Like Hillary Clinton, Helen Hunt has always bugged me. I was never crazy about Mad About You, and while I don’t think she deserves the barbs thrown at her for As Good As It Gets (she’s been lambasted as one of the least deserving Best Actress winners) I’m not exactly quick to rise to her defense, either. Again, like HRC, I can’t quite put my finger on what it is exactly that annoys me about her. I think, on film, it may be the way she listens — the camera closes in tight on her exposure-hardened face (all that TV and movie work since she played Murray’s daughter on The Mary Tyler Moore show takes its toll) and she gets all sensitive and concerned on us. Now that in itself is no grounds for petulance, but there’s something awfully mannered about that look, which she has hung on her puss for decades now. It’s a kind of body armor, a wall against getting too close. Under the guise of empathy, of wanting to care and share, I see a big “Keep Away” sign hung around her neck. She gives you this look that suggests she feels your pain, but I know if you dared try to hug her she’d slap the crap out of you.

But, just as Clinton has impressed me by hanging tough in this campaign, going to the mattresses as surely as the characters in The Godfather after Don Corleone is hit, so, too, do I feel a new respect for Hunt with Then She Found Me,which ThinkFilm opens today. This is her debut as a feature film director (she is a co-producer and co-writer as well) and her multi-year struggle to bring Elinor Lipman’s novel to the screen accounts in part for some odd ellipses in her post-Oscar career. (I saw her on Broadway in a gorgeously designed Twelfth Night and the comedy-drama Life x 3, but her thoroughly adequate performances left little trace in my memory bank.) Going to see a Hunt-hyphenate picture, with her doing all those tasks and starring as well, was about as appealing to me as a stretch in Abu Ghraib (see below). Yet Then She Found Me has a kind of toughlove charm I responded to. (more…)

I’ve been tasked with preparing a summer movie guide for Popdose. I haven’t done one of these since I was at the Daily Northwestern, cramming dozens of titles into a few column inches. Entertainment Weekly, your local paper, and — for all I know — Orbitz, Stuff on Your Cat, and anyone with a blog will be running one of those all-bases- covered-but-somehow-lacking guides in the coming weeks. But that won’t do here. The trick is to winnow, to cut the chaff to get at the wheat. And as it’s summer, or summer-ish — the season pretty much starts with the May 2 release of Iron Man, though a case could be made for beginning a weekend earlier with the Harold & Kumar sequel, the one Iraq picture audiences may actually see — there’s a lot of fluff to separate out.

Most of these pictures are machine-stamped to be disposable, to make as much money as quick as can be, then be regurgitated as DVDs by Christmas. I find of lot of them to be dispiriting. Summer is mostly about indulging your inner child, and the kid in me just dies at some of the stuff put before us. Worse, there isn’t a single picture on the slate with a giant animal wreaking havoc. (The Incredible Hulk doesn’t count.) I love that kind of movie, but I’ll have to wait to see if Santa brings one.

But scanning the calendar I can find ten to hype about. It’s all about the sizzle, and I’m putting these on the griddle. I’ll say up front that I have no special knowledge of any of these movies, no crystal ball beyond cast lists, a few preliminary trailers, and the odd gleaning or two. They may all stink, and a rose may pop up somewhere else totally unexpected. In the spirit of trying to simplify your viewing, here are two fistfuls of films you must try to squeeze in between May Day and Labor Day. Anything constructive to add, please comment; any complaints, call management. Hey, I’m one person over here, from my garret in Brooklyn, and I tried.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (May 22). “Hoo-boy,” I can hear you snarking, “this guy’s really going out on a limb. Making the tough calls.” But I need this film to work. You need this to work. There are problems: That Jim Morrison-sounding title isn’t rocking my world. And its star, missing in action (or at least a good action film) since the Clinton years, is so old he needs to be backed up by the felonious whippersnapper whose name I can neither pronounce nor spell. Still, the notion that Steven Spielberg is rolling up his sleeves and getting back to basics, scaling back the CGI and employing the same lighting and editing style he used on the first three adventures, excites me. Those, to me, are true-blue summer movies — you remember, the ones with stories, and smarts, and heart to go along with the thrill ride. (And, in this case, Soviet bad guys and a bad gal, played by the all-purpose Cate Blanchett. Yes, Soviet, not Russian — we’re back in the USSR!) What will kids reared on rock-’em, sock-’em robot crapfests make of this? Taking this sort of picture back to its roots is a truly radical notion.

