recollections by people who worked with him and in archival footage (plus a few re-creations) assembled by director James Marsh. His last documentary, Man on Wire, won the Academy Award. This film is not as tense and gripping, but, in exploring what exactly it means to be human, it is just as powerful. (International Village) 4 out of 5
CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS: Last time, Werner Herzog took us to the Antarctic to meet some eccentric people working there. Now he takes us back 32,000 years to ponder some ancient people through their artwork. “Do they dream? What are their hopes?” he asks with the philosophical curiosity he’s famous for. He’s looking at, as he says, “one of the greatest discoveries in the history of human culture”. They’re charcoal drawings of horses, lions, bears, even rhinos and many other animals perfectly preserved in the Chauvet Cave in southern France.
The site is strictly off-limits to all but a few researchers but Herzog managed to go in with a 3-D camera and a small crew.
The pictures he brought are not quite glorious as some have proclaimed, but certainly impressive and stir up our sense of wonder and imagination. Horses are running in a group, their outlines blending into each other. Eight legs simulate movement. A woman who may be half-bison is only partially visible. A reindeer was started by one artist and finished by another, 5,000 years later. Shadows play on the drawings and the shape of the rock walls. The camera brings us close but doesn’t stay in any one spot long enough. We really need more time to study the remarkably complex work of these artists. Herzog moves too, to visit experts on ice age art, including one who plays him The Star-Spangled Banner on a primitive flute. All in all an absorbing rumination on humanity, then and now. (International Village) 3 1/2 out of 5
THE SMURFS: To get a handle on this film you have to flash back to two cultural markers from your childhood. There’s the Smurfs TV cartoon show, of course, whimsical, gentle, humanistic. There’s not a great deal of that in this new movie version. You do get a lot of bashing and crashing comic violence as in the Home Alone films. The director worked on two of them and brings a lot of that sensibility to this project. Gargamel gets it repeatedly, and (caution to animal lovers) so does his cat. The writers, who have been involved with some of my least favorite movies, including The Zookeeper and even worse, Norbit, have puts in lots of cultural references for the parents and modern touches the kids will take to.
Surprisingly, despite the dollar-signs that drive this film, it works. It’s rousing, loud, hyper-active and quite funny. I don’t remember a life lesson, but they usually stick one in so there probably is one. The story has six Smurfs stranded in New York. They whooshed through a vortex from their village and are trying to find their way back. Neil Patrick Harris, who’s life, apartment and office they overrun, tries to help. Hank Azaria, having great fun as Gargamel, is in pursuit. Katy Perry is the voice of Smurfette, about whom there are some adolescent jokes, and Jonathan Winters is Papa Smurf. (He played Grandpa in the TV series and uses that same tone here). Joan Rivers has a cameo. Little kids won’t understand. The older ones will have fun. (The Dolphin and many suburban theatres) 2½ out of 5
TRUST: Here’s a film worth your attention as a cautionary tale in these days of the internet and social media. Despite lots of publicity, it never made it to Vancouver and has just come out on DVD and BluRay. It’s an intense drama about internet stalking and, judging by some recent news items, it’s dreadfully timely. A 14-year-old in Chicago, played by a terrific newcomer Liana Liberato, is charmed by a teenage boy she met on line in a chat room and agrees to meet him at a mall. He turns out to be over 30 but sweet talks her anyway, into his car and his hotel room where he rapes her. There’s no violence involved and the incident is portrayed by suggestion, not graphically. The film is more concerned with what happens then, to her at school, with her friends and most of all within her family. Clive Owen plays her father, in one his best performances ever, moving easily from concerned to feeling powerless to blustering angry.
The film is directed by David Schwimmer. Yes, Ross from TV’s Friends, but also a supporter of a California rape treatment centre. His film is authentic because everything in it is based on interviews with victims. The pedophile carefully ingratiates himself with the girl, playing on her insecurities with flattery and understanding, all seen in texting printed on screen. She is so charmed she actually takes his side when the police investigate and her father rages. She even denies there was a rape. There are some slips in logic and the father’s outburst at a volleyball game is excessive but they only cause a few dents in this strong film. 3 ½ out of 5
The PACIFIC CINEMATHEQUE is showing three films about artists who died young.
