Transformers 2, Year One, and Bruno

The boys club of summer flicks: scotum slapstick, CGI enhanced robot babes and well Sascha Baron Cohen:

Year One can't ride the "so bad it's good" bandwagon. I don't know why neither Jack Black nor Michael Cera were able to recgonize the devoid of humor Monty python ripoff. It had so much potential yet flatlined from the first scene. I am reminded of movies this could have been: Tropic Thunder, Robin Hood Men in Tight, maybe Spaceballs? The setup is so precarious. Take contemporary comedians and insert them into a revival of a film formula--the silly caveman. Hard though if they don't buy into the world and thus are unable to richly lampoon it. We are left with a lot of awkward actors in stupid laugh setups. They just want to be themselves.

Trannies 2 clocks in at 2:45 which is actually too long for a midnight showing. Or maybe it speaks to the commitment of its fans to persevere through bad pacing and epic explosions. To critique Revenge of the Fallen is like yelling at a donut for not being a raspberry tarts with peach compote. It never claimed to be anything but empty bland calories. If you are on board for that, as most midnight screeners or obese Americans are, own it. We are in a recession--let the people have their bread and circuses.

Bruno--a friend said, with SBC, if you don't get the joke, you are the joke. He is very talented and the situations in his second full-length adventure (wow, even that sounds dirty) are pretty absurd. I laughed a bunch, sometimes out of shock, response to cleverness or prudish discomfort. The latter only being a sort of mediated laugh, like I would laugh here but would the person judge me. Do I care? I mean we are all here to laugh. But also maybe to think. Homophobia (bruno) might present just as serious a threat to our social fabric as xenophobia (Borat). Still think the wit in Borat was stronger but have also seen it several times. Maybe Bruno will dig deeper next time. Wow. Mind in gutter.

Up!, Away We Go, The Hangover

Haikus on a few summer flicks.

Up

Must see in three-D
Bawled for first ten minutes straight
Pixar does no wrong

Away We Go

Slackers in a car
Wax poetic about love
Emo tunes abound

The Hangover

Frat pack in Vegas
Drinks flow and chaos ensues
Ouch, insane sunburn

17 Again, Wolverine, and Star Trek: the Guilty Pleasure Trifecta

I like to kick off my summer months with some truly silly entertainment. For starters, eye candy: Zac Efron, Hugh Jackman, Ryan Reynolds, and Chris Pine. While I am somewhat embarrassed to say I saw these films, I counter with the hours upon hours I spent at Tribeca Film Festival watching downers like Yodok Stories (documentary about Korean concentration camps). Surely my culture quota and personal integrity has been recouped and redeemed.

17 Again: three stars... I love a good dance sequence and Matthew Perry's comedic timing is actually underrated

Wolverine: one star...almost unwatchable

Star Trek: two, for kindness, this should have been a tv movie...a reunion special of some extraordinary Angels In America HBO scale, but instead it was repackaged as a summer blockbuster. I am no Trekkie, but I was not fooled.

Enlighten Up and Every Little Step

Yoga and Broadway...two of my favorite things featured in two of the hottest docs in town. One I will recommend and one I will recommend if you aren't paying Manhattan prices.

Enlighten Up follows photogenic journalist Nick on his six-month crusade to dabble in the tao of yoga. Along the way, he tries all sorts of yoga across the world, meeting with gurus and yogi flakes, etc. What could have been a very enlightening movie about the contemporary American yoga craze and yoga's actual spiritual pull lacked a clear thesis. Filmmaker Kate is too present, too whiny, too bent on interrupting her own film. The final shot is of her on her mat. That alone is very telling. The film will achieve a limited success among an ever expanding community of contortionists. My 90 minutes would probably have been better spent in suvasana.

Every Little Step covers the casting process of the 2007 Broadway revival of A Chorus Line. Some what American Idol for the jazz hand set, but also fascinating insight into the history of this fantastic show. This doc managed to capture the energy of several exciting moments throughout this epic search for the cast. It was fun to revisit favorite scenes. Every Little Step is a reminder of the power of terrific theatre and the drive that inspires the greater theatre community.

