Even if you haven’t seen a movie about psychic Jedi warriors in the United States Army who kill goats with their mind, you may come out of “The Men Who Stare at Goats” thinking that you’ve seen a lot of it before.

George Clooney stars in this adaptation of Jon Ronson’s non-fiction book and Grant Heslov, his producing/writing partner from “Good Night and Good Luck,” takes the director’s chair for the first time. Where Clooney exhibited measured control directing “Good Night,” though, Heslov is all over the map with “Goats.”

The movie can’t quite make up its mind about what it wants to be: a silly farce, a character drama, a military satire, a supernatural story, or the personal journey of a humiliated cuckold. This wouldn’t be a problem if it did all of things well and found a through-line, but “The Men Who Stare at Goats” doesn’t do that. Instead, it’s a random string of gags and scenes (some that work well, some that don’t) that all somehow ring familiar. What the film is lucky to have is an excellent cast that seems game for anything.

The cuckold’s tale

Ewan McGregor plays Bob Wilton, the reporter who stumbles onto the story of the First Earth Battalion around the same time his wife leaves him for a one-armed man. His discoveries about a New Age branch of the Army headed by long-haired Vietnam vet Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) should be enough to get him interested, but instead it’s being dumped that gets him to Iraq, talking quite coincidentally to Django’s star pupil, Lyn Cassady (Clooney). His backstory seems forced from the get-go, but when the absurdities of the situation start piling up, it’s easier to forgive.

Silly farce

From there, the movie has a lot of fun filling in the details of this psi-ops Army division. Few actors today can do furious deadpan delivery like Clooney, but some of the stuff he has to convey is so preposterous that when the film asks you to believe in its characters, it’s just impossible. The exception: Bridges is quite sympathetic as a man who’s faith and hope are always teetering on collapse. On the level of farce, however, the film works for a good hour or so.

Military satire

The suggestion that the Army would pursue psychic exploration—and put up with a flower-carrying troop that stands for everything contrary to Army policy—for the sole reason of weaponizing it, is pretty funny. Screenwriter Peter Straughan gets a lot of mileage out of the notion, hoisting awkward notions of peace right up there against men in military outfits who start behaving strangely. But just when the movie feels as if it ought to be getting somewhere comes the sad realization that it has actually begun to wind down.

Character drama?

When all the characters from this flashback-riddled and disjointed movie finally converge, it’s the biggest letdown of the film. All the possibilities that the script hinted at earlier are unwisely scuttled for a lame escape attempt with no real consequence or purpose. It’s hard to get involved in the characters’ plight, especially when the road that they take is so arbitrary all of a sudden.

Supernatural story

Kevin Spacey plays a career-minded psychic warrior who brings unwanted change into the New Earth Army and therefore confirms our suspicions that all of this mind-literally-over-matter stuff is hogwash. Or is it? “The Men Who Stare at Goats” has an unconvincing and unfunny ending that wants to have it both ways, but just comes off as pandering.

The movie is uneven for sure and ludicrous in conceit, but that’s not to say that it isn’t entertaining at times. McGregor is saddled with a tiresome everyman role, but Spacey, Clooney, and especially Bridges make some of their scenes work better than they should. If only Heslov had been able to make a cohesive film out it …

Tags: 2009, clooney, film, goats, movie, movie review, review, The Men Who Stare at Goats

Here’s a post about the validity of the film’s “documentary footage” and true story claim. Review below.

Milla Jovovich, bathed in white light, steps into the foreground. As the camera circles her and abruptly changes angles, the actress delivers a spiel about the film’s production, its authenticity, our freedom to draw our own conclusions, and she wraps things up with the caveat that “some of what [we]’re about to see is disturbing.”

If you start things off with a proclamation like that, you’d better have the goods to back it up.

Set in a small town in northern Alaska in October 2000, the movie purports to use real video and audio from various interviews conducted by Dr. Abbey Tyler with several of her patients who were experiencing alien encounters in conjunction with dramatizations of those interviews and events. With that premise, one would think having convincing documentary footage would be the logical place to start. One would be wrong.

Right off the bat, “The Fourth Kind” can’t get its act together. The footage that kicks off the actual feature is of Dr. Tyler being interviewed by the film’s director, Olatunde Osunsanmi, and it’s so awkward and obviously scripted that the immediate effect is incredulity.

