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Film and the Arts

Film Review: "Prince Avalanche"

"Prince Avalanche" 
Directed by David Gordon Green
Starring Paul Rudd, Emile Hirsh, Lance LeGault, Joyce Payne
Comedy, Drama
94 Mins
R
 
Prince Avalanche starts slow, aims lows and won't make any dough. It's a pretentious channeling of Terrence Malick, infected with self-importance and devoid of any meaning. Attempts to pull an "Emperor's New Clothes" gag, Green's film openly mocks you if you don't "get it". But it's clear, there is nothing to get here, little to take away and zero to cherish. The equivalent of an imitation Jackson Pollock, this is a festering pile of trash wrapped up with fancy names and presented as craft. From the childish performances to the wandering story, and all along the gimmicky art-house road, this is a bad movie that made me jealous of the people storming out in the middle of it.

To get a grasp on what exactly makes Prince Avalanche so bad, first comprehend what it could have been. The combination of director David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express), Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch screams comedy gold. Even the trailer presented this as a quirky comedy about two offbeat guys doing goofy things - nothing could be more misleading.

Read more: Film Review: "Prince Avalanche"

August '13 Digital Week II

Blu-rays of the Week

Aftershock and The Demented
(Anchor Bay)
Disaster and horror go together, but these movies show how hard it is to get the balance right. Aftershock turns a real event—the 2010 Chilean earthquake—into an excuse for exploitative violence, including rape, along with a crude ending that makes the title painfully literal.
 
The Demented, a so-so zombie flick, also uses a shockeroo ending—“it was only a dream…or was it?”—to try and distinguish itself from the pack. It doesn’t work. The Blu-ray images look good; Aftershock has featurettes and a commentary.
 
On the Road
(IFC)
Jack Kerouac’s classic “Beat Generation” novel has resisted adaptation since its 1957 publication, and Walter Salles’ honorable failure—from Jose Rivera’s script—shows why.
 
There are some good scenes, and even better casting (Sam Riley is dead-on as Kerouac’s alter ego Sal Paradise, as is Garrett Hedlund as Dean Moriarty), but the jazz-filled atmosphere pervading the book corrodes a movie which, for two hours, never approaches Kerouac’s originality. The hi-def transfer is excellent; some deleted scenes are the extras.
 
Smiley’s People
(Acorn Media)
Alec Guinness dominates this involving BBC adaptation of John Le Carre’s classic spy novel, made in 1982 by director Simon Langton. The second go-round for the “retired” expert, following Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, features superb supporting actors, authentic location shooting and an expansiveness which suits the book’s complexity.
 
Above it all hovers Guinness, whose slightly inscrutable presence makes Smiley endlessly fascinating. The Blu-ray image is good and grainy; lone extra is an interview with the normally reticent Le Carre.
 
Street Trash
(Synapse)
This 1987 cult flick has been resuscitated although, considering its ineptitude, one might ask why. Admittedly, its scenario—a new liquor causes the homeless winos who drink it to literally melt away—is ridiculous, and filmmaker James Muro knows it, so it’s played (mostly) tongue in cheek.
 
Still, that doesn’t excuse the lousy acting, script and directing. Oh well: its fans will find it, at least. The Blu-ray image looks decent; extras include a two-hour retrospective documentary, interviews, commentaries and the original short.
 
West of Memphis
(Sony Classics)
The unfortunate West Memphis Three case—permanently immortalized in the triptych of Paradise Lost films—has been adroitly summarized by director Amy Berg for anyone who hasn’t seen those films or who wants to learn what’s happened since a trio of “devil-worshipping” goth-dressers supposedly murdered three young boys in 1993.
 
It’s straightforward and unsurprising, but its new interviews and footage make it as much a “must-see” as its predecessors. The Blu-ray image looks fine; extras include commentary, deleted scenes, interviews and the Toronto Film Festival press conference with Berg, one of the three, Damien Echols, and one of their celebrity champions, Johnny Depp.
 
What Maisie Knew
(Millennium)
In their modern-day adaptation of Henry James’ story about a young girl who, after her immature parents split up, gradually builds a new life for herself, directors Scott McGhee and David Siegel smartly keep the focus on little Maisie, enacted with unforgettable intensity by newcomer Onata Aprile.
 
The adults are precisely played by Julianne Moore, Steve Coogan, Alexander Skarsgard and Joanna Vanderham, but it’s Aprile who creates an indelible character whose wise-beyond-her-years stratagem is rendered plausibly. The Blu-ray image is excellent; extras include deleted scenes and directors’ commentary.
 
Zombie Massacre
(e one)
More zombies are afoot in this generic horror flick about a soldiers who attempt to ward off a bunch of cretinous undead created after a biological disaster. The main reason for any zombie movie to exist is to come up with new ways of mauling humans and destroying the undead, and there are the usual gory ends for those who can’t enough of it.
 
Otherwise, you’ve been warned: dust off an old copy of any George Romero “dead” flick instead. The Blu-ray image is good; lone extra is a making-of featurette.
 