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Thirty years from now, My Blueberry Nights may be considered a good film. It may even be considered a great film. Let me explain.

Some years ago, I selected for my film-watching group (19 years old and still going strong) Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point (1970), his first made-in-America production, shot in youthquake California. It was an utter disaster upon its release: unhip, out-of-touch,pretentious. Harry Medved consigned it to his infamous Fifty Worst Films of All Time book (1978), which I still have on my shelf.

Some years later, I caught up with it on laserdisc (I still have some of those on my shelf, too.) I was entranced. Yes, the sensibility was Martian, as if the great director was visiting student revolutionaries from another galaxy. But it was a genuinely sincere attempt at engagement, and Antonioni’s attempt to get inside their mindset was valiant. As was customary, it was immaculately made, with an impeccable period score. The explosive climax, where our entire consumer culture blows up as Pink Floyd plays, was an unforgettably lunatic vision—terrifying,ridiculous, and beautiful, all at once. I had prepared my group for the worst,underplaying the film’s unique qualities. I had overstated the case: The picture, which had aged into an invaluable cultural artifact, went down fine, flaws and all.

My Blueberry Nights bears some relation. The noted Hong Kong director, Wong Kar Wai, makes his English-language debut with an American-made film that glides from New York to Memphis to Reno. (Coincidentally, he and Antonioni, acclaimed visual stylists both, were bunkmates in the 2004 omnibus film Eros.) The stakes, however, are lower. Antonioni injected himself into our national muddle, and was crucified by the right and left for doing so. Wong has Fed-Exed his muse to the West. His description of the film—“Sometimes the tangible distance between two persons can be quite small but the emotional one can be miles…I wanted to explore these expanses, both figuratively and literally, and the lengths it takes to overcome them”—pretty much applies to any of his acclaimed pictures.

I’m not his biggest acolyte. Certain audiences groove on the languorous pace and slowly-burning emotions of films like 2000’s In the Mood for Love and 2004’s 2046. I’m friends with some of these folks, and they don’t understand why I’m not on board. Or, rather, why I left the boat: I enjoy earlier films, like 2004’squirky Chungking Express and 1997’s fraught gay romance Happy Together, just fine. They had a beating heart and pulse. Gradually, however, he drifted toward being an interior decorator. The human element receded into the background; the period furnishings and wallpaper communicated the stories, off altering relationships that play out in a few airless rooms. Some find this entrancing; I get restless. (more…)

Arthouse meets grindhouse in Funny Games, and the results are no fun at all. Writer-director Michael Haneke, the Austrian provocateur behind The Piano Teacher (2002) and Caché (2005), is a filmmaker of some distinction, but even his admirers split on his original 1997 production, of which this Warner Independent Pictures release is a scene-by-scene duplication. The subtitles and “foreign-ness” of the first film gave American viewers an out; there’s no such escape this time, should cinematic rubberneckers choose to attend.

The setup is simple, as it is in horror pictures of yesteryear like Last House on the Left and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. As Handel plays on the CD player of their car, we are introduced to an upscale couple, Ann (Naomi Watts) and George (Tim Roth), and their affectionate son Georgie (Devon Gearheart). The music abruptly switches to John Zorn as the title of the film slashes across the screen and we know immediately what is to come: These classical music lovers, content in their love for each other and obviously refined values, are toast. We can smell the burn approaching as their neighbors in Southampton, where they have come to vacation, act strangely at their arrival, as if something is amiss in the community.

Georgie is the first to pick up on the scent, when Peter (Mysterious Skin co-star Brady Corbet) comes calling on Ann (pictured), looking for some eggs. The introduction of Peter’s companion, Paul (Michael Pitt), raises the alarm — with their tennis togs, sallow skin, thick lips, and closely aligned personalities, these apostles of ill will look like mimes gone seriously bad. An uneasy face-off between the parties goes Code Red when the two young men hold the family hostage, bent on torture and protracted, painful murder. (more…)

Look. I know. I hear you.