This persists throughout the entire film. None of the footage is convincing and the insinuation that it’s authentic becomes insulting. It doesn’t do itself any favors when it goes into split screen, either, showing the dramatized action alongside its allegedly real counterpart, often revealing the former to be more startling.

With that crippling problem set aside, Jovovich, playing Dr. Tyler, turns in a surprisingly decent performance. She’s convincing as a woman grieving the death of her husband while juggling motherhood and her duties as a psychologist.

Elias Koteas is good, too, as her visiting colleague who champions hard evidence, the scientific method and…yet…denies the validity of his own extraterrestrial encounter later on in the film.

And Hakeem Kae-Kazim as Dr. Awolowa Odusami (said to be an alias), a scholar of ancient languages, provided the film’s one sincere moment of intrigue and disturbance when he discussed the relationship between aliens and ancient Sumeria.

But then we have Will Patton as Sheriff August (another alias) who brings things to a screeching halt with his self-aware, arbitrarily hostile and unreasonable antics which make no sense and do further damage to the credibility the film so desperately needs.

He acts the way only a character in a bad movie would: ignoring evidence, making hasty, irrational decisions that negatively affect just about everyone, withholding basic information about Tyler’s husband’s death without purpose. Did Osunsanmi honestly think we wouldn’t find his character insufferable?

If for nothing else, the film fails by not living up to its own hefty proclamation. It isn’t scary in the slightest. The interviews seem fake and so much of the action borrows from “The Exorcist” and other possession films that it’s laughable. The scares that do occur are simply surprises and couldn’t haunt you if they wanted to.

I have a friend who’s never watched “E.T.” all the way through because he’s terrified of aliens. Just the other day, he was whining to me about being bullied into seeing “Signs” in theaters and how it nearly ruined his life. This wouldn’t faze him.

Tags: 2009, abduction, alaska, Alien, fourth, fourth kind, kind, movie, movie review, review

Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut “Whip It” is so overflowing with enthusiastic performances that it is impossible to watch it and not have a good time.

Sure, you may notice an over-reliance on music montages to show the evolution of a budding teenage romance. You may also think you know where the movie is headed from the first moments. Since it’s a sports film (based on the rough n’ tumble female roller derby leagues in Austin, TX), you also understand that everything is leading up to the big game.

But you know what? With as much energy as Barrymore puts into every part of the movie, it’s a joy to watch small-town beauty queen Bliss Cavendar (played by Ellen Page from “Juno”) turn into badass punky rollergirl Babe Ruthless, even if it isn’t completely believable that it happens that fast.

Based on the book Derby Girl by Shauna Cross, an actual Texas Rollergirl, “Whip It” casts poor Bliss as a girl who wants more out of life than her stereotypical small Texas town can offer. Her Mom, a former pageant winner herself (played by Marcia Gay Harden), is living out her dreams again through her daughter. But Bliss wears her Mom’s old Christian heavy-metal band T-shirt for irony’s sake and wants cool thrift shop clothes.

Naturally, she’s bound for Austin.

As high-school misfit Bliss meets and all-too-quickly joins up with the losingest team on the roller derby circuit, she finds a new group of friends and a community that she finally fits into, even if it is populated by thirtysomethings Kristen Wiig (playing Maggie Mayhem, the actual stage name of Cross) and Drew Barrymore (as the always-late and accident-prone Smashley Simpson).

South Street, Waterloo Records, the Alamo Drafthouse, and other ultra-cool Austin hangouts are the backdrop for a love affair Bliss has with a younger Richard Ashcroft look-alike (Landon Pigg) who—like everyone in Austin—plays in a band. Even though they rarely have any intelligent dialogue between them onscreen, they quickly fall in love. (Come to think of it, many early relationships are like this—based mostly on “newness” and physical attraction.)

OK. I just read everything I’ve written so far and it sounds like I’m really bagging on this film. I’m not. I shouldn’t be. Because for as much of “Whip It” is by-the-books in the screenplay department, Barrymore manages to put forth a real sense of sweetness and unruliness at the same time.

The core of the movie is Bliss’ relationship with her mother (who now works as a postal carrier), and the scenes between Harden and Page are some of the best in the movie. Where some films might underestimate the importance of the mother/daughter relationship and instead focus on more violent girl-on-girl action, Barrymore doesn’t abbreviate it at all. She understands this is what the entire movie hinges on and both director and actresses approach these scenes with subtlety.