DVDs of the Week
Community—The Complete 4th Season  
(Sony)
and Political Animals—Complete Mini-Series
(Warners)
The latest season of NBC’s comedy series Community has the same pluses and minuses as the previous three, as genuinely funny banter and characters are balanced by the too-clever school of comedy that’s all the rage; these 13 episodes are inconsistently amusing.
 
The mini-series Political Animals stars Sigourney Weaver as a former First Lady who’s now Secretary of State; it’s too close to current reality to be any more than intermittently dead-on in its satire, despite the cast’s efforts. Community extras are commentaries on all episodes, outtakes, deleted scenes and featurettes; Animals extras are deleted scenes.
 
Cream—Farewell Concert
(Kino)
The musicianship of the fabled supergroup (whose final concert came before its 1968 break up) is unquestioned: guitarist Eric Clapton, bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker are first-class players, and the songs, from the opening “Sunshine of Your Love” to the final “I’m So Glad,” are exhilarating to hear.
 
The film itself, with hilarious narration that “explains” rock music to an audience of what was assumed were idiots, is worth hearing for its insipidness, and band-member interview clips interspersed throughout. The sound never hits that hard despite the 5.1 surround mix, however.
 
Mitchell and Sweet Revenge
(Warner Archive)
These Warner Archives releases resuscitate two forgettable mid-70s action flicks. In 1975’s Mitchell, Joe Don Baker can’t reignite his Walking Tall lightning as a renegade cop; the best scenes are between Mitchell and beautiful Linda Evans as an escort for hire.
 
A young Stockard Channing goes up against a young Sam Waterston in 1976’s Sweet Revenge, Jerry Schatzberg’s by-the-numbers drama about a female car thief and the straitlaced lawyer who enters her life.
 
Old Dog
(Icarus)
Director Pema Tseden’s engaging, thought-provoking drama follows an elderly Tibetan herder who desperately wants to buy back his beloved pet mastiff after his adult son decides that it’s better to sell the valuable animal before he’s stolen and sold for a fortune on the black market.
 
With an effortless documentary realism, Tseden subtly—and even humorously—shows how the pressures of modern society are continually impeding on traditional Tibetan culture.
 
The Thick of It
(BBC Home Entertainment)
Peter Capaldi’s scaldingly comic portrayal of Malcolm Tucker, spin doctor for the British prime minister, is the obvious reason to watch this hilarious BBC series, which begat the still-funny movie In the Loop and less-funny HBO show Veep.
 
Creator Armando Iannucci comes up aces with his cynically witty expose of current politics; his estimable supporting cast notwithstanding, it’s Capaldi’s show all the way, and he runs with it, profanity-laced expletives and all. The seven discs comprise all four seasons and special episodes; extras include commentaries, deleted scenes, outtakes and featurettes.
 
CD of the Week
Bartok—Violin Concertos
(Harmonia Mundi)
Bela Bartok’s two violin concertos are among the 20th century’s masterpieces for solo instrument and orchestra—if not quite up to the level of his three piano concertos—and soloist Isabelle Faust finds, in both works, the folk melodies and the eerie night music of which Bartok was a supreme master.
 
The later, mature Second Concerto sounds brilliant, and Faust and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra (under conductor Daniel Harding) do the same for the First Concerto—composed 30 years prior—making it nearly as good.

Film Review: "Elysium"

"Elyisum"
Directed by Neill Blomkamp
Starring Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, Alice Braga, Diego Luna, Wagner Moura, William Fichtner and Emma Tremblay
Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
109 Mins
R

At times prone to bluntness, Elysium packs wads of conventional sci-fi action amidst a ravaged view of the future. Nailed together with biting political satire, it's a savage message board that hammers home director Neill Blomkamp's cynical ethos. Offering a glum look at an Earth spoiled by overpopulation and rampant authoritarianism, Blomkamp has perfected his signature sardonic voice and here uses his ruminations on wealth inequality as entertaining, and meaningful, ammunition.

Expanding on the political edge he utilized in District 9, here Blomkamp shifts from apartheid to global health, convicting the duplicitous members of the elite for their crimes against humanity as a whole. As much a pot-shot at the one percent as a sci-fi actioner, this caliber of blockbuster is of the rare intellectual breed, emboldened by Blomkamp's knack for world building. Overflowing with sly wit and stylish cinematography, Elysium is a meaningful addition to a genre that is as much about prognosticating events to come as it is about action.

Read more: Film Review: "Elysium"

Film Review: "We're The Millers"

"We're The Millers"
Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber
Starring Jason Sudeikis, Jennifer Aniston, Will Poulter, Emma Roberts, Ed Helms, Nick Offerman, Kathryn Hahn, Mark L. Young
Comedy, Crime
110 Minutes
R

Filler entertainment for sure, We're the Millers is caught somewhere in between the hard-R, cuss-laden adult comedy and your run-of-the-mill, PG-13 family comedy with a soul. It stokes enough laughs to keep the engine churning for its 110 minute run time but when all is said and done, it's just another comedy kept buoyant by chuckles with little living behind the curtain, sloppily saddled with a moral message far out of its natural reach. You won't walk out regretting what you've seen but you'll be hard pressed to remember it by name a year down the line.