Paired well with Hampton Chutney...uptown or soho. Nourish your inner yogi with a South Indian-inspired rice crepe while keeping your chorus girl figure.

Duplicity and I Love You Man

Expectations. Marketing. Stars. These are factors that frequently impact my critique of a film whether I like or admit it or not. The films Duplicity and I Love You Man are excellent examples of these concepts.

Expectations: I went in with very high expectations for Duplicity based on several things: spectacular reviews by major critics, a thoughtful profile of Gilroy in the New Yorker, my overwhelming love of Clive Owen and any frame of film he chooses to enter. When the movie was only average (and frankly, dull for the caper genre), I was even more disappointed than I would have been had I caught this on cable years later (it will obviously live on one of the channels currently populated by What Women Want).
With I Love You Man, I had very low expectations. I nearly walked out of Superbad. I almost submitted an op-ed on the degradation of the female professional in Knocked Up. So as you can imagine, I did not think I would be amused by this latest frat pack outing. However, when it was charming and delightful, I was thrilled. I laughed out loud several times.

Marketing: Duplicity was made to look slick and fastpaced. It was not. I imagine it is actually a challenge to make Julia Roberts look frumpy. Success! It was slow moving. I fell asleep. The plot was less about them duping each other (as it seemed in the commercials) and more about, well I don't really know as I was asleep.
I Love You Man captured the exact audience it was intended for. And for this reason, the crowd was really responsive and made the experience that much more fun. I like when going to the movies is audience participatory (like not in a negative way with cell phones and annoying talkers back i.e. seeing Watchmen in Vegas with a bunch of spring break drunkards).

Stars: With Duplicity the stars seemed to have their own agendas and I don't mean that in a "sneaky espionage" way. I mean that they probably refused to take direction. Like someone probably said "calm down Paul Giamatti" and he was like, "No, I want to eat the scenery...yum, chomp chomp." They overpowered their scenes. Spies should be unassuming.
With I Love You Man, full of character actors and familiar favorites, the cast coalesced perfectly. Rashida Jones was actually spot on. I felt her role as the girlfriend was actually a fairly hard balance to strike -- adorable, worth pursuing, a girl girl and a guy's guy's girl. Not all young actresses can drink root beer floats with the girls and attend RUSH concerts. Paul Rudd was also perfect. I was completely with him the entire film.

For these reasons, I will recommend I Love You Man and spurn Duplicity. And maybe Juan Valdez on 57th. First it looks like any other chain, but inside, some fun drinks and snacks.

The Watchmen and Coraline in 3D

I lump these two films together because they have many similarities:

A) They are based on highly-successful texts: a graphic novel and a childrens' novella respectively
B) They take place within the American modern world, yet are enhanced by terrifying and whimsical special effects
C) In spite of clever visuals, they drag on too long. I checked my watch several times.
D) They were strategically released around the same time by the studios: February/March swamp season. There is something significant about that decision which should not be ignored. These films are not to be considered for Oscar consideration nor to compete with summer blockbusters.

I had infinite expectations for Coraline. It is rare that I am so keen to see an animated film, but the trailer looked magical and engaging. The reviews were so glowing. But in spite of all the wonderment of this world created within a ram shackled house, the author failed to establish a journey. I didn't feel as if Coraline really went through a journey with lessons. It was a typical Wizard of Oz arch (there's no place like home) but the Oz she steps into is simply scary and disconcerting. There isn't really a conflict. There is a lot of shrill animated Terri Hatcher and loony side characters without any charm. Sure I loved the images -- the flowering garden, the mango milkshakes descending from the ceiling, the transitions between technicolor and sketchy grayscale. But if I want to see some excellent art, I will go to the MOMA. When I come to the theatre, I want a compelling story with my 3-D glasses.