Even the roller derby girls get ample screen time to flesh out their characters. Wiig especially shines as she is revealed to have motherly instincts lurking under her aggressive exterior. Juliette Lewis, who begins the film as one-note bad girl Iron Maven, shows a surprising amount of depth by the end.

For as much convention as “Whip It” adheres to, it also sports a stubbornly independent streak. A break-up between two major characters is handled in uncharacteristic fashion, and even the climax of the movie has some nice left turns on its way to its inevitable conclusion.

The marvel of “Whip It” is that Barrymore’s freewheeling spirit is infectious, even when her direction borders on sloppiness and the script skirts with cliché. That is the sign of a natural director.

Tags: barrymore, derby, lewis, movie, movie review, page, review, roller, whip it, whip it review, wiig

The timing is right. The entire world is struggling to find its way out of a recession. Middle America is pissed off and broke. U.S. unemployment is soaring and the economic meltdown continues. So along comes the provocateur filmmaker who has spent the last 20 years raging against the machine, and he’s aiming at a big, big target—the very economic system that his country is based on.

Michael Moore’s new documentary “Capitalism: A Love Story” may be a bit scattershot and it may employ many familiar tricks, but it’s nothing if not a challenging and personal movie from one of the most polarizing figures in politics today.

He calls himself a populist, but sometimes you have to wonder. Why—you may ask—didn’t Moore go for a smaller, less controversial prey? With President Obama being called a “socialist” at every turn and that word being villainized the way it is in the mainstream media right now, why didn’t he use his ample storytelling and heartstring-tugging skills to rally film audiences around a less contentious idea?

Well, if you think about it, Moore has always shot for the moon. “Bowling for Columbine” was not a documentary about gun control—it questioned the fascination our country has with guns and asks what that leads to. “Fahrenheit 9/11” didn’t only try to bring down a sitting President—it highlighted a culture of fear. “Sicko” didn’t just find flaws in the American health care system—it challenged viewers to re-examine what it means to be a citizen and have your country protect you.

Moore has always gone for the big picture; always tried to re-frame the argument. And to some extent, the buttons he pushes get people to talk. Many of the issues brought up in his movies have gradually seeped into the collective consciousness. Will the thesis of this movie do the same thing? Only time will tell.

His argument this time is simple. Capitalism is broken. Not only does it not work, but it’s immoral, anti-Democratic, and anti-American. From the start, he goes for the throat. He shows an old film of life in ancient Rome and while the dated voice-over talks about the fall of the Roman Empire, he cuts in images of modern America. There he goes alienating people again. His trademark sledgehammer style is certainly off-putting at times, but after watching the rest of the movie, it’s hard not to see the similarities.

The movie plays like a bookend to 1989’s “Roger and Me,” where he documented the decimation of his blue-collar hometown of Flint, Mich. after the closing of a GM plant. Things have only gotten worse since then. Moore is focusing his anger on the growing divide between the rich and the poor in America, as he again follows families that are being evicted from their homes.

He highlights “dead peasant” policies, an ugly life insurance practice that gives employers huge payouts when their workers die, while nothing goes to the family. He uncovers politicians who were given special refinancing deals by the same company that was capitalizing on sub-prime mortgage deals. He traces prominent banking executives who were appointed to Presidential cabinets and traces them back again to the private sector as they maneuver to increase their already obnoxious wealth at the expense of others.

This kind of rampant greed has stampeded out of control for quite some time, Moore says, and he traces its roots back to the Reagan administration’s heady de-regulation days. As big business got in bed with more politicians, the government opened the floodgates on the ways that corporations could make money exponentially and make sure that it was not against the law.

This is a subject Moore is quite passionate about. By tracing his family’s roots back to an embattled worker’s strike in the 1930s and conversing with his father about the work ethic and pride that employees at the GM plant were instilled with back in the 70s, Moore really does spotlight how things have changed since then. He recalls a time when capitalism held the promise that everyone, if they worked hard enough, might someday share in some of the wealth. Juxtaposed with the cynical climate of today and the staggering statistic that the richest one percent of the country makes more than the other 99 percent combined, it’s easy to be nostalgic.

I like that Moore takes historical perspectives to remind everyone that what you think our country is now may not resemble what it was in the past. On a trip to Washington, D.C. this August, I again visited the Lincoln Memorial and it was striking to read the thoughtful, philosophical prose of a President who today seems a hundred times more liberal and progressive than I remembered.

