The Women (2008, Warner Bros./Picturehouse)
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Critics and film fans often tsk and tut when a studio fast-tracks a picture in an effort to shove something out while the iron is hot, but even if you give a film all the development time in the world — like, say, over a decade — that doesn’t mean it’s going to be a success. Witness Diane English’s remake of The Women, which emerged from an interminable series of delays this year, only to be pelted with horrible reviews and box office indifference. At 13 percent on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer, The Women was one of the worst films of the year.

Or was it?

English’s take on The Women wasn’t a film I ever planned on seeing — although I think Clare Booth Luce’s play is gut-bustingly funny, I’ve never been a big fan of George Cukor’s 1939 adaptation, and anyway, even under the best of circumstances, it’s probably not a good idea to make your directorial debut with a huge cast of famous names like Annette Bening, Meg Ryan, and Eva Mendes. And after reading some of the reviews (”A chick flick that’s the very reason why guys hate them” — Austin Kennedy, Sin Magazine), I went into The Women expecting something punishingly awful.

The first thing that needs to be said, then, is that The Women is probably not as bad as you’ve been led to believe. (more…)

Did everyone have a late-night horror show in their local TV market? Cleveland had The Hoolihan and Big Chuck Show (later The Big Chuck and Lil’ John Show), which aired every Friday night at 11:30 PM. As a kid I would relish Friday nights, fighting weary eyes to watch those guys perform corny skits with ethnic (read, Polish) humor in the commercial breaks of mediocre 1960s horror films. It wasn’t so much the movies that made me want to stay up till two in the morning, it was the feeling of camaraderie the audience had with hosts “Big Chuck” Schodowski, Bob “Hoolihan” Wells, and “Lil’ John” Rinaldi. I bring all of this up because when I sat down to watch the Warner Bros. Horror Double Feature DVD with It (1966) and The Shuttered Room (1967), I felt a pang of nostalgia for those Friday nights long ago when a glass bottle of Coke and some Pringles were all I needed to keep me going for a couple of hours.

As Robert Cashill wrote about in an earlier post, Warners is releasing several of their cheesy horror films from that bygone era. The two films I watched this week were particularly bad, at times laughable. Yet I couldn’t stop watching.

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Towelhead (2008, Warner Independent)
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Screenwriter Alan Ball rose to prominence with 1999’s American Beauty, a quietly disturbing look at a theme that has become something of a cliche for ’subversive’ filmmakers over the last few decades — namely, the supposedly diseased heart that beats beneath the perfectly manicured lawns of suburbia — so it’s perhaps only natural that Ball made his directorial debut with the adaptation of a novel that includes dark suburban secrets as one of its major ingredients. Towelhead was in and out of theaters in a blink this year (not too quickly to escape the eye of our film editor, Bob Cashill), but if you missed it during its original run, never fear — the DVD is (almost) here.

American Beauty was a movie that most people loved when it came out, at least until the inevitable backlash — but I felt about it then the same way I do now; specifically, I found it to be a very well-acted, frequently funny film that perhaps relied a little too heavily on portentous shots with Big Meaning for its own good. Still, even if it wasn’t as smart or powerful as it thought it was, Beauty was still plenty enjoyable, not least because of the bounty of topless scenes from young actresses. (What? I’m only a man.)

Young flesh is another theme that recurs in Towelhead, actually; the plot centers around a half-Lebanese 13-year-old named Jasira (Summer Bishil), who is shipped off to her Texas-dwelling father after her mother’s boyfriend is caught giving Jasira’s nether regions a shave. That Jasira didn’t ask for this bit of grooming doesn’t matter to her mom, who tells her the whole thing is her own fault — and that’s just the first piece of mind-bogglingly stupid parenting that our young protagonist is subjected to over the first half of the movie, because if Jasira’s mother is an emotional child, her father isn’t much better, ruling the house with an iron fist when he isn’t off canoodling with his chesty wannabe makeup artist of a girlfriend.

