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City of Life and Death

20 Mar

Review: City of Life and Death

A visceral portrait of the hopeless

By TOM MEEK  |  June 2, 2011
The events surrounding the 1937 invasion of Nanking (the then capital of China) by Imperial Japan are debated by both countries. In this harrowing dramatization of the six-week siege, also known as the Rape of Nanking, Chinese director Lu Chuan attempts to provide insight and balance by representing viewpoints of the occupied as well as that of several Japanese soldiers. Shot in opulent black and white, the atrocities never cease. Captured Chinese soldiers are lined up and executed and women are systematically raped, or forced into “comfort” service until they expire. Ironically, the one savior is a Nazi businessman (John Paisley) who sets up a safe zone for survivors. The recreation of the military campaign stuns in its scope and choreography, making this the most visceral war film since Saving Private Ryan — a portrait of the hopeless in the grasp of a sadistic oppressor.

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Of All the Things

20 Mar

Review: Of All the Things

A touching portrait of a forgotten songwriter

By TOM MEEK  |  April 15, 2009

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Dennis Lambert may be the biggest hit machine you never heard of, a songwriter and producer in the ’70s and ’80s with such classics as “Rhinestone Cowboy,” “Baby Come Back,” and Starship’s now notorious “We Built This City” to his credit. After that, the New York native, who’s now 60, moved to Boca Raton and went into high-end real estate. But a call from the Philippines — where his obscure (in the US) 1972 solo album, Bags and Things, was a smash — sparked a comeback tour. Son Jody Lambert’s touching portrait reveals an artist who’s a perfectionist behind the controls but lets loose with pathos and exuberance in front of a crowd

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Dust to Glory

20 Mar
DUST TO GLORY
Dana Brown, who took over the Endless Summer surf-documentary series from his father with Step into Liquid (2003), returns to dry land with this wham-bam chronicle of the Baja 1000 dirt race. Employing helmet and hood cams, Brown delivers the jolts and the bravado in heart-pumping bursts, including two souped-up pick-ups careering off each other and a roadside RV as they blow through the main drag of a Mexican village packed with locals and spectators — at 140 mph. But Dust to Glory isn’t all breakneck machismo. As in Liquid, Brown probes the subject’s heart, uncovering its history and the bit players who hit the goat paths for the love of the race. The Baja, which began in 1967, has involved as participants or observers such luminaries as James Garner, Steve McQueen and, at the time Brown was filming, Mario Andretti. One intrepid entrant even attempts the entire 1000 miles (15 to 30 hours) on his own as opposed to the usual team of riders/drivers. Brown gets it all down with pit-stop efficiency until the final lap, when the film rambles in on vapors. (97 minutes)

BY TOM MEEK

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Waiting for Supernan

20 Mar

Review: Waiting for Superman

Guggenheim suggests the wait will be long for America’s schools

By TOM MEEK  |  September 28, 2010

If you were wondering about the state of our education system, Davis Guggenheim’s documentary won’t make you feel very optimistic. Terms like “academic sinkhole” crop up as Guggenheim chronicles the bittersweet travails of several families (in Los Angeles, New York City, and DC) readying their children for the school lottery — which will all but decide each child’s fate. Reformers appear in the form of Harlem Children’s Zone champion Geoffrey Canada and Michelle Rhee, the DC super whose brash approach has been blamed for the recent election defeat of Mayor Adrian Fenty. Guggenheim’s culprits are teacher unions, who refuse to accept performance pay, and a tangled bureaucracy; both are hideously exemplified by New York’s “Rubber Room,” where ineffectual teachers sit around, surf the web, and collect a paycheck.

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Next Stop Wonderland

20 Mar

Next Stop, Wonderland

Next Stop WonderlandMiramax head Harvey Weinstein shelled out $6 million for this romantic comedy after catching it at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Is it worth the money? The premise, which revolves around two thirtysomethings (she’s 29 and he’s 35) trying to find their foothold in life, is a tad maudlin and a bit predictable. But the witty script that director Brad Anderson wrote with actor Lyn Vaus is peppered with humorous quips and tart contemplations about love, destiny, and life’s bigger picture. Wonderland will also score points with the local audience, since it was shot in Boston and makes use of such landmarks as Wonderland Racetrack, the New England Aquarium, and the Burren pub in Davis Square.

Hope Davis is Erin, a nurse newly jilted by her left-wing radical boyfriend; Alan Gelfant is Alan, a plumber struggling through college and volunteering at the Aquarium with hopes of becoming a marine biologist. He’s into Frankie the loan shark (Victor Argo) for his tuition, and Frankie, for his own sordid political gain, wants to use Alan to put a scare into Aquarium officials. Even more menacing than Frankie is Erin’s interfering mom, who places personal ads for her in the local papers. Erin and Alan seem perfect for each other, but they spend the entirety of the film circulating through the same urban venues and recursively coming into near-contact. Will they ever meet? That’s the question that keeps the film afloat, and though Davis and Gelfant are amiable enough, the real hook here is Anderson’s energetic craftsmanship and Boston’s opulent cityscape.

— Tom Meek

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Step into Liquid

20 Mar
STEP INTO LIQUID

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT I:Dana Brown and his cinematographers go to great lengths to render each stunt with stomach-fluttering impact.