So in the movie when a sickly Franklin Roosevelt appeared in a 1944 address to call for a “second bill of rights,” I was reminded of the courage it takes to stand up for “big picture” ideals that may not be popular at the time. When Jimmy Carter appeared with an altogether harsher tone in a TV address that condemned the greed and materialism that he saw in our society, I thought the same thing.

I’m still not quite sure what Wallace Shawn (“The Princess Bride”) was doing in the picture as a talking head and I’ve seen enough of Moore’s stunts (such as putting yellow crime scene tape around banks and asking for the bailout money back) on the previews. On the other hand, so much of the information in the movie is so depressing that these moments were fairly welcome just for their lighthearted tone.

Connecting the dots between all this fascinating and frustrating material isn’t easy, and sometimes it seems like a 360-degree turn. Moore is on solid ground, however, towards the end of the film when he spotlights one factory in Chicago that fought back after told they were being fired and subsequently not paid for hours already worked. The single most inspiring moment in the movie comes during these events, and it’s good timing; it’s a call to arms.

Love or hate his tone and his methods, Moore is a gifted filmmaker who isn’t afraid to say exactly what he feels. He loves his country and—in his words—he’s not leaving. If he rubs you the wrong way sometimes, then we are in the same boat. But his idealism and refusal to back down to injustices he perceives are inspiring. But it’s not from him that I derive my greatest hope. For all the awful mistreatment of people in “Capitalism: A Love Story,” it’s hard not to be somewhat optimistic when you see what everyday people are capable of when they rally together.

Footnote: FDR’s 1944 speech called for the “right” to “adequate medical care,” “a useful and remunerative job,” “a decent home,” “a good education,” “adequate food and clothing and recreation,” and “the right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad.”

Footnote 2: There is no such thing as objective cinema. Every shot, angle, voice-over, piece of music has a point of view and is subjective. Every documentary you’ve ever seen has a bias.

Footnote 3: Propaganda is not inherently “bad.” It all depends on your perspective. Moore joins a talented propagandist club already populated by WWII-era geniuses like German documenatrian Leni Riefenstahl (”Triumph of the Will”) and beloved American filmmaker Frank Capra (”Why We Fight”).

Tags: capitalism: a love story, film, michael moore, movie, movie review, review

With the exception of a few arthouse hits, the type of Japanese films that gain notoriety in America tend to lean towards the violent or random. Potentially a little bit “weird” for the art crowd, and a little too “art” for the weirdos, “Fish Story” (Fisshu sutôrî) is a breath of fresh air that deserves attention.

It’s 2012 and a comet is mere hours away from Earth. The American attempt to destroy it, dubbed “Project Armageddon,” planted nuclear bombs but could not detonate them.

A man in a wheelchair wanders into a record store where a clerk and his patron are discussing punk music, seemingly oblivious to the unfolding events. The clerk breaks out a record, a rare single from a Japanese punk band that was recorded a full year before the Sex Pistols emerged. It’s called “Fish Story,” and its lyrics are either incredibly deep or completely nonsensical.

From the introduction of the song, we jump around to several points in time as various seemingly unrelated events unfold: The band in 1975 as they struggle to find an audience, a group of doomsday cultists in 1999 that are less than pleased when the world fails to end, a mild-mannered young man bullied by paranormal recording aficionado friends in 1982 and his chance encounter with a girl who claims to be psychic, and a science major on a ferry who sleeps through her stop in 2002 and finds herself in the middle of a terrorist hijacking whose only hope is a waiter who claims to be a champion of justice.

How do they tie together? What does the song mean? Is there any hope the comet will be destroyed? Are there any champions of justice left? Can music really save the world?

The way the movie unfolds is its biggest strength. Sometimes movies that juggle various timelines and characters struggle with pacing or fostering a consistent level of interest. Subverting the traditional three-act structure is much harder than it seems.

But “Fish Story” works by always remaining compelling and never overstaying its welcome.

While some critics have made comparisons to Robert Altman, this film (directed by Yoshihiro Nakamura) probably feels closest in tone and plotting to two slightly obscure Canadian movies, the end-of-the-world ensemble “Last Night” and the time-spanning “The Red Violin.”

Like those, “Fish Story” is a smartly told movie of great ideas and humor that explores fate and the way in which life and even world-altering events can hinge on the smallest of decisions and coincidence.