It sounds dark, and it is — even before Jasira attracts the attentions of her skeevy Army Reservist neighbor, Mr. Vuoso (Aaron Eckhart), setting in motion a chain of events that leads to the inevitably tension-filled final act. In fact, it’s so dark that you may find yourself questioning what the point of all this is — although Ball certainly has a knack for getting the best out of his performers, including the always-wonderful Toni Collette as a thankfully sane neighbor, the plot includes so many squirm-inducing turns that it’s easy to start feeling like Towelhead exists for no other reason than to provide viewers with the voyeuristic thrill of watching people do terrible things to one another (and mostly to a clearly confused teenage girl). (more…)

“You have no will, no mind of your own,” intones the dastardly villain in The Brides of Fu Manchu, one-half of a horripilating double feature available today. Fu, I hear yu. I gave up brick-and-mortar DVD shopping years ago, but when Warner Home Video or Universal Home Entertainment announce that they’re making their vintage horror and sci-fi movies available only through Best Buy, off I go. The studios know that kids weaned on Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine (goodbye, Uncle Forry) will as grown-up consumers do anything to get their hands on essential ephemera from their childhoods, even rummage through a—gasp!—Best Buy, where it’s never a sure thing that the titles will be in stock, or, just as bad, correctly categorized. (People, if the packaging says “horror” or “sci-fi,” how about putting it there, and not under “action-adventure” or “drama”?)

How sweet it is, though, to finally, finally hold in your hot little hands a favorite like the Warner-supplied When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, which this past summer slipped onto the market in an uncut, Holy Grail version, where the vivacious cavewomen fleeing the stop-motion saurians are topless in a couple of scenes, more than compensating for the historical inaccuracy. Who could wait for that? But if you had the patience, the film (twinned on DVD with a lesser Hammer picture, Moon Zero Two) did show up for online purchase, as have The Brides of Fu Manchu and Chamber of Horrors, double trouble I found more resistible. Produced in 1966, the features haven’t aged as well as their titillating posters, but the letterboxed transfers, while lacking supplements of any kind, are presentable.

For completion’s sake, Brides, the second of a series of films starring Christopher Lee as the Oriental criminal mastermind, should be paired with its predecessor, 1965’s The Face of Fu Manchu, the only one of the five movies still MIA on DVD. Face and Brides are the easiest to differentiate, as they have some inkling of style and a few bucks behind them; the rest are bargain-budget lunch specials. Long before there was political correctness there was Sax Rohmer’s yellow peril genius, threatening the West with extinction, a pulp boogeyman played to the hilt by Boris Karloff in 1932’s The Mask of Fu Manchu and a career ender for Peter Sellers in the alleged 1980 comedy The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu. (more…)

Mamma Mia! The Movie (Two-Disc Special Edition (2008, Universal)
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I freely admit I’m not the target audience for this movie. Being without a vagina, an attraction to men, and/or a fondness for the music of ABBA, I went into Mamma Mia! The Movie pretty much figuring that I’d have some problems with it. I’m not a really big fan of musicals, actually; all things being equal, Jason “I Love Showtunes” Hare would be the Popdose staffer reviewing this for you.

Still, I’m capable of objectively assessing a piece of entertainment, even if it isn’t meant for me, and even if I don’t care for ABBA’s music, I am a fan of the lovely Amanda Seyfried, whose work as the sane daughter on Big Love I’ve long appreciated. How bad could Mamma Mia! be?

I will tell you.

I finished watching this movie almost 24 hours ago, and I’m still sort of awestruck by it, because Mamma Mia! is both the most painful and most fun movie I’ve seen in a very long time. The acting is so over the top that it reeks of ham — but the actors’ giddiness is all part of an undeniably infectuous sense of fun. The musical numbers are shoehorned into something that vaguely resembles a plot, from a distance, if you squint — but you’ll still be humming them after the movie’s over. Every single moment of Mamma Mia! is absolutely ludicrous…but it also contains some of the most beautifully filmed sequences I’ve seen in a very long time.

