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Review
JENNIFER Lynch, the spawn of David Lynch, has returned to spew "Surveillance," which is either a ludicrously bad movie or a parody of same. Either way, it's pretty funny.
Julia Ormond and Bill Pullman play FBI agents who arrive in a small town on the ol' lonely highway to grill cops and motorists about a murder rampage/traffic wreck. Much debate about who might be telling the truth suggests the aim is a grindhouse "Rashomon."
Entirely gratuitous violence, a masked freak, a chuckling maniac, girl-on-girl action and screamingly bizarre dialogue ("Bring the butter! We're gonna have toast!") amp up the camp factor in a second film from the woman who gave us the 1993 cinematic anti-legend "Boxing Helena." Unlike Lynch's father's latest, "Inland Empire," this one isn't a bore. It may enjoy a life in the after-midnight slots of obscure pay-TV channels.
A viewing state of nonsobriety is strongly recommended.
Review
With machines that are impressively more lifelike, and characters that are more and more like machines, "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" takes the franchise to a vastly superior level of artificial intelligence. As for human intelligence, it's primarily at the service of an enhanced arsenal of special effects, which helmer Michael Bay deploys like a general launching his very own shock-and-awe campaign on the senses. Otherwise, little seems new compared to the first installment, except that this version is longer, louder, and perhaps "more than your eye can meet" in one sitting. It will reap similar B.O. rewards worldwide.
Kicking off where the initial entry ended, part two of an eventual trilogy continues to carry Hasbro's toys and cartoons of the '80s to the heights of 21st-century CGI and moviemaking technology. Focusing even more on what auds seemed to appreciate last time around -- that is, the stupefying sight of colossal alien robots morphing quite realistically into earthly contraptions, and vice versa -- the plot serves as merely a pretext to showcase lots of well-designed creations, which run the gamut from a remote-control toy car to an actual Stealth fighter.
After a prologue set in 17,000 B.C., we once again team up with U.S. Army grunts Capt. Lennox (Josh Duhamel) and Sergeant Epps (Tyrese Gibson), now members of an elite squad called NEST, which uses humans and Autobots to hunt down rogue Decepticons across the globe. Hoping to free their leader, Megatron (voiced by Hugo Weaving), who was previously imprisoned at the bottom of the ocean (why he wasn't melted down into scrap metal is a question only franchises can answer), the baddies are hoping to uncover the remaining shards of the powerful cube ("the Spark") that was destroyed at the end of the first pic.
As was the case before, nerd-cum-hero/heartthrob Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) happens to hold the key to the Decepticons' shot at world domination. Only this time, he's left both his goofy parents (Kevin Dunn, Julie White) and hot mechanic g.f. (Megan Fox) behind for a college whose students all look like twentysomething actors, and whose frat parties seem to take place at expensive strip clubs. In fact, on his first night out, Sam is treated to a sort of lap dance by a Decepticon posing as a nymphomaniacal freshman -- one of several more overtly sexual nods in this episode (including a shot of John Turturro in a G-string).
Cutting schematically between the military's efforts to thwart the Decepticons and Sam's prophesying tics (scribbling foreign symbols, speaking in tongues) provoked by the Spark, the opening hour culminates in a massive, forest-set battle that leaves the Autobots' leader, Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen), ripe for the junkyard.
Like the other extensive combat scenes -- including a closing, all-out war that appears to take place in the same desert location as in the first movie -- the sheer amount of ripping steel, exploding mechanical parts and mutating vehicles of all shapes and sizes is something to behold. Industrial Light & Magic's superb handling of these sequences, which are like a little boy's playtime fantasy taken to Wagnerian proportions, are the veritable centerpieces of a narrative that makes little effort to set up the fights.
The effects are captured in varying earth tones by d.p. Ben Seresin ("Best Laid Plans"), who does a terrific job matching the CG and live-action sequences, while delving into Bay's usual combo of a few slow-motion dramatic moments and lots of widescreen, airborne pandemonium. Likewise, a new team of editors pieces everything together seamlessly.