Hopefully this finds U.S. distribution, because this “Fish Story” is a great movie that’s well worth catching.

Tags: fish story, fish story movie review, fish story review, movie review, review

“The Hurt Locker” is one of those movies where the story arc just kind of sneaks up on you when you’re not looking. It’s a lot like the situation that its principal characters find themselves in every day.

Bomb defusers must always be alert. A man on a cell phone peeking out from a doorway in Baghdad on a deserted street is a potential sign of danger for Bravo Company’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal squad (EOD), three U.S. Army soldiers who find themselves in unbearably tense situations on a regular basis.

These are the guys who get called in every time there is a car trunk that is suspiciously weighed down or an unidentifiable homemade device is found sticking out of a trash heap. Director Kathryn Bigelow is the perfect director to bring this story to life, having previously tackled men with adrenaline rush addictions in “Point Break” and “Strange Days.”

Because “The Hurt Locker” is told in an episodic fashion, dominated by several extremely tense EOD situations, a lot of character-building happens in those “action” scenes. Noticing the subtleties in how differently the men handle a sniper shoot-out or the defusing of an improvised explosive device is key to interpreting the non-political Iraq War film that Bigelow and former embedded journalist/screenwriter Mark Boal have made.

For some soldiers, their situation is deceptively simple. As the quote from New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges that opens the film says, “War is a drug.”

Jeremy Renner plays Staff Sgt. James, the new hotshot leader of the EOD team. Don’t let the term “hotshot” fool you, however. James is not the Maverick-“Top Gun” type in the typical gung-ho military film. That particular role in “The Hurt Locker” is a small one—a macho colonel played by David Morse, who goads James into admitting that he has defused 873 bombs. He may keep his head low and not like to brag, but James clearly keeps track. The title of the film comes from a box of wires and parts he keeps under his cot that almost killed him.

By-the-books Sgt. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) is counting down the days left in Bravo Company and wants what James has back home—a family. But when James stares right through a picture of his son, the picture of what James has become gets a little more clear. Specialist Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), on the other hand, can’t take the stress anymore and wants out immediately. Confidence for him comes in the most unlikely of places during one intense battle when James encourages Eldridge to be a better soldier.

Even though James is clearly dangerous to the squad (which seems always on the verge of collapse), he might also be crucial. “The Hurt Locker” blurs this line constantly. Although he is assured and precise when it’s time to defuse something, his emotions get the best of him when he ventures outside of that (un)safe zone. Renner internalizes everything in a riveting, natural performance that doesn’t follow the traditional showy style of Oscar-caliber stuff—but he just might sneak in there to get a nomination next year, depending on the amount of higher-profile competition.

The action scenes are delivered with an emphasis on the real and the unexpected. Bigelow ramps up the visceral tension with help from cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, who also lensed the terrifying docudrama “United 93.”

“The Hurt Locker” only falls into familiarity with a couple scenes towards the end that thankfully are very short and don’t diminish the power of the rest of the movie too much. Boal’s screenplay is simple but effective and Bigelow delivers in spades on the suspense factor. The end result is a film that slowly works its way into your head (and James’) and will probably linger for quite a while there too.

Tags: 2009, bomb, diffuse, eod, film, ied, intense, iraq, jeremey renner, kathryn bigelow, movie review, review, the hurt locker, war

Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies” is a lovingly crafted exercise by the veteran filmmaker, whose films have covered the similarities between criminals and lawmen many times before (See “Manhunter” and “Heat”). Starring Johnny Depp as infamous Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger and Christian Bale as dogged FBI agent Melvin Purvis, the film gives the audience an impression of what it must have been like to be there more than any other movie that has covered this well-worn territory before.

In that respect, “Public Enemies” recalls Terrence Malick’s haunting 2005 film “The New World,” set in 1607 Jamestown. The two movies are less concerned with suspense and plot mechanics than they are with realizing an experience, even if the two directors’ narrative strategies are completely different. Malick created a dreamlike portrait of an untouched land and life that moves at its own slow pace, while Mann prefers to put the viewer within close proximity of Dillinger and his gang during their intense 13-month crime spree. Both films reach their goals, sometimes with thrilling results.