In short, Mamma Mia! is a great viewing option if you’re drunk, or in a bad mood, but if you’re looking for a movie that makes a lick of sense — even in the context of musicals, which frequently require the viewer to turn off large chunks of his or her analytic mind — it will most likely annoy you to the point of distraction, especially if you’re prone to difficulty with things like a chorus line of scuba-flippered men, or plot points that suddenly appear or vanish, or the sight of Colin Firth in a slow-motion topless dance. (more…)

Somewhere in the translation from script to screen, a really smart idea got lost when Anamorph was made. That’s not to say that the movie is entirely bad (and it certainly deserves better treatment than it received from its distributor), but Anamorph never quite reaches its full potential dramatically or as a thriller.

Willem Dafoe stars as a homicide detective haunted by a serial killer case that was supposedly solved when a man was shot and killed (unarmed and sitting in chair) in his home. Dafoe’s character carries around the guilt of one of the victims and has gone into teaching instead of continuing as an investigator. Five years later, a possible copycat, or perhaps the original killer (he called himself Uncle Teddy) is back on a killing spree. What makes this maniac unique is his method of murder: His victim’s bodies are used to construct elaborate, gruesome works of art. The killer/artist creates works in the concept of anamorphosis, a painting technique that manipulates the laws of perspective to create two competing images on a single canvas.

Sounds clever, huh? Unfortunately, that one idea gets lost amongst the attempts by Writer/director H.S. Miller and his co-writer Tom Phelan to create strong characters and a convincing plot. Shame, because so much of Anamorph is excellent, starting with the cast. (more…)

Spin City: The Complete Season 1 (Dreamworks/Shout! Factory) (Buy this DVD at Amazon)

The success of any workplace series comes down to casting. If we believe that every character in a show could be our co-worker or friend, then the show should be destined for success. Perhaps the greatest example isThe Mary Tyler Moore Show, which created a real sense of family with the oddballs that supported Moore during her historic show’s run. Since then, countless numbers of sitcoms have tried and failed to capture what Moore’s did so well.

However, Spin City came close in its seven-year run. With a certified television icon, Michael J. Fox, as the show’s center, the producers of Spin City had gold to work with. DreamWorks Television and Shout! Factory have just released the first season of Spin City in a sleek new DVD box set that reminds us of the comic genius of Michael J. Fox and how great network sitcoms used to be.

Created by Gary David Goldberg, who had discovered Fox and guided him to fame on Family Ties, and Bill Lawrence, who would go on to create the beloved Scrubs (which took the visual humor of Spin City a step further), Spin City showed the inner workings of the Mayor’s office in New York City. One of the luxuries of watching a complete season of a television show, especially one in its first season, is seeing it work out the kinks and find its true voice over the course of 13 or 22 episodes. In the case of Spin City, the producers had a bit of a dilemma. Was it a romantic comedy set against the backdrop of the mayor’s office, or was it a work place comedy with romantic inclinations?

As the cast portraying the mayor’s staff gradually revealed how talented they were, it didn’t matter how charming Fox and Carla Gugino (playing his reporter girlfriend Ashley) were together — the laughs came from the interaction of the mayor’s staff and the mayor himself. Listening to the commentary of Goldberg and Lawrence, they express regret that they couldn’t have had both facets of the show carry on. But as you can see by the end of the first season, it was just more interesting to watch the oddball characters in the office.

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Beautiful Ohio (IFC, 2008)
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Chad Lowe has long suffered being the second banana to his brother and his ex-wife. Even though he won an Emmy for his work on ABC’s Life Goes On, (in which, let’s face it, he was second banana to Corky and Kellie Martin), he’s never gained the attention he deserves as an actor. Perhaps this is why he has stepped behind the camera to direct shorts and episodic television. With the confidence he gained from those endeavors, Lowe moved on to movies and his feature directorial debut, Beautiful Ohio, comes out on DVD November 25th. The coming-of-age drama is a strong effort in which Lowe handles both the big-name stars and the unknown actors who star in the film.

Indeed, with William Hurt as one of your central characters, any novice director would run the risk of losing control and having Hurt walk away with the movie. But that is not the case in Beautiful Ohio. Hurt slips into the ensemble seamlessly and actually betters the performances of everyone around him.

