Films in Brief: "Free Men"; "4:44 Last Days on Earth"; "The Deep Blue Sea"

Details

Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Thursday, 22 March 2012 10:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Free Men
Directed by Ismael Ferroukhi

4:44 Last Days on Earth
Directed by Abel Ferrara

The Deep Blue Sea
Directed by Terence Davies

The history of the French resistance, which comprises thousands of worthy stories, was most recently treated most compellingly by director Robert Guédiguian in 2009’s Army of Crime. The latest attempt, Free Men, presents the resistance through a different lens: the setting is the Paris Mosque, where it was historically documented that the Muslim community protected and assisted Jews to escape the Nazis.

Director Ismael Ferroukhi’s fictionalized version revolves around his Algerian-born hero Younes who, after being coerced by the Vichy-controlled police force to inform on Muslims suspected of being freedom fighters, almost accidentally becomes transformed from an uninvolved immigrant to a committed resistance member. This remarkable change occurs after Younes discovers that the young and talented Algerian singer Salim--whom he has befriended--is Jewish; soon after, he helps hide two Jewish youngsters whose parents were taken away, and his new career has begun.

Despite melodramatic touches, Ferroukhi builds tension without sacrificing credible psychology as Younes becomes politically--and morally--engaged. Tahar Rahim, who was so memorable as the protagonist in Jacques Audiard’s prison drama A Prophet, plays Younes as an innocent naïf, remaining a blank slate for the director to fill in the character’s interior complexity. At times, Rahim is too much his director’s pawn, so detached he seems. But no matter: Free Men believably chronicles the multi-faceted Vichy atmosphere through the eyes of people we’ve rarely encountered onscreen: Muslims putting their lives on the line to defeat Hitler.

Abel Ferrara’s movies come off as unhinged rantings, which result in stillborn messes like the recent Go-Go Tales or his latest, 4:44 Last Days on Earth, which explores the final hours for a group of Manhattan city dwellers as the countdown to (an unexplained) Armageddon begins.

There are interesting moments here--particularly when protagonist Willem Dafoe screams from his building’s rooftop at neighbors and others still wandering the neighborhood--but Ferrara never develops anything coherently. The relationship between Dafoe and a wooden Shanyn Leigh as his wife never gives us any reason to care about the impending demise of non-entities. Aside from the woeful Leigh, the cast works hard, but Ferrara lets them (and the end of the world) down.

For his first fiction film since The House of Mirth in 2000, British director Terence Davies tackles Terence Rattigan’s dated play, The Deep Blue Sea, in which Hester, an unsatisfied young wife, finds solace in the arms of another man; since these are the conservative 1950s, her older husband--an upstanding judge--refuses to divorce her, committing her to a life of unhappiness.

Rattigan--a closeted homosexual at a time when it was a crime--originally wrote Sea with gay characters, but he knew it could never be produced during his lifetime, so he made the protagonist female, which further simplifies an already simplistic story without gaining emotional or psychological weight. Davies--also a homosexual--doesn’t change too much, diving head-first into Rattigan’s drenching sentimentality. The result is at the same time remote and syrupy.

Rachel Weisz suffers dutifully as Hester, first seen recovering from a suicide attempt; she looks and sounds perfect, yet her character’s inner life remains unexplored. Tom Hiddleston (lover) and Simon Russell Beale (husband) are fine. Davies’ eye for period detail is unerring, but his ear needs work: by smearing Samuel Barber’s aching, yearning, gorgeous Violin Concerto over everything, he fails too urgently dramatize Hester’s (mostly) unspoken longings and feelings.

Beautiful as Barber’s music is, it’s forced to carry the bulk of the drama’s burden, which Davies usually--and impeccably--avoids. But with Barber an easy shortcut, The Deep Blue Sea ends up treading water.