Mann’s cinema vérité style is achieved with lots of handheld camera shots and the fact that everything—like his last two movies, “Miami Vice” and “Collateral”—is shot on digital HD. On one hand, video is as unglamorous as can be, exposing blotchy skin tones and letting in harsh light. Since Mann was going for a heightened sense of realism, this would make sense. Digital works fine for a contemporary setting. However, there were several times in “Public Enemies” where I was pulled right out of the story. The simple fact that I am not used to seeing a period piece shot with a camera that at times is very self-aware made me forget that I was watching Dillinger and Purvis , and instead I saw Depp and Bale playing dress-up.

It’s a strange feeling to be sure, and it didn’t last—mostly because everything else in the movie kept me rooted. Neither Depp nor Bale are glamorized, although Dillinger’s fantastical public legend certainly could call for it (and the mere fact that he is played by Johnny Depp does its own glamorizing). During the Depression, Dillinger’s exploits were plastered on the front page seemingly every day. Dillinger’s robberies and prison escapes combined with people’s anger at the banks made him a folk hero. That the authorities couldn’t catch him or keep him in jail made it even more exciting.

Although Mann gives us few traces of the Depression onscreen, and hardly delves into the cultural significance of Dillinger, he definitely gives us thrilling robberies and shootouts. It’s almost as if the filmmaker expects us to know something about the era going in so he can concentrate on the business at hand.

Chaos explodes over and over again in “Public Enemies” as cars, buildings, and windows are pummeled by a constant barrage of Tommy-gun bullets. Within that bedlam, Dillinger is always the calm, cool, and collected of the bunch. This is one film where I can’t complain about not being able to see the choreographed action as well as I want to—that’s the point.

It’s fascinating to see the now-powerful FBI as an ill-equipped, outmatched group of newbies. Purvis, egged on by never-ending pressure from director J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) and a perceived national pandemic of crime, eventually moves from Hoover’s clean-cut image of the force to hiring older seasoned veterans. At one point, in an eerie evocation of Abu Ghraib, his orders are for prisoners—like Dillinger’s girlfriend Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard)—to be interrogated vigorously.

As much time as we spend with Dillinger and his gang, we don’t really get to know any of them. We get a sense of Dilinger’s loyalty to them, though, and—like James Caan in Mann’s “Thief”—we sympathize with Dillinger.

Sometimes the movie is fairly inert in its sense of drama (an inevitable result of Mann’s vérité choice perhaps?), but the last 30 minutes of “Public Enemies” develops a strong sense of foreboding that is missing n the rest of the movie. Buoyed by the fact that we know this won’t end well for the bank robber, the film meticulously re-enacts the events leading up to Dillinger’s last moments.

Part of what gives the finale its power is its historical accuracy, but I have to be honest—I got goosebumps during a scene towards the end of the movie which I assume is some sort of metaphorical fantasy as well. You see, trading off realistic presentation for artistic license is not always a bad thing.

Tags: 2009, christian bale, film, johnny depp, michael mann, movie, movie review, Public Enemies, review

Post-modern awareness is mixed with an ancient setting in Harold Ramis’ “Year One,” but somehow most of the humor still manages to be prehistoric. If you’ve always wanted to see smart comedians revert to grade school hi-jinks for cheap laughs, then this is the movie for you.

Jack Black and Michael Cera star as two early tribesmen who talk like, well, Jack Black and Michael Cera. Black is an ignorant, hulking hunter named Zed and Cera a wimpy gatherer named Oh. A hundred winking “hunter and gatherer” jokes later, Zed eats shiny gold forbidden fruit from a tree, gets kicked out of the tribe, and sets the two off on an adventure. A couple of abruptly cut-off scenes later, the duo are inexplicably hob-knobbing with Cain and Abel.

Although there seems to be a lot of gags and some side characters that go nowhere, Ramis no doubt edited many of these early scenes to be as short as possible, thus giving the film a sense that it’s actually going somewhere—which it isn’t. Since he and co-writers Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg (from NBC’s “The Office”) obviously weren’t aspiring anywhere near the satiric heights of Monty Python’s Biblical-times spoof “Life of Brian,” it’s a wonder that “Year One” was made at all. After all, we already have plenty of lowbrow sex jokes in “Caveman” (starring Ringo Starr!) and Mel Brooks’ “History of the World Part I.”

Both actors do their trademark shtick (Black is a good-natured, hyper horndog, Cera is a mopey deadpan teenager), and sometimes they are able to generate laughs despite the muck they are mired in. Hell, there are even small parts played by Hank Azaria and Oliver Platt in which these character actors throw themselves into sleazy witlessness so eagerly and with such relish, that you can’t help but giggle at the absurdity of it all. Then you’ll want to immediately take a shower.

