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The Descent

18 Mar

The Descent

One word…gore.

By TOM MEEK  |  August 1, 2006

THE DESCENT: Every arterial spray and bone crack makes a point.

Few gore fests (including Hostel and Saw) make me cringe, but this one had my stomach on edge even before the team of spelunking sports babes winds up face to face with albino cannibals two miles underground. It’s everything The Cave (2005) might have been and more. Neil Marshall (who mined similar terrain in Dog Soldiers) works masterfully on a small budget to invoke claustrophobia and paranoia as the squad squeezes through narrow pipes and ultimately gets sealed in. Soon after, a fall results in a shinbone grotesquely protruding through the skin, and the women stumble into a dank ossuary of sorts. The ensuing carnage is ample but not gratuitous; every arterial spray and bone crack makes a point. In such circumstances, it might be too much to ask for character development, though Aussie dancer/singer Natalie Mendoza holds her own as the can-do leader, and Shauna Macdonald prevails as the weak link who finds her inner Ripley.

 

 

 

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The Express

18 Mar

The Express

Football bio-pic offers a reflection on our not-so-proud past

By TOM MEEK  |  October 9, 2008

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Ernie Davis may be the greatest running back never to play in the NFL. He was the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy, in 1961, and though the color of his skin didn’t break new ground (Jackie Robinson had already suited up for the Dodgers, and Jim Brown preceded him at Syracuse), this bio-pic offers a stark reflection on our not-so-proud past. Gary Fleder, who’s known mostly for pre-fab work (Kiss the Girls and Runaway Jury), and his screenwriter, Charles Leavitt (working from Robert Gallagher’s book The Elmira Express), choose to recount the bittersweet rise to stardom not so much in the big moments (winning the 1959 national championship) as by focusing on Davis’s personal trials and triumphs before he became a household name and those he experienced later, after he was diagnosed with leukemia. It’s a smart call, showing Davis vulnerable as a stuttering youth in the face of bullies and then as a young man challenged by a childhood friend turned radical to use his blossoming star power for the greater African-American political cause.

The Pride of the Yankees and Brian’s Song were poignant depictions of promise, courage, and greatness cut short, and the actors threw their souls into their characterizations. The same holds true here. Rob Brown (Finding Forrester) portrays Davis as torn by optimism and anger. (A scene in which Davis and his black teammates are not allowed to attend the national-championship banquet in Dallas does more in that brief moment to bring to light past racial inequities than the whole of Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna.) And Dennis Quaid’s portrayal of ’Cuse coach Ben Schwartzwalder, a decent man sometimes forced to choose between virtue and victory, personifies the conflicted American conscience of the era.

 

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Cycle Killers

17 Mar

Cycle killers

With its own porn, polo, and personalities, bike culture in Boston isn’t just about getting to work any more

By TOM MEEK  |  April 30, 2010

From atop their mounts, the participants — some with helmets and gloves, many more in just T-shirts — jostle one another for a chance to whack the ball with their care-crafted mallets from one goal line to the other.

“I want to see some blood!” screams a spectator in fishnet stockings and glittering hot pants as others nod in degenerate agreement.

VIEW:Photos from Boston bike polo matches

Clearly, this isn’t the sport of gentlemen unfolding at, say, the Myopia Hunt Club in Hamilton, but rather urban bike polo at a street-hockey pit in Allston. Many are dressed in black and look like refugees from a club Goth night. Participants sometimes wear Mexican-wrestler masks, while others have no shirts on at all.  Continue reading →

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Rambo

17 Mar

Rambo

Inadvertent camp

With Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone closed out his pugilist franchise on a sentimental note; here, as director, co-writer, and star of what might be the final First Blood chapter, Sly seems to be angling for the same effect, the difference being that Rambo is devoid of humanity. We catch up with the title nihilist in Thailand wrangling cobras and pythons. A bevy of cloying missionaries entreat him to take them up-river into war-torn Myanmar (formerly Burma) so they can deliver medical supplies. As the film has it, the Burmese army is violating human rights as a matter of policy — rape, land-mine games, and death by pig nibbling are just a few of the gory gems. That shit doesn’t wash with Rambo. Machete-honed, the real carnage begins. Devotees will find rewards in the action sequences; the punch-drunk dialogue, however, reduces matters to inadvertent camp. Let’s hope the fork has been firmly planted.