You’d rather be reading about 10,000 B.C., that caveman-and-saber-tooth-tigers thing opening today. Listen: I’d rather be writing about it. Cavemen (cavewomen), saber-tooths, mastodons — I am so there. Granted, prehistoric mammals aren’t a patch on dinosaurs. I know that cavemen (and cavewomen; remember One Million Years B.C. with Raquel Welch? Barbara Bach in Caveman? Hubba hubba) didn’t co-exist, but, boy, they should have, just like they do in the movies.

But: No one sent me a screening invite. Just didn’t happen. These are the breaks. So, here it is instead, the picture someone would let me see in advance: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, which Focus Features opens today for audiences with less Neanderthal sensibilities.

And it is not half bad. The film is based on a fairly forgotten novel by one Winifred Watson, who set and wrote the book back in the Pleistocene age, or right before the Second World War. Watson, who died in 2002, put her pen down for good during WWII, which is too bad, as her whole canon might have committed to celluloid by now. Knowing that she went cold turkey on her career to raise her family adds poignancy to one of the film’s best scenes, where Miss Pettigrew (the indomitable Frances McDormand) and her well-born, would-be suitor Joe (Ciaran Hinds, the go-to Brit you get when Tom Wilkinson is unavailable) take a breather from a party to watch planes massing in the night sky. Noting the age of the partygoers, who are unconcerned about what the spectacle portends, Joe observes, sadly and presciently, “These young people didn’t live through the last one.”

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. (more…)

Much like the stupid redneck protagonist of Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Will Ferrell’s latest sports comedy, Semi-Pro, revolves entirely around a paper-thin character that’s supposed to be funny based on looks alone. True, Ferrell does look pretty goofy donning an afro and a pair of Daisy Duke basketball shorts, but is that really enough to garner laughs? For some, maybe, but where Semi-Pro scores in concept, it fails in execution — ultimately relying too often on the charisma of its star to realize that most of the jokes just aren’t funny.

Ferrell stars as Jackie Moon, the voice behind the disco hit “Love Me Sexy” and the owner-coach-player of the ABA Flint Tropics basketball team. As the worst team in the league, Moon is clearly losing money on his investment, but when a rumor surfaces that the ABA is going to be dissolved (with the four most marketable teams heading to the NBA), Moon convinces the commissioner to amend the rule and allow the four best teams into the league instead. With a lot of ground to make up before the end of the season, Moon brings in some new blood with Monix (Woody Harrelson), a washed-up NBA champion who’s admired by all except Tropics superstar Coffee Black (Andre Benjamin). Despite their differences, the Tropics begin to play like a team and rally together for an 11th hour comeback that could make their NBA dreams come true.

Read the rest of Jason Zingale’s Semi-Pro review at Bullz-Eye.com!

Penelope made its debut at the Toronto Film Festival. The 2006 Toronto Film Festival. Not a good sign that the movie has languished this long without being released. The story gets better, though: the movie is coming out smack dab in between the most recent projects from its lead actors, one of which was a Best Picture nominee (James McAvoy, Atonement) and the other is one of the summer’s most anticipated movies (Christina Ricci, Speed Racer). Mighty convenient, that timing. The movie surely is a train wreck, right?

Surprisingly, it’s not. While it paints with far too broad a brush and loses its way in the second act, the story at its core is a sweet one, and the two leads, plus some big-time scene stealing by Peter Dinklage, keep the fairy tale just grounded enough for it to work.

Ricci is Penelope Wilhern, a blue-blood aristocrat and victim of a terrible curse. Generations ago, one of her relatives fell in love with, and then broke the heart of, one of the servant girls, whose mother just happened to be the town witch. (Every town had its own witch back then, it appears.) The witch declared that the next daughter born to a Wilhern would have a pig’s nose, so they would know her horror and heartbreak. Only by earning the true love of a blue blood would the curse be broken. Until then, Penelope remains a pig girl.

Read the rest of David Medsker’s review of Penelope at Bullz-Eye.com!