Unfortunately, what “Year One” will probably be known for is for how much comic talent is just completely wasted in the movie. Bill Hader, David Cross, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Kyle Gass, Paul Scheer, and Paul Rudd generate exactly zero laughs between them, but maybe this point is best exemplified by the fact that Ramis unselfishly steps into one of the film’s thankless roles himself. You’ve got to admire a director whose solidarity with his actors extends that far.
But “Year One” fails because it sets its sights so disappointingly low.

Ramis directed “Groundhog Day,” so it’s sad to see him wasting his time on such juvenile and retread material. There are a couple jabs at outdated religious superstitions like human sacrifice, but it’s all so safe and awfully unfunny. I didn’t expect a movie set in this time period to be devoid of crude, gross-out humor, but it’s too bad that it has to rely so heavily on it.

Cultural Sidenote: In 1972, Divine eats poop in John Waters’ scandalous and unrated “Pink Flamingoes,” which garners an NC-17 rating upon re-release. In 2009, Jack Black eats poop in “Year One,” and it’s so passé, it gets a PG-13. Fun!

Tags: 2009, harold ramis, jack black, michael cera, movie review, year one

It’s a bad pun to make, but “Land of the Lost” is just that. Caught in an unfunny netherworld between kid-oriented mainstream summer entertainment and a cheap-looking green-screened sort of surreality, “Land of the Lost” might have been a watchable—no—bearable movie had it just embraced one or the other fully.

Instead, what we are left with in this adaptation of the Sid and Marty Krofft Saturday-morning kids’ show (that ran for three seasons in the 1970s) is a half-baked and uninspired lark of a film that will probably please nobody.

The names are the same as the TV program, but the roles are different. Will Ferrell’s Rick Marshall is now a quantum paleontologist (!) who was publicly humiliated for his belief in a parallel universe that he has yet to prove exists. Holly is no longer his daughter—she’s a budding scientist (played by Anna Friel) who believes Marshall is correct and wants to help him find this world. Will is played by Danny McBride, doing a lesser version of his redneck schtick from “Pineapple Express” and HBO’s “Eastbound and Down.”

Through a series of events too ridiculous to spend time relaying here (but not strange enough to be subversive in any way), the trio ends up in this universe where past, present, and future co-exist. Director Brad Silberling apparently felt the premise was too silly to properly set up because he spends barely any time with his characters before dumping them in the CGI landmark-strewn sand dunes that make up this “lost” world. That wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that it is so underwhelming.

The production design was probably trying to mimic the cheapness of the original’s sets and costumes, but since the movie never commits to a parodic tone and never really goes overboard with its extravagance, it just looks shoddy. A bunch of world landmarks stuck in the sand with a Bob’s Big Boy statue and other 70s icons does not make a convincing alternate reality—it just looks like laziness.

Though it should be noted that the CGI dinosaurs look very convincing—which is odd, since the mysterious race of Sleestaks are obviously men wearing lizard suits. Why they didn’t go with herky-jerky stop-motion dinos to match the cheesy lizard suits is beyond me. Again—no consistency.

Monkey-boy Cha-Ka (Saturday Night Live writer and Lonely Island member Jorma Taccone) is a beloved weirdo from the show, but in the movie he’s turned into an annoying horndog who is responsible for about half of the movie’s unfortunate stable of pee and poo jokes. He’s not the one that drenches Marshall in a big bag of urine, however. Twice Ferrell gets to do that “joke.” “Land of the Lost” is so desperate for laughs that it resorts to this kind of stuff far too often, and it’s pretty beneath everybody.

It could be said that adapting a movie from source material that is more well known for being hokey was a dubious idea in the first place, but that would be too simplistic an approach to laying the blame. With Will Ferrell and Danny McBride in two of the three lead roles, “Land of the Lost” had the potential to be an off-the-wall adventure with a winking, nostalgic tone.

One hint of the “movie that never was” (and the only time I laughed out loud) is a scene where McBride realizes the unusual electronic processing powers of a certain giant crystal. Immediately he starts singing Cher’s “Believe” with Ferrell and their voices ring out with the same vocoder effect. It’s such a random moment of absurdity that it makes me wonder what this screenplay would have been like if the writers (Dennis McNicholas and Chris Henchy) had embraced all the opportunities for a clever spoof.