Free Men
Directed by Ismael Ferroukhi
Opens March 16, 2012
http://filmmovement.com

4:44 Last Days on Earth
Directed by Abel Ferrara
Opens March 23, 2012
http://ifcfilms.com

The Deep Blue Sea
Directed by Terence Davies
Opens March 23, 2012
http://musicboxfilms.com

March '12 Digital Week III

Details

Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 16 March 2012 20:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week
The Descendants
(Fox)
Alexander Payne (Election, Citizen Ruth, Sideways) makes movies that aren’t as substantial as he thinks. The Descendants is no different: a superbly befuddled George Clooney plays a Honolulu lawyer who discovers--once she’s in a coma--that his wife cheated on him, so he gathers his two daughters to track down her lover. What begins as a nicely observed adult comedy about dealing with everyday disasters switches gears, and spins its wheels, once the race is on to find the adulterer.

Payne builds to a satisfyingly melancholic ending, but too often finds easy, sitcom laughs a la James Brooks. The Blu-ray has a first-rate image; extras are featurettes on casting, Hawaiian locations, the real family behind the story, music videos and conversation between director and star.

Killer’s Moon and Virgin Witch
(Redemption/Kino Lorber)
This pair is the latest in Redemption Films’ attempt to redeem schlocky guilty pleasures. Alan Birkinshaw’s Killer’s Moon (1978) follows mental patients gleefully killing off teenage girls and their strait-laced chaperones; Ray Austin’s 1972 Virgin Witch follows innocent wannabe models discovering the agency is a front for a murderous witches’ coven.

They’re both as silly as they sound, but with plentiful gore and nudity, there’s definitely a built-in--and unfinicky--audience. The movies retain blemishes on hi-def but look good enough; Moon extras include director and star interviews.

The Last Temptation of Christ
(Criterion)
Martin Scorsese’s deeply personal adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis’ controversial novel was labeled anti-Christian to those who obviously never saw it; watching it in the Criterion Collection’s glorious hi-def version is a treat.

Shot on authentic Holy Land locations and propelled by Peter Gabriel’s otherworldly score, the film even overcomes some questionable casting with tremendously committed performances by Willem Dafoe (Jesus), Harvey Keitel (Judas) and Barbara Hershey (Mary Magdalene). Michael Ballahus’ cinematography shines on Blu-ray; extras include a Paul Schrader/ Dafoe/Jay Cocks commentary, Gabriel interview and Scorsese-shot location footage.

Melancholia
(Magnolia)
Ham-fisted and relentlessly clumsy--narratively, psychologically and metaphorically--Lars von Trier’s latest provocation begins with a ponderous wedding sequence that plays like a slack-eyed parody of The Deer Hunter, and his leaden dramatics are on display for a mind-boggling 135 minutes.

Kirsten Dunst is fatally hamstrung by her character’s essential shallowness: this depressive’s troubles are small potatoes compared to the title planet (who named it?) moving toward earth. Trier even repeats trite effects: Antichrist’s slo-mo Handel opening returns, as Armageddon is here scored to Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. On Blu-ray, Trier’s clever imagery gets its digital due; extras are four featurettes.

My Week with Marilyn (Anchor Bay)
Michelle Williams’ gently affecting portrayal of Marilyn Monroe dominates Simon Curtis’ incredibly thin biopic that does little with a great subject: the battle royale between Marilyn and Lord Olivier on the set of The Prince and the Showgirl.

Despite Kenneth Branagh’s excellent Olivier impersonation, the movie never livens up, with bland scenes between Williams and Eddie Redmayne as the lowly assistant whom MM gloms onto (at least according to his memoir) mere filler. The movie looks strong on Blu-ray; extras include a Curtis commentary and making-of featurette.

Neverland
(Vivendi)
This lengthy (three hours!) Peter Pan prequel does Spielberg’s Hook one better by actually fleshing out characters and leaving the big-names to Keira Knightley’s voice (as Tinkerbell). Despite occasional dawdling and repetition, Neverland scores in the person of Anna Friel, a delightfully frisky, criminally underused actress who steals scenes as a pirate any man would love to be the enemy of.

The rest of the cast and effects are fine, but some story streamlining would have helped. No qualms about the Blu-ray image, which is fantastic; the extras comprise commentary, cast interviews and special effects featurette.