For those that aren’t completely sick and tired of trashy melodramas centered on Queen Elizabeth (I and II), director Justin Chadwick takes a slightly different approach with The Other Boleyn Girl: a movie that focuses not on the infamous rulers, but rather the series of nefarious events leading up to the first Elizabeth’s birth. Though it could have just as easily been titled Elizabeth: The Prequel, Chadwick’s film is seriously lacking a protagonist even remotely as passionate or interesting. Instead, he pulls together a group of ignorant and traitorous characters that the audience simply can’t identify with, ultimately resulting in one of the most pointless movie experiences since last year’s hugely overrated Into the Wild.

Based on the novel by Philippa Gregory, the historically inaccurate tale follows the two Boleyn sisters — Mary (Scarlett Johansson) and Anne (Natalie Portman) — as they vie for the love of King Henry VIII (Eric Bana). After Henry’s current wife, Queen Katherine of Aragon (Ana Torrent), fails in delivering a male heir to the throne, he begins looking for a mistress to bear him a son. Desperate to earn the respect and gratitude of the king, Sir Thomas Boleyn (Mark Rylance) offers up his eldest daughter Anne as a potential candidate, but when Henry visits their estate and falls for the recently wedded Mary instead, she’s quickly whisked away to court to serve her country.

Read the rest of Jason Zingale’s review of The Other Boleyn Girl at Bullz-Eye.com!

It’s fitting that Chicago 10, a Roadside Attractions release, is opening February 29. It’s a weird, once-every-four-years day, and Chicago 10 is a weird, out-of-time movie. Here we have a 40th-anniversary commemoration/celebration of a Vietnam-era carnival of civil disobedience targeted at a contemporary audience that has shrugged at every Iraq-themed film put in front of it. How what amounts to a lengthy ‘Nam flashback is supposed to get asses off couches and into a movie theater is a puzzle, man.

The director, Brett Morgen, has an idea or two about that. To bring the story of Hollywood rapscallion and lounge lizard Robert Evans to the screen, Morgen’s prior film The Kid Stays in the Picture used cut-out graphics and clever visuals, and to hell with the talking heads. It worked: If you were too tired to pick up Evans’ tome and actually read it, or had purchased the thing but hadn’t gotten it off the shelf, the doc did all the heavy lifting for you, as Evans’ sonorous voice recounted his adventures over all the retro-chic razzmatazz. The Kid Stays in the Picture took the book-on-tape concept and transferred it to film.

With Chicago 10, Morgen and co-producer Graydon Carter extend the experiment, lopping off every device that stinks of traditional documentary. (Carter, whose not having a Vanity Fair Oscar party got almost as much coverage as his having one, wants to define the cutting edge for the form with these pictures.) Voiceover, out. All that place-setting jazz, “It was a time of change in America,” etc., gone, baby, gone. Yes, it’s history, but it’s living history, relevant to our age, so let’s give the Doors and “Smoke on the Water” and whatever else that smacks of its time a rest and rock on with Eminem, Rage Against the Machine, and the Beastie Boys and what the people are listening to today. The actual trial was political theater, so the movie about it must be theater of the real — confrontational, in your face. It must be…animated. (more…)

There was one movie that my movie critic peers and I were looking forward to seeing in these dog days of winter, and it was Be Kind Rewind, Michel Gondry’s wacko tale of a video clerk and his oddball friend who shoot their own versions of hit movies. Then, without a word, the movie disappeared from our screening schedule. Further research revealed that New Line was yanking all screenings from certain markets, and we lived in one of them. Considering that they had just shown us Over Her Dead Body, a movie that they should have set on fire, flattened with a steamroller and buried 50 feet below ground level, the decision to screen that but not this struck us as curious, to say the least.

Ah, but good news! The rep has passes for us to see the movie for free…but they’re only good beginning the following Monday after it opens. Whaaa? Surely the rep knows that we need to get our reviews up as soon as possible and will be seeing the movie at a Friday matinée, right? Why is the studio trying so hard to discourage us from seeing this?

I’ve now seen it, and I think I get it. Be Kind Rewind does not live up to the fragmented genius that is Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and is closer in spirit and tone to The Science of Sleep, his maddeningly loopy 2006 movie about a delusional dreamer. When the movie works, it is delightful. The problem is that those moments are far too infrequent.

Read the rest of David Medsker’s Be Kind Rewind review at Bullz-Eye.com!