 

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Rocky Balboa

17 Mar

Rocky Balboa

Solid for 15 rounds

It’s been 16 years since the last Rocky, and even then, most thought of star/creator Sylvester Stallone as a has-been kicking a dead horse. But we’re talking boxing, a sport propelled by kitsch and lore. So into the ring the 60-year-old actor goes again, outdoing George Foreman’s return by nearly a decade and a half, but before the big brawl against the undefeated champion (generic, real-life boxer Antonio Tarver) there’s the Rock update: Adrian has passed (perhaps Talia Shire got tired of being a shrew in the later Rockys), and as we learned in Rocky V, the aging pugilist is of humble means and estranged from his son. Stallone, who also writes and directs, is still able to conjure the rough and earnest underdog with infectious results. And the film is surprisingly wry, especially when Burt Young as Rock’s morose brother-in-law, Paulie, is on screen. It’s no knockout, but it does go a solid, nostalgic 15 rounds.

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In the Land of Blood and Honey

17 Mar

Review: In the Land of Blood and Honey

Angelina Jolie’s feature directorial debut

By TOM MEEK  |  January 5, 2012

Much has been said about Angelina Jolie’s feature directorial debut set against the bloody Bosnian conflict of the 1990s — vanity project, plagiarism, and so on. Putting that aside, Jolie has loosely reworked the story of Romeo and Juliet in an infamous setting familiar from CNN but here seen from the inside. Serb police officer Danijel (Goran Kostic, looking very Daniel Craig–like) and Ajla (Zana Marjanovic), a Muslim artist, make a fetching Sarajevan pair until the war hits and they’re relegated to opposite ends of the ethnic equation. Muslim women are brutally raped as a tactic, so Danijel, now an officer and the son of a prominent general, attempts to shield Ajla. His power is limited, and fate and internecine rage take over. Jolie’s narrative power also has limitations, but thanks to the cast and chaotic historical backdrop, the horror of hate and war takes on a compelling human face

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The Game

17 Mar

R: ARCHIVE, S: MOVIES, D: 09/18/1997,

The Game

David Fincher’s grandiloquent mind fuck works tirelessly to maintain its heightened, if heavily engineered, state of paranoia. The film’s relative success lies in the dark, eerie moodiness that the director elevated to an art form in Seven. Here, however, his visual palette barely masks a slight, manipulative plot.

As Nicholas Van Orton, Michael Douglas resurrects his Wall Street creep, Gordon Gekko, except this time Douglas’s scrutinizing power broker has a hole in his life: he lacks love and excitement. So for his 48th birthday, Nicholas’s loopy black-sheep brother Conrad (Sean Penn catching minimal screen time) gives him a gift certificate for a high-concept gaming experience, a personalized adventure that comes to the player. Nicholas’s endeavors are surprisingly mundane as he is plagued by a series of minor life tragedies and near-Twilight Zone encounters that imply something larger and more devious is at work. The rocky blur between reality and fantasy aspires to be a Hitchcockian After Hours, but at two hours plus, The Game gets played out early on. Douglas and Penn help keep things credible with solid performances, and Deborah Kara Unger extends the sexual immediacy of her Crash role by playing the object of desire who doesn’t wear any panties.

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Kolya and Prisoner of the Mountain

17 Mar

R: ARCHIVE, S: REVIEWS, D: 02/06/1997, B: Tom Meek,

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Foreign correspondence

Kolya and Prisoner are moving tales of war

by Tom Meek

KOLYA. Directed by Jan Sverak. Written by Zdenek Sverak. With Zdenek Sverak, Andrej Chalimon, Ondrez Vtchy, Lilian Mankina, Iren Livanova, and Libuse Safrankova. At the Kendall Square.