The Search for One-Eyed Jimmy
(Kino Lorber)
This 1993 Brooklyn-shot indie by Sam Henry Kass (remember him? I didn’t think so) has the dubious distinction of casting future stars of film, stage and screen--Samuel L. Jackson, Sam Rockwell, John Turturro, Steve Buscemi (and Jennifer Beals and Ann Meara for good measure)--and letting them flounder with an unfunny script and non-story that would bore any shaggy dog.

The movie looks decent in its leap to hi-def; no extras.

The Three Musketeers
(Summit)
In this lukewarm swashbuckler, director Paul W.S. Anderson puts a middling cast (Orlando Bloom, Milla Jovavich, Logan Lerman, Luke Evans) through its paces, but never approaches the grand fun and swordplay heroics of earlier adaptors Richard Lester and Bertrand Tavernier.

The movie looks gorgeous--Anderson’s refusal to use more green screen than in-camera effects is refreshing for an action director today--especially on Blu-ray. Extras include filmmakers’ commentary, deleted scenes with commentary and scene-specific featurettes and interviews.

DVDs of the Week
Bellissima and La terra trema
(e one)
Before such luscious, opulent spectaculars as The Leopard and The Innocent, Italian director Luciano Visconti made small, neo-realist pictures, and two of his classics return, superbly restored.

1948’s magnificent Trema was shot on Sicilian locations with non-professional actors, while 1951’s Bellissima stars Anna Magnani as the most overbearing stage mother ever; here Visconti uses neo-realist techniques to great effect, not least in the unaffected acting of young Tina Apicella. Would that those annoying yellow subtitles didn’t detract from the near-pristine black and white pictures.

House of Pleasures
(IFC)
Bertrand Bonello’s unerotic turn-of-the-century character study about prostitutes in a high-class Parisian brothel is more successful at relationships than sex, even if dividing screen time among several women robs them of their individuality, despite their compelling stories, like one whose mouth has ghastly scars from a crazed john and a teen whose “career” is off to a rocky start.

Costumes, sets and lighting are exquisite, but Bonello--as in his other films--takes a good idea then does little with it. Extras include casting and making-of featurettes.

In Their Own Words
(Athena)
These fascinating, informative BBC documentaries do more than save the words and voices of the 20th century’s prominent writers and intellectuals: they intelligently and learnedly place them in context so one can appreciate their achievements in art, science, politics and economics.

The first program features seven decades of British writers from Virginia Woolf to Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie; the second chronicles thinkers from Sigmund Freud and Margaret Mead to cultural attaches from the BBC and others.

My Joy
(Kino Lorber)
Sergei Loznitsa’s astonishing debut feature makes little narrative sense: if you don’t pair the first half’s clean-shaven truck driver with the bearded man of the second, you’ll be lost during a corrosive series of unsettling vignettes showing the anarchic society that Putin’s Russia has become.

But Loznitsa is in total command of the frame: rarely has widescreen seemed so terrifying, especially the breathtaking final shot on a snow-bound road in near-total darkness. Too bad there are burnt-in subtitles, no extras and no Blu-ray.

Savage Sisters, Sinful Davey, Timbuktu
(MGM)
Three decades are represented in this latest trio from MGM’s Limited Edition Collection, on DVD-Rs instead of official DVDs. There’s Jacques Tourneur’s vaguely ludicrous sand epic, 1958’s Timbuktu, starring Victor Mature and Yvonne DeCarlo in a romantic adventure set in the French colony in 1940.

John Huston’s 1969 Sinful Davey, a Tom Jones retread, is as forced and hollow as the earlier film was witty and relaxed; John Hurt’s performance as the title rogue is wasted. And 1974’s Savage Sisters is a weak attempt at a T&A epic set in an unnamed jungle nation, as three buxom heroines get caught up in a disastrous coup attempt. The films look decent on DVD, at least; no extras.

CDs of the Week
Marlis Petersen: Goethe Lieder
(Harmonia Mundi)
German soprano Marlis Petersen--whose torrid Lulu at the Met a few years back introduced her New York audiences in a big way--sings a well-programmed recital of songs by 16 composers on texts by Goethe about the “eternal feminine.”