On the other hand, “Land of the Lost” certainly doesn’t follow the classic blockbuster Hollywood mentality either, because the script is so unfocused and characters so non-existent that there is no forward motion or reason to root for anybody. Maybe when Will Ferrell signed on, the producers heaved a sigh of relief because they spent all their time securing the rights to film the movie and knew they’d spent no time on the script. They probably thought, “Throw Will in with a bunch of Sleestax, Cha-Ka, some dinosaurs, and we got a movie! He’ll just improvise the rest!”

That may explain why “Land of the Lost” very often took me to the verge of laughter.

Tags: 2009, anna, danny, ferrell, film, friel, Land of the Lost, mcbride, movie, movie review, review, will, will ferrell

Roger Ebert thinks 3D is overrated: “Every single frame of a 3D movie gives you something to look at that is not necessary,” he recently wrote. To a formulaic movie like DreamWorks’ “Monsters Vs. Aliens,” however, 3D was the only thing keeping me awake. And in Laika’s stop-motion treasure “Coraline,” the 3D was absolutely integrated into the “Alice in Wonderland”-like story, enriching the storytelling.

I’m not sure if seeing Pixar’s latest animated achievement “Up” in 3D would help or hinder, though. I saw it in regular ole’ 2D, and it is such a genuinely moving tale, that I have my doubts whether 3D would improve the experience. Village Voice critic Robert Wilonsky saw the 3D version and is pretty firm on the matter: “Do not see ‘Up’ in 3D. It’s inessential to the tale and altogether distracting.”New York magazine’s David Edelstein, on the other hand, says, “By all means, see ‘Up’ in its 3D incarnation: The cliff drops are vertiginous, and the scores of balloons—bunched into the shape of one giant balloon—are as pluckable as grapes.”

Either way, go see “Up.”

Co-directed by Pete Docter (“Monsters, Inc.”) and Bob Peterson (who also wrote the screenplay and voices two of the characters), “Up” uses the oft-explored theme of boyhood imagination to propel a story about coping with loss and learning how to live. Sound depressing? Well, at first, it is. And it’s a testament to the artists at Pixar that they keep delivering one piece of expertly-rendered, artful entertainment each year that doesn’t pander to kids and that families will still adore.

With the CGI world in such rapid evolution, “Up” probably could have been made in live-action form. Thank the stars that it didn’t, because the animators pour tons of personality into every pixel of their character design. Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner) is a single-minded 78-year-old curmudgeon with a jaw so square you could measure right angles with it. Paralyzed by the loss of his wife Ellie, he comes out of his house only to assault the construction crews that surround him. (Think Clint Eastwood in “Gran Torino,” only without the overt racism and incessant growling.)

An impossibly round eight-year-old Junior Wilderness Explorer named Russell (voiced by Jordan Nagai) comes to the house, interested in completing his “Assist the Elderly” badge. He looks like a Weeble and his unstoppable boisterousness keeps him always on the verge of falling down.

The city won’t get his house if he has anything to say about it, so Carl uproots the entire thing with a massive bouquet of balloons on a mission for the land he and his wife always meant to visit—Paradise Falls, Venezuela. This moment is pure magic, and it sets up a logic-defying second and third act that consistently surprises even as it adheres to a fairly standard formula.

When boiled down to its essence, “Up” is essentially a buddy comedy about a young kid who teaches an old sourpuss to appreciate the joy he had in his past and live again. Even then, the movie tells this familiar story in such an enchanting way that it’s hard to begrudge it. Docter and Peterson imbue inanimate objects with so much meaning that huge moments of change and climax for the characters can happen without them even saying a word.

In fact, a wordless montage that takes place early in the movie could stand on its own as a short film—it’s an incredibly moving portrait of Carl and Ellie’s entire life together. It accomplishes in about 10 minutes what some movies fail to do with two hours or more.

Just because the narrative follows a well-tread path doesn’t mean that “Up” isn’t overflowing with inventive ideas. Plenty of computer-animated movies these days feature talking animals—so much so that it’s become a minor annoyance and a major crutch. Leave it to Pixar to create a new and creative way for this to happen. Using its clever set-up, Peterson even expands on the joke and wrings plenty of empathy out of it.

I won’t spoil it for you, but let’s just say it is just one example of the advanced level of expertly cultivated imagination that has gone into making “Up” such a joy.

Tags: animated, film, movie, movie review, Pixar, review, up