PRISONER OF THE MOUNTAINS. Directed by Sergei Bodrov Sr. Written by Sergei Bodrov Sr., Arif Aliev, and Boris Giller. With Sergei Bodrov Jr., Oleg Menshikov, Jemal Sikharulidze, Susanna Mekhralieva, Alexei Jharkov, and Valentina Fedotova. At the Kendall Square.

During the first half of the 1990s, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences developed a penchant for awarding the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar to such lite romps as Mediterraneo and Belle Époque while slighting works with real integrity and depth, like Raise the Red Lantern and Farewell My Concubine. In 1994, the Academy interrupted this trend of false merit when it bestowed the distinction upon Nikita Mikhalkov’s stirring masterpiece Burnt by the Sun. This year, with the submission of the Czech Republic’s Kolya and the Russian Prisoner of the Mountains, the Academy will have two more opportunities to atone for past miscues.  Continue reading →

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Welcome to Sarajevo

17 Mar

R: ARCHIVE, S: MOVIES, D: 01/08/1998, B: Tom Meek,

Bosnia calling

Michael Winterbottom’s scathing Sarajevo

by Tom Meek

WELCOME TO SARAJEVO, Directed by Michael Winterbottom. Written by Frank Cottrell Boyce, based on the novel Natasha’s Story, by Michael Nicholson. With Stephen Dillane, Woody Harrelson, Marisa Tomei, Emira Nusevic, Kerry Fox, Goran Visnjic, Emily Lloyd, and James Nesbitt. A Miramax Pictures release. At the Kendall Square.

Michael Winterbottom is perhaps the most-talented, least-known filmmaker of the moment. His fledgling accomplishments — Butterfly Kiss, the tangy road movie about two lesbian serial killers, and Jude, featuring the red-hot Kate Winslet in an idiosyncratic updating of the quintessential Thomas Hardy novel — demonstrated the British director’s knack for visual storytelling. But neither film would serve as an appropriate yardstick for what Winterbottom has achieved with Welcome to Sarajevo, the first cinematic rendering of the Bosnian conflict.

Based upon British war correspondent Michael Nicholson’s novel Natasha’s Story, and piquantly peppered with other journalistic reports from the front line, Welcome to Sarajevo is a blistering docudrama, as refreshing as it is horrifying. Told through the eyes of Western journalists, the film doesn’t concern itself with the nebulous details of the Bosnian Serbs’ terrorist assault on the city that hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics; instead it’s a simple, eloquent, chronicle of Sarajevans’ daily struggle to survive. Winterbottom sets the film’s stark tone in the unassuming opening sequence as his camera follows the ceremonial preparations of a bride and her wedding party. The pageant frolics along, carefree and unconcerned, until the rip of a sniper’s bullet terminates the moment of jubilation and ushers in the shocking reality of civil war.  Continue reading →

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Color of Paradise

16 Mar

Color of Paradise (reviewed 1999 in The Boston Phoenix)

Majid Majidi’s portrait of a torn Iranian family is riveting both in scope and emotional texture. At the center of Majidi’s universe is Mohammad (the arresting Mohsen Ramezani), an eight-year-old blind boy who spends the school year at an institute in Tehran and then journeys to the highlands to be with his family for the summer hiatus. As the film opens, Mohammad’s father (Hossein Mahjub, the film’s only professional actor) is late to pick up his son and when he finally does arrive; he is reticent to take possession. At home in the hills, where life unfolds in small simple strokes, Mohammad is warmly welcomed by his grandmother and sisters, but his father, a widower, remains disdainful.   He perceives the boy’s handicap as an obstacle to his proposed marriage with a woman from a strict Islamic family and tries to place Mohammad outside the homestead. The self-interested action causes a divide and triggers a chain of tragically fateful events.

Majidi, who impressed American audiences with “Children of Heaven,” makes a visually stunning film, and yet communicates the lack of sight with sensual brilliance: be it Mohammad pawing through a pile of leaves to save a hatchling or a gentle touch applied to his sister’s face to measure her growth. Like Mohammad’s ever-reaching fingers, and the soul they bear, “Color of Paradise” is poetically subtle and offers great rewards.

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