The Watchmen also lost my attention even though it too had some merits. The opening credit sequence is one of the best I've ever seen and completely succeeded in expediating exposition in a fascinating way. However, the gang of heroes featured some major duds which caused issue with pacing. Dr. Manhattan...was...boring...each of his scenes seem to stretch out across time and space. The chick that played Laurie (a Swede)...yawn. Patrick Wilson, really? Must you always play pent-up sexual frustration types? Why are you in this movie? I don't really want to spend time critiquing this film because it is so epic and requires quite a bit to successfully support my case. But suffice to say, I was not entertained by a 2.5+ hour storyboard. When adapting from source text, decisions must be made, things cut, angles selected. In spite of all the danger abounding in Watchmen, the writers played it pretty safe so as not to alienate their fanbase. But the ultimate slap is an unmemorable movie buried in March.

Dull the pain with snacks from Shack Shake...now on the upper west side near the Natural History Museum.

This will just take a second...Oscar-nominated shorts and Momofuku Milk Bar

One of the treats of big city living is the opportunity to check out films that don't make the rounds at the mall megaplex. You can only see Paul Bart so many times... The Oscar shorts are a handful of films live-action, documentary, and animated under forty minutes gathered from all over the world. Only Academy members who have attended special shorts screenings get to cast their vote. Too bad democracy doesn't work like that. What is so fascinating about these films is they really are the only "Films" with a capital F in statue contention. They are non-linear (sometimes), culturally-specific, non-commercial, driven by technique sans star wattage, big budgets or major studio backing. Until Itunes movie rental, you couldn't see them at home legally. So why make them? They offer the directors and creative teams to really showcase their craft. I don't think you could get a better demo reel.

This year I caught the live-action and animated shorts at the IFC in the West Village. The live action contenders came to us from Ireland, Germany, France, and Denmark. Topics ranging from genocide in two cases, gang violence in two cases, a bicycle crash, and a funny-looking painting of a pig. Death is a very popular plotline in the live action short as it quickly establishes (or hopes to) an emotional connection to the proceedings. How else to convey a communal sense of loss with characters you met two minutes ago? Show them losing a loved one. Or re-visit a harrowing historical period (holocaust, African civil unrest) for which the audience has an educated pre-text. While none of the films were without flaws, I think I enjoyed The New Boy (Ireland) and Manon on the Asphalt (France) the best, though according to predictions at Entertainment Weekly, neither stand a chance against the token holocaust film. The New Boy focused on the new kid in an Irish classroom who is immediately targeted by the class bullies. Meanwhile he remembers his school life before, with his father as a teacher in a one-room African school house. Manon on the Asphalt finds the title character in a bike crash imagining her closest friends' reactions to her death. What I liked about both these films was the opportunity to explore or to be given access to characters' thoughts in a magical way a la The Lovely Bones. Both heightened the everyday with almost supernatural fantastical elements. In this way, regardless of the cultural milieu the films came out of, they achieve a universality that allows audiences from all backgrounds to feel for the characters.
The animated films were, in a word, bizarre. While the American entries all seemed to follow the same plotline -- under-appreciated animal wants food, goes to absurd lengths to get it, the foreign nominees were a bit more existential. We had dancing corpses, a man who lives 91 cm from himself, domestic strife between a polar bear and a penguin, and some French flick that I think I nodded off during (does not bode well for a 19 minute film). Note -- not all these films were nominated though they are part of the screening. Pixar's Presto (rabbit wants a carrot) only run for its money would be the French 2-minute Oktopi. Two octopi fight for their lives on a Greek Isle. Clever animation and very engaging. It also marks the third movie this year that has made me want to relocate to Greece (the first two: Mamma Mia and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants-- in my defense, on a plane). Although not entirely. Because I bet Greece doesn't get the Oscar shorts. Or more importantly, Greece doesn't have David Chang's Momofuku Milk Bar in the East Village. Salivate over this list: http://www.momofuku.com/bakery/bakery%20menu.asp

Bring your spoon to this festival of wonderful menu items. Snickerdoodle soft serve topped with pistachio...or how about a slice of blue cheese polenta or crack pie. Sure they'll be gone in a moment, but it was good while it lasted.