A few surprises arrive in the second half -- involving bigger, deadlier pieces of metal, including a character, the Fallen (Tony Todd), that gives the pic its title -- when the action heads to Egypt and Jordan. But returning scribes Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman -- joined this time by Ehren Kruger ("The Ring," "The Brothers Grimm") -- seem to be mining conventional motifs from "The Mummy" and "Indiana Jones" series.
Although the writers propose a similar dose of tongue-in-cheek dialogue for Sam, his parents and his techie roommate (played by Ramon Rodriguez of "The Wire"), the actors often have to shout it over constant music or thunderous bursts of crunching hardware. LaBeouf has a few strong moments during the college-set scenes, and Turturro -- whose character has been demoted from a government agent to a butcher in a Brooklyn deli -- once again offers some much-needed zaniness in the heavy later stages.
But the true stars here are the Transformers themselves, who continually steal the spotlight from the flesh-and-blood cast, even in scenes of tragic death or comic relief usually reserved for real actors.
"If God made us in his image," ponders Optimus Prime early on, "then who made him?" If such a question seems to be hinting at a veritable Autobot creation myth, it may explain why humans here have become backseat drivers to these extremely cool cars.
Camera (Deluxe color, widescreen), Ben Seresin; editors, Roger Barton, Thomas Muldoon, Joel Negron, Paul Rubell; music, Steve Jablonsky; production designer, Nigel Phelps; supervising art director, Jon Billington; art director, Julian Ashby, Naaman Marshall, Ben Procter; set designers, C. Scott Baker, Jann K. Engel; set decorator, Jennifer Williams; costume designer, Deborah L. Scott; sound (Dolby Digital/DTS/SDDS), Geoffrey Patterson; supervising sound editors, Ethan Van der Ryn, Erik Aadahl; re-recording mixers, Greg P. Russell, Gary Summers; visual effects supervisor, Richard Kidd; visual effects, Industrial Light & Magic, Asylum, Digital Domain; special effects supervisor, Wayne Toth; stunt coordinators, Kenny Bates, Bob Brown; associate producer, Matthew Cohan; assistant directors, K.C. Hodenfield, Bruce Moriarty; second unit director, Bates; casting, Denise Chamian. Reviewed at Odeon Leicester Square, London, June 15, 2009. (In Los Angeles Film Festival -- Special Screenings.) MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 149 MIN.
Review
Dawn-of-time music thunders portentously from the soundtrack as a band of primitive hunters track down a wild boar. For about 30 seconds of "Year One," we could be watching a drama - or something even more ridiculously straight-faced and somber, such as a historical re-enactment in a TV documentary. And then one of the hunters screws up, badly, and we meet Jack Black as Zed, an overly confident, loudmouth caveman who somehow can't find his place in prehistoric culture.
"Year One" has one joke, but it's a good one, played for many variations over the course of an often very funny comedy: It's the contrast between the modern sensibility embodied by Black and Michael Cera and that of a brutal, early period of history. The comedy turns on the spectacle of a pair of modern-seeming people who keep finding that their best attributes - wit, sensitivity, loquaciousness, inventiveness - are completely useless in a world in which courtship consists of hitting a girl over the head with a club and dragging her back to the hut.
Black and Cera's comic styles are quite different. Onscreen, Black's persona tends to be self-promoting and easily exasperated, a character in constant collision with his environment, who acts before he thinks and tries to get by on bluff. Cera, by contrast, is watchful and paranoid, sardonic and full of dread, and thinks hard before he commits himself in any direction. These contrasts make them a superb comic duo, and so does their one similarity: They both operate under the implicit assumption that the world is a threatening place that must be mastered, either by forceful action (Black) or careful thought (Cera).