Proving that he knows how to milk a good laugh, director Rawson Marshall Thurber is no stranger to comedy. Back in 2004, he directed the much revered (at least by this guy and his high school buddies) Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. In case you are wondering, yes, that is the movie you're thinking of. Apparently the world just forgot about the most unnecessarily tacked on post-colon fragment of all time in the whole "A True Understory Story" bit but trust me (and IMDB), it's part of the name.

While Thurber was the solitary writer behind the laugh riot that was Dodgeball, We're the Millers has an exorbitant six writers. If writing duties were shared evenly, that calculates to about 18 minutes from each scribe. No wonder the film feels so tonally jarring, rocking back and forth between sweet and sour, shmaltzy and irreverent. When you finally feel like you have a read on Thurber's voice, it turns on a dime from lewd to sentimental and back again. Like an amusement park ride that spins more than it moves forward, the result is dizzying, disorienting and may make you wanna puke.

The exalted Dodgeball also had Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and a pre-pariah Lance Armstrong working for it while We're the Millers rests on the comedic shoulders of Jason Sudeikis and Jennifer Aniston. Sudeikis was a pleasant surprise in Horrible Bosses but he's still something of an unproven talent while Aniston has largely played the same girl next door with boy issues every since her role as Rachel on Friends. She certainly did break character in Horrible Bosses as the pushy sexual deviant boss, which ultimately resulted in one of the biggest breaths of fresh air in her entire career. For some of her onscreen time in this, she captures a similarly charmless aura but, about halfway through, descends to the flippant level we've come to expect of her.

And although this isn't Sudekis's first rodeo, it is essentially his first go-around as the leading man. As a supporting character, Sudekis thrives with his bohemian dude-isms. He's that silent bomber that swoops in and steals the laugh but here, he owns the pony show and is happy to try and strike at all the bells and whistles. Even in moments where the film stagnates, he satisfying leads the cast with his easygoing, quip-laden energy and eager beaver physical comedy.

Sudekis plays the role of David Clark, a 30-something burn out drug dealer working for his nerdy-college-buddy-turned-pot-kingpin (Ed Helms). When David gets robbed by a fuzzy-haired pack of hoods, he is enlisted to carry a smidge and a half of pot (read two hundred pounds) over from the dusty lawlessness of Mexico. In an attempt to be inconspicuous, he employs stripper neighbor, Rose (Aniston), apartment twerp/dork/loser/virgin, Kenny (Will Poulter), and hood-rat hobo with an iPhone 5, Casey (Emma Roberts) to impersonate a hapless, all American family on an RV vacation. Naturally, the border guards wouldn't suspect a pink polo-sporting family to be smuggling tens of millions of dollars worth of sweet, sticky ganja across the heavily guarded US border.

There are moments of stitch-inducing laughs peppered throughout but it's hard to shake the feeling that this is a minor experience in a minor film. Nonetheless, there are moments that really got a rise out of me, such as an impromptu learning-to-kiss seminar that is gruelingly awkward as well as various asides from Sudekis, spoken or even just mouthed, but two days after watching the film and the effects have already mostly washed off. Regardless of its relative levity and how easy it is to write off, it was a film that I didn't feel bad snickering at alongside the audience exploding in a cacophony of laughter around me. In terms of the immediate experience of having a good time at the movies, We're the Millers accomplishes that goal.

What I did have an issue with is the shoehorning in of moral lessons surrounding the troubles of drug dealing. There's a sort of implied agreement that if you're going to see a stoner comedy about a sourpatch burnout slinging bags of weed with names like "Fucking Awesome" and "Alaska Thunderfuck" then you don't really have any moral credo against the illicit substance. We don't need to be told that drug dealing is bad and, by extension, don't need to see our hero turn away from it in order to understand that he's actually a good guy.

There was never a "Cheech and Chong Turn Narcs!" for a reason just as Pineapple Express didn't end with James Franco and Seth Rogen swearing off the substance forever. It's an unnecessary turning point for a film that already is trying to stand for the importance of the family. Being a comedy with a little bit of a message is one thing. Being a moral guard of the US War on Drugs is quite another. Had they just stuck by the idea that things are better in twos, or threes, or fours, it could have had enough of a sugarcoat to satisfy the older demographics but instead it tilts too far into preachy, moral guardianship. By the end, two is two too many ethical judgments for this comedy to cram in.

But, let's not get too down on it. It's a fun movie right? That's the point, right? Surely, but it's also the reason why I won't be prancing through town singing its praises. I thought the ongoing Scotty P. "You know what I'm sayin'" gag was hilarious, I laughed a lot when Kenny was in the throes of a kiss gangbang and even Jennifer Aniston hit more than she missed (even if she should retire stripping from her resume as soon as possible). But in the end, it's not much more than throwaway entertainment that'll see a meager return on its investment, have a quick HBO run and disappear into the same discount bin that Horrible Bosses lingers in today a mere two years after its release.

C+

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