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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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Step into Liquid
20 Mar
Takers
20 MarReview: Takers
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.
My Super Ex-Girlfriend
20 MarMy Super Ex-Girlfriend
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.
Beyond the Mat
20 MarR: 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
Resident Evil
20 Mar
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Aeon Flux
20 MarAEON FLUX
| Peter Chung’s animated MTV series, which made scores of young male anime fans sing with joy and lust in the mid ’90s, gets resurrected and plastered on the big screen. What’s missing is Chang’s terse, cyberpunk edge; instead, 400 years in the future, after Earth has been decimated by a plague and the remainder of mankind lives in cordoned utopia, we get toothless melodrama and convoluted political machinations. As the title rebel assassin fighting the totalitarian regime, Charlize Theron brings considerable thespian muscle to the table, and she looks fetching in scanty S&M fantasy garb, but her talents are wasted on a one-dimensional role that was crafted for a two-dimensional medium. Karyn Kusama directed Girlfight back in 2000, so she knows how to present a woman as tough, sexy, and vulnerable, all at the same instant, but here her heroine’s biggest vulnerability is to a possible wardrobe malfunction.
BY TOM MEEK
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You Can Count on Me
20 MarYou Can Count On Me
Laura Linney creates a breakthrough role as a woman suffering from single-mother dysfunction in upstate New York. Sammy, free of her marriage to a redneck creep, struggles to be a caring parent and make ends meet in a dead-end banking job. She has a new anal-retentive boss (Matthew Broderick) who relishes paperwork, and her on-again, off-again boyfriend finally wants to get married. Things seem to take an upswing when her wayward brother, Terry (Mark Ruffalo), returns to the family homestead and helps out with the care of Sammy’s eight-year-old son, Rudy, (Rory Culkin, even cuter than Macaulay). But though Terry’s the family screw-up who’s spent time in jail, it’s Sammy who acts the part as she wavers on the marriage proposal and starts sleeping with her dickhead boss, who’s married and expecting a baby.
Writer/director Ken Lonergan (he wrote the script for Analyze This) was decorated at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. His four leads, especially Linney, are superb, and though Lonergan at times betrays his players with forced situational entrapments and highbrow dialogue, his dark, witty depiction of small-town motherhood is affectingly bittersweet.
The Pursuit of Happyness
20 MarThe Pursuit of Happyness
By TOM MEEK | February 20, 2007
Not what you’d expect given the title or star Will Smith’s wholesome persona — no, not at all. Based on the real-life travails of Chris Gardner (featured on a 20/20 segment), Happyness is a rags-to-riches yarn that latches onto the dark underside of the journey. Smith plays Gardner in circa 1980 San Francisco. Not much is going right for Chris. His medical-sales business is tanking (he sells bone-density machines door-to-door and no one’s buying), he can’t pay the rent, and his wife (Thandie Newton giving a lot of depth to an unsavory role) leaves him. Not to mention he has a five-year-old son (Smith’s son, Jaden, who steals a few scenes from his dad) to look after. Chris needs money, and fast. The answer arrives when he sees a smiling, happy stockbroker driving a Ferrari. He schemes endlessly to land a job at Dean Witter, and when he does (by solving a Rubik’s Cube and telling a great story about why he showed up to the interview looking like a garbage picker), he learns that it’s an unpaid internship and that at the end of six months only one from the flock of interns will be hired.
That’s just one of the many cruel realities that keep pushing Chris toward the gutter. His daily juggling act is a harrowing ordeal: drop son off at day care, make cold calls at Dean Witter, sell scanners on lunch break, make more cold calls and fetch higher-ups coffee, pick up son and try to find a place to sleep at night. Yes, Chris and his son are homeless throughout most of the story, and just when you think things can’t get any worse, they do. But through it all he keeps his eyes on the prize. His perseverance and resourcefulness are infinite, admirable, even uplifting.
The issues of race and ’80s greed never overtly raise their head, but their sphere of influence is palpable. Smith turns in a career-capping performance, and director Gabriele Muccino ingeniously turns the material inward, cautioning us all to be grateful for what we have, for we’re closer to the edge than we think.
The Incredibles
20 Mar| THE INCREDIBLES
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Pixar, the animation studio behind Toy Story and Finding Nemo, adds to its laurels and then some with this tale of a family of costumed crimefighters. Writer/director Brad Bird’s witty take on the domestic lives of superheroes is set in a cheery, postmodern society where frivolous litigation (collateral damage and personal injury) against superheroes had become so rampant that the heroes — much like the mutants in X-Men — were legally required to suppress their superpowers and fit in with everybody else. As the film opens, it’s 15 years later: Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson), now plain old Bob Parr, has traded his six-pack for a beer gut and is pushing a pencil at an insurance company, and his wife, Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), now Helen Parr, has become a stay-at-home mom supervising a rambunctious trio of super-charged children. Sick of the mundane malaise of suburbia, Bob puts on his Mr. Incredible tights and joins his former sidekick, Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson), in parlaying their bowling night into an opportunity to revive their superhero escapades. One thing leads to another, and without telling Helen, Bob accepts an invitation to a remote island to battle a peevish megalomaniac (Jason Lee) and his omnipotent über-bot. Mr. Incredible proves not as incredible as he used to be, and an angry Helen and the kids have to bail him out. Sure, the world hangs in the balance, but it’s the adult-savvy everyday dynamic between Bob and Helen that saves the day. (115 minutes) BY TOM MEEK
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Finding Nemo
20 Mar| FINDING NEMO BY TOM MEEK |
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With this fish tale about family ties, director Andrew Stanton and the animation brain trust at Pixar (Toy Story and Monsters, Inc.) do it again. Sure, the plot about a father’s odyssey to save his imperiled son is old hat, but it’s the clever details, enchanting emotional nuances, and cheeky humor that make Finding Nemoswim. One of those sublime details is the “lucky” (undersized) fin that the neophyte of the title (voiced by Alexander Gould) is blessed with. As a result, the little white-and-orange-striped clown fish (the species is supposed to be funny, but Nemo’s dad can’t tell a joke to save his tail) isn’t a very good swimmer and isn’t supposed to leave the safety of the reef, but when he does, he’s nabbed by a diver and relegated to an aquarium in a dentist’s office. Marlin (Albert Brooks), Nemo’s widowed father, sets off to retrieve his son, forming an unlikely alliance with a batty blue tang fish who’s impaired by short-term memory loss (deftly done by Ellen DeGeneres). Along the way they encounter a trio of sharks who are trying to give up their piscean diet (“Fish are friends, not food”) and a 150-year-old turtle who articulates in affected surfer speak (“Yah dude!”). You know exactly how this one ends; yet getting there is such an enjoyable delight. |