Actually, Black and Cera have something else in common: They are both very skilled, very precise comedians. In the case of Black, this is well known, and in the case of Cera, it's no surprise, considering his performance in "Superbad." Still, it's a striking thing to find a 21-year-old actor with such self-assurance, such innate timing and such a thorough understanding of himself as a screen entity. Even Buster Keaton and Chaplin didn't really get under way until they were about 25.
Director Harold Ramis, who wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay, never lets "Year One" settle. He keeps the plot moving, introducing new elements and finding new opportunities for comedy. He mines each environment for laughs and moves onto another, and he doesn't worry about anachronisms.
And so the two cavemen, presumably living about 20,000 years ago, come down from the mountains and run into the farmers, Cain (David Cross) and Abel (Paul Rudd).
Soon we find ourselves in early biblical times, with Zed and Oh (Cera) running into Abraham (circa 2000 B.C.) at a crucial moment. "We are the Hebrews," Abraham announces, "righteous people, but not very good at sports."
Abraham tells them about Sodom and Gomorrah, which he describes as horrible cities in which people drink and celebrate all day, and where the women are so licentious that sex is given freely, to anyone, just for the asking. Watch Black's face as he hears this description. His eyes practically roll up into his head as he tries to figure out how to politely ask for directions.
"Year One" is not always laugh-out-loud funny, but it's always lively. After 30 years of writing and sometimes directing some very fine comedies ("Groundhog Day," "Analyze This," "Caddyshack," "Ghostbusters," "Animal House," "Stripes"), Ramis knows exactly what it takes to hold an audience's attention in comedy. Every character is made vivid and absurd, from the breezy but wicked Cain, to the righteous but oblivious Abraham (who thinks everybody should want to be circumcised), to the flamboyant (and hirsute) high priest of Sodom (Oliver Platt).
Ramis never lets his guard down, never gives the audience a chance to relax, even if it means hanging a lead character upside down and making him urinate on his own face. There's no vulgar or not vulgar here, just funny or not funny. "Year One" shows what has been true since the beginning of time: that it's anything for a laugh.
-- Advisory: Sexual situations and crude humor.
Review
Bottom Line: Diverting romantic antic about a sham engagement is sparked by the bright chemistry and comic timing of Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds.
Sandra Bullock is one of the most likable and skilled comedians in movies today, but she hasn't had a comedy hit since the first "Miss Congeniality" nine years ago. That's about to change with "The Proposal," an engaging, well-crafted lark that proves "high concept" isn't necessarily a tired tactic.
Bullock also is talented enough to play convincingly against her genial image here as the proverbial boss from hell, Margaret Tate, a hard-driving New York book editor. Choreographer-turned-director Anne Fletcher ("27 Dresses," "Step Up") delivers a well-paced, highly attractive production. Summer audiences, especially the female segment, should have no hesitation accepting this "Proposal."
Peter Chiarelli's script borrows a page or two from "The Devil Wears Prada" in the opening scenes, as Margaret's fearsome reputation literally precedes her among her frantic office staff. Chief among these is her younger, underappreciated assistant, Andrew Paxton (Ryan Reynolds), who harbors his own ambitions to become an editor.
Margaret has been so focused on her career, she's neglected a few legalities and is suddenly informed that she faces deportation to her native Canada. Desperate to keep her job, she impulsively "confesses" that she and Andrew are engaged to be married. Andrew grudgingly agrees to the charade, on condition that he finally gets that book editor position.
The forced romance coincides with a major family celebration back in Andrew's hometown of Sitka, Alaska, where, Margaret discovers, the Paxton tribe is a very big, affluent deal. Andrew's mother, Grace (Mary Steenburgen), is warm and welcoming, but his formidable dad, Joe (Craig T. Nelson), who has always resented his son's rejection of the family business, is skeptical about this older woman in Andrew's life.
And then there's Annie, the outspoken and mischievous 90-year-old matriarch played with scene-stealing ebullience by TV icon Betty White. Also in the mix is Gertrude (Malin Akerman of "Watchmen"), the sweet, pretty Alaska girl Andrew abandoned for the big city.