PHIL OCHS: THERE BUT FOR FORTUNE: The “I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore” singer gets an admiring biography with lots of praise from the likes of Joan Baez, Peter Yarrow and Tom Hayden, but not a word from Bob Dylan who was a friend early on but all but snubbed him when he gained fame. I got to know Ochs in Toronto where he often played the Yorkville clubs and know how much he ached to get Dylan’s respect. I’m also impressed how good a portrait this is, covering his political intensity, his desire to grow as a songwriter and his humor. There’s stuff missing, of course, and it’s sad to hear his later decline and eventual suicide described, but with many film clips and bits from some 35 of his songs, this is a first-rate portrait of an activist artist. 4 out of
BEAUTIFUL DARLING: This bio gives us another look inside the self-obsessed world of Andy Warhol. Candy Darling, actually James Slattery of Long Island, wanted to be a movie star like in the fan magazines. Andy let her hang out with his crowd, put her into a couple of films and then dumped her. She appeared in a few others and once, at a Hollywood premiere, actually imagined she was a star. It was all a delusion, though, because she only played and looked the part.
She was a transgender person who never had the operation but took estrogen and dressed as a blonde bombshell. She made little money, slept on people's couches and may have turned tricks now and then. But she was indulged the cool people and was immortalized by Lou Reid in a couple of songs. That's her in Walk on the Wild Side. Her photo is on an album by The Smiths. Among the many folks who appear to tell her story, Jeremy Newton, a long-time friend and acolyte, is the most intimate and writer Fran Lebowitz is the most direct. "Candy was a fantasy," she says. "She played herself." She died of cancer at age 29 possibly brought on by the very means she used to live her fantasy. Quite a touching film and a Vancouver premiere. 3 out of 5
I AM SECRETLY AN IMPORTANT MAN: And actually the most tragic of these three entertainers. Jesse Bernstein was one of those guys who appear on the fringes of the avant-garde and parlay personal problems into an artistic niche. He had mental, medical and drug problems when he deserted California for Seattle and was adopted by the hangers on around the grunge music scene as a guy who knew what the tough life was all about because he had already lived it. He wrote about it in gritty poems which he recited in a raspy voice, sometimes opening for bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden. There’s even a clip of him yelling at a heckler that “this IS music.” In another clip, he’s got a live mouse in his mouth. A brother says he loved to push things just to “kick up a fuss.” He was voted Seattle’s best poet but succumbed to his demons with drugs, drinks and eventually suicide. A grim and grungy bio and again a Vancouver premiere. 2 1/2 out of 5
For times, dates and other info on these three films go to www.cinematheque.bc.ca/ and while you’re there also check out the summer film noir series which starts Thursday with two classics, The Killers and The Lady from Shanghai. I’ll write about a few others next week.
Also now playing …
CRAZY, STUPID LOVE: Because of a scheduling conflict I haven’t seen this one yet, but I hear good things about it. Odd that, because the idea doesn’t sound that promising. Steve Carell plays a man dumped by his wife (Julianne Moore) and re-introduced to the dating scene by a proficient skirt chaser (Ryan Gosling). His mentoring involves a hair and clothes tune-up and a lot of hitting on women in bars. But the teacher has some lessons of his own to learn. (The Ridge and several suburban theatres)
THE DRUMMOND WILL: This low-budget black comedy from England, made by and starring a bunch of unknowns, has been popular at festivals although it’s hard to imagine why from some of the reviews I’ve read. “Uneven but diverting” and veering towards slapstick, says one; “Hammy” and “not original” says another. Two brother return home when their father dies and discover a suspiciously large amount of money, a colleague who almost immediately dies and an ethical dilemma that leads to more deaths and that slapstick. (Granville Theatre)
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