The film is set in Cleveland, Ohio, circa 1973. The protagonist is William (Brett Davern), a young boy lost in the shadow of his mathematical genius brother, Clive (David Call). As the film opens, Clive has drifted away from his family; the weight of being a genius has begun to bear down on him. For Clive, math is just something he sees does, he does not believe he is amazing. Meanwhile, his parents gloat over him and the neighbors are endlessly impressed. Still, William’s mother (Rita Wilson) does her best to place the spotlight on William as much as possible. I have never seen Wilson perform as nicely as she does in this movie. He face wears the pain she feels for her younger son and the anger she has toward her husband well. And when she speaks, it’s with a quiet reserve. In this film, the mother is the glue holding the family together and Wilson does an excellent job.

William Hurt is the patriarch of the family and in many ways, he’s as lost as Clive and William. A veteran of war (presumably Korea), he has settled on selling insurance for a living. As he sees the world changing around him and feels that his life is standing still, Simon is desperate to feel alive. Whether it’s listening to Clive’s MC5 records, flirting with his gorgeous, younger neighbor (an effective, albeit underutilized Julianna Margulies) or trying dope for the first time, Simon is like a character lifted from an Arthur Miller play and tossed into a 70’s counterculture movie. Despite the anger bubbling under the surface though, Simon still has a great deal of affection for his boys. In particular, the scenes between Simon and William are funny and moving. (more…)

Encounters at the End of the World (2008)
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I had a very odd application.

I had to explain that I was into things like: Is there such a thing as insanity among penguins? And why is it that human beings saddle a horse, and like the Lone Ranger, put on masks in order to disguise their identity and then feel the urge to chase the bad guy? And why is it that certain species of ants keep flocks of wild lice in order to milk them like slaves for droplets of sugar? And why is it that a chimp — clearly a superior creature — does not straddle a goat and ride into the sunset?

So does Werner Herzog explain his motivations for the journey that would spawn Encounters at the End of the World, and if you’ve sat down in front of the crusty director’s latest documentary hoping (or fearing) that you were in for another Discovery Channel-esque look at the wonders of life at the bottom of the planet, prepare to have your expectations knocked off their axis. We’ve had a lot of film crews journey to various bits of frozen tundra over the last decade or so, but nobody combines disdain for humanity with a curious spirit quite like Herzog, and his work here is typically, appropriately iconoclastic.

There are no chimps on goats, but Herzog still manages to take viewers places they’ve never been before — both around Antarctica and into the psyches of the people who live and work there. This latter component is really what makes Encounters tick: Herzog arrived at McMurdo Station curious about what would drive a person to seek employment in such unforgiving environs, and between various excursions, he does a fair amount of probing the histories of his hosts. Given Herzog’s career-long love for the exceptional (or exceptionally strange), you might think Antarctica would be the perfect place for him, and you’d be right — pretty much as soon as he steps off the plane, he’s aiming his lens at a pack of characters positively Lynchian in their penchant for the unusual. (more…)

Get Smart (2008)
Starring: Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin
Director: Peter Segal
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In the ’90s, the direct-to-video market was the realm of ex-stars like Corey Feldman, making indirect sequels to forgotten franchises like License to Drive and Meatballs, but the increasing affordability of kickass home-theater systems, and the seemingly infinite possibilities of hi-def formats — not to mention a widening gulf between movie ticket prices and what they actually deliver — have helped level the playing field between the box office and the rumpus room. This year, more than one studio has announced plans to ramp up their direct-to-video output; in the short term, this means you can expect to see sequels to horrible movies like Without a Paddle on the shelves at Best Buy, but in the long run, it just might lead to more stars making moderate-to-big-budget movies for the home market.

Which brings us to Get Smart, which was released to theaters over the summer — and did well, grossing over $100 million — but is a perfect rental if there ever was one.

This isn’t to say Get Smart is a bad movie; actually, I enjoyed it quite a bit more than I thought I would, and laughed often. It’s an endearingly stupid film, which makes perfect sense, given that Steve Carell has built a career out of playing endearingly stupid men, and it’s an update on a television series based on the premise that even an incompetent blowhard can be a superspy. Basically, what it does is take Michael Scott from The Office, give him the skills of an assassin, and set him loose in the Russian countryside with Anne Hathaway. More often than not, it’s a lot of fun. (more…)