With excellent pianist Jendrik Springer along for her adventurous ride, Petersen begins with Ernst Krenek’s epic “Stella’s Monologue” and performs 18 more songs, from Schumann, Wagner and Liszt to rarities by Walter Braunfels and a new work by Manfred Trojahn, all in a crystalline voice conveying the varied moods of Goethe’s unreachable, ideal females.

Massenet: Don Quichotte
(Mariinsky)
Jules Massenet’s grand opera, loosely based on Cervantes’ classic novel, has the requisite rousing choral numbers and vivid orchestral passages that give a sense of the mock-grandeur of literature’s most absurdly heroic buffoon. But intimate scenes between Don and sidekick Sancho Panza or Dulcinea, the woman of his dreams, lack comic and romantic fire.

At least that’s what we get in this workmanlike 2011 Mariinsky Theater performance--the indefatigable Valery Gergiev leads orchestra, chorus and his academy’s young singers in a dutiful, occasionally inspired interpretation of a twilight work from the French composer.

Making the Leap with A New "21 Jump Street"

Details

Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Thursday, 15 March 2012 21:54

Written by Lloyd Carroll

21 Jump Street
directed by Phil Lord & Chris Miller
starring Jonah Hill & Channing Tatum

Married With Children and 21 Jump Street were two shows that helped put the fledgling Fox Broadcasting Corporation on the map when it started 25 years ago. Until then, the broadcast world was dominated by CBS, NBC and ABC although a few cable networks were starting to gain traction as more homes were willing to pay for both better reception and more programming choices.

The plot of the TV show, about a bunch of young cops who infiltrate a high school as current students, was basically lifted from the 1960s ABC classic, “The Mod Squad,” and it ran for five seasons on Fox. It made a huge star out of a previously unknown actor named Johnny Depp.

Nowadays it seems as if every television series that ran more than two years gets its own movie version. To its immense credit, the filmmakers blatantly acknowledge Hollywood’s creative laziness by having one of the characters, Deputy Chief Hardy (Nick Offerman of NBC’s “Parks & Recreation”), grouse on screen “Every piece of crap from the Eighties gets recycled.!”

Doug Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Craig Jenko (Channing Tatum) were both members of the same high school class who ran different circles. Doug was the quintessential nerd while Craig was the bully who enjoyed tormenting him on occasion. Seven years after graduation, they are partners in an unnamed city’s police department and are so little regarded by their superiors that their beat is riding a bicycle around a park.

After blowing their first arrest by failing to read a suspect his Miranda rights, Schmidt and Jenko are assigned to an undercover unit run out of—where else—21 Jump Street. The commander of the unit is Captain Dickson played by rapper/actor Ice Cube who is clearly having fun spoofing his angry persona. Dickson assigns our heroes to a high school where a dangerous and potentially lethal synthetic hallucinogen is being distributed. He makes it clear what is expected out of them and the consequences if they screw up in a very profane and hysterical manner.

In a clever twist, it turns out that in seven years a lot of the high school clique rules have changed. Here it is the ecologically conscious and more empathetic characters seem to run the show while the muscular jocks are the outsiders. It is Schmidt who finds himself the object of a very attractive girl’s affections while it’s Jenko who is forced to bond with members of the AP chemistry class in order to have friends.

There is little doubt that the filmmakers pad the screen time with endless car chases. That is the film’s most notable drawback but it’s a relatively minor one when it comes to overall enjoyment .

The good more than outweighs the bad. Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum may be Hollywood’s ultimate co-starring odd couple but they have a very believable chemistry. The supporting cast is spectacular with the always-welcome “Saturday Night Live” alum Chris Parnell, Comedy Central vet Rob Riggle, and the aforementioned Ice Cube and Nick Offerman pitching in. They are assisted by some terrific newcomers, Brie Larson and Dave Franco (the younger brother of actor James Franco.)

In a terrific nod to the TV series, most of the original cast: Richard Grieco, Peter DeLuise, Holly Robinson, and of course, Johnny Depp, have cameos here. I guess that Dustin Nguyen must have been busy. 21 Jump Street is great combo of laughs and action.