Dana Brown’s surf documentary (his father, Bruce, directed the Endless Summer films) hops from Rapa Nui to Wisconsin to capture its subject. It’s not just a thrills-and-spills highlight reel: middle-aged men hanging ten on the muddy ripples of Lake Michigan and Texans who wake-surf oil tankers get as much screen time as daredevil Taj Burrow and six-time surf champ Kelly Slater. On the inspirational side: three Irish brothers from Ohio hit the chilly brine of the homeland and then offer their skills to a clinic designed to unite Protestant and Catholic youths. Then there’s the war veteran who makes the cathartic journey back to Vietnam to donate a second board to the Danang Surf Club, 30 years later.

The film prefaces itself by saying “no special effects,” and the younger Brown and his talented team of cinematographers go to great lengths to render each stunt with stomach-fluttering impact. At 87 minutes, Step into Liquid does feel long and over-philosophized, but that doesn’t matter when a hodgepodge of pro-circuit riders and extremers head 100 miles off the coast of San Diego to ride 60-foot curls in shark-infested waters. (87 minutes)

BY TOM MEEK

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Takers

20 Mar

Review: Takers

More like “Takers or Leavers”

By TOM MEEK  |  September 1, 2010

Much of this LA-based actioner directed by John Luessenhop carries on like a generic TV crime drama propped up with a bristling score and rapid-fire flash cuts that redirect you from one disjointed situation to the next. That may work on the tube, but Takers has a hard time making it hold up on the big screen.

The film develops some momentum when the living-large quintet of thieves (led by Idris Elba and featuring singer/slapper Chris Brown and interchangeable honkies Hayden Christensen and Paul Walker) undertake an armored-car heist hatched by a former member recently released from jail (rapper Tip “T.I.” Harris).

The Russian mob and Matt Dillon — pretty much reprising his Crash persona as the grizzled cop trying take down the crew — pop up as plot-point wild cards. It’s no Heat, but it does take in a small haul of thrills.

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My Super Ex-Girlfriend

20 Mar

My Super Ex-Girlfriend

The female Superman

By TOM MEEK  |  July 31, 2006

Uma Thurman seems to have fun with all her roles, even as the battered wife in the Kill Bill series. Here she gets to flutter about in fluff as G-Girl, the female equivalent of Superman — a bespectacled nerd turned lithe anatomical anomaly when jetting to the rescue of mortals. In her Jenny Johnson persona she falls for Matt (Luke Wilson), a screwball suit, when he attempts to retrieve her purse from a thief. They have super sex (the bed goes through the wall), but Jenny/G-Girl grows needy, controlling, and jealous. All of which comes to a boil when Matt’s perky co-worker Hannah (the always game Anna Faris) factors into the picture. Assault with a shark and super stalking follow. The plot’s never too deep or inspired, but director Ivan Reitman’s been down this path before with the likes of Ghostbusters, and he knows when to let his talent take the reins. These three give it their all, and they forge a comic synergy that’s on, even when the material isn’t.

 

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Beyond the Mat

20 Mar

R: ARCHIVE, S: MOVIES, D: 03/16/2000,

Beyond the Mat

Barry Blaustein’s affectionately biased documentary is a behind-the-scenes look into the gaudy world of professional wrestling that profiles three grapplers at different stages of their careers. At the apex of superstardom is Mick “Mankind” Foley, a masked mountain of flesh and “Smackdown” headliner who struggles with the effect of the sport’s violence on his children. Legend Terry Funk is trying to remain in the ring even in his 50s; at the bottom, hovering near self-destruction, is Jake “The Snake” Roberts, who smokes crack and intimates disturbing revelations about his past. Big-name personalities like World Wrestling Federation czar Vince McMahon, the Rock, Chyna, and even political piledriver Jesse Ventura pop up. The film also follows a pair of amateur hopefuls and their not-so-classy promoter.

Blaustein, a screenwriter with mostly Eddie Murphy films to his credit, does a respectable job of getting an evenhanded lock on his subject, though he sullies the effort with gratuitous and sybaritical commentary. No matter — even if you find the nation-sweeping spectacle repugnant, Beyond the Mat is an intriguing exposé. 

— Tom Meek

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Resident Evil

20 Mar
RESIDENT EVIL

In director Paul Anderson’s short career, he’s adapted a video game to the big screen (Mortal Kombat), made a futuristic actioner (Soldier), and a stranded a crew in a bloody chamber of horrors (Event Horizon). Here he does all three at once. The scant plot has to do with a subterranean laboratory, the “Hive,” that’s owned and run by a dubious corporation parent (no, not Enron). A botched espionage attempt unleashes a deadly virus, whereupon a SWAT team descends upon the Hive to secure the facility and prevent further contamination. What the commandos must endure during their journey into the Hive — their game quest, if you will — is a homicidal supercomputer (hello HAL!), a teaming throng of zombies, and a beastly incarnation called the “Licker.”

Much of Resident Evil unfolds like a video game rendered in jump-cut, music-video style. There’s little character development, and no need for it; the perpetual action asks you to watch, not think. The film’s modest and campy success hangs on the magnificent screen presence of Milla Jovovich, an angelic warrior clad in a red dinner dress and black combat boots, with piercing blue eyes that are far more mesmerizing than any hyper-sense wizardry Anderson might concoct. 

By Tom Meek

Issue Date: March 15 – 21, 2002

 

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