Chiarelli's script mines all the fish-out-of-water humor of the business-dressed, cell phone-dependent Margaret's immersion in the more laid-back and sometimes downright odd culture of picturesque Sitka (actually doubled by towns in Massachusetts).
Starting the film as a borderline caricature of an unpleasant workaholic, Bullock convincingly peels back the layers of Margaret, revealing the pain behind her steely facade and the vulnerability that surfaces as she and Andrew get to know each other better amid the tense masquerade. By midpoint, we're actually rooting for this erstwhile office gargoyle.
It helps immeasurably that Bullock has tremendous chemistry with Reynolds. The former TV actor and "Van Wilder" cutup has been getting a lot of work lately but hasn't quite broken through as a star. "The Proposal" should remedy that.
He matches Bullock's comic timing note for note and conveys all of Andrew's frustration, exasperation and growing attraction to Margaret. (His remarkably fit physique also is a boxoffice plus.) The situations might be formulaic, but the teamwork of the two leads brings them to sparkling life.
Review
Not everything works in Woody Allen’s first New York–based movie in five years (he’s gone European). Whatever Works feels like something out of time and, worse, out of step. Hell, Allen wrote the script back in the 1970s for Zero Mostel. The grumpy old Jew at the center of this comedy of complaints — divorced physicist and two–time suicide attempter Boris Yellnikoff — is played not by Allen, 73, but by Larry David, 61. Allen wanted to go younger and angrier. Enter David, the fulminating joke engine of Curb Your Enthusiasm, whose Boris kvetches at the camera (meaning us) just like Allen’s Alvy Singer did in Annie Hall in 1977. “The universe is expanding,” a worried young Alvy tells his mother. Her retort, “What is that your business?” is a call to arms. Boris has made the universe his business. He thinks we’re racing toward extinction while space and time laugh at “our sad little hopes and dreams.”
(Watch Peter Travers' video review of Whatever Works.)
Boris is moving on down from the East Side to a funky crib near Chinatown. He rants at colleagues (Michael McKean, Conleth Hill) and kids he calls “submental cretins.” Allen’s characters have trouble expressing rage. As Woody said in Manhattan, “I grow a tumor instead.” Not Boris. He rails against the “mindless zombies” eating away at the city’s intellectual life.
(Get more news and reviews from Peter Travers on the Travers Take)
Into the toxic space of this misanthrope comes Melody St. Ann Celestine (Evan Rachel Wood), a runaway Dixie beauty queen just past jailbait age. Think Truman Capote’s Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s before she started hooking. Wood is totally beguiling in the role, absorbing Boris’ cynicism but still charming him into marriage. Though we never see Boris macking on his bride, there is an “ew” reference to Viagra. The laughs fly when Melody’s God–fearing mom, Marietta (the captivating Patricia Clarkson steals every scene she’s in), hits the Big Apple to bring her baby home and stays to become hilariously corrupted. And that’s it for spoilers. On its way to an ending of surprising serenity, Whatever Works stutters and stumbles. Allen is covering familiar ground, and the timely reference to Obama just seems wrong. But no true movie fan will want to miss the comic mind–meld of Woody and Larry. On that level, at least, there’s no need to curb your enthusiasm.
Review
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Thanks to the smart, expertly shot documentary "Food, Inc.," I now know why it's so hard to find a supermarket tomato that tastes like, well, a tomato. That's because tomatoes, like so much of our food, aren't farmed or grown as much as they are engineered to satisfy rigid corporate and economic mandates.
And don't get producer-director Robert Kenner started on beef, chicken, pork or that No. 1 public enemy: corn -- the manipulated mass production of each is concisely and rivetingly scrutinized here.
Suffice it to say, after the film's disturbing glimpses inside the meat industry, along with its blunt indictment of fast food giants, you'll think twice before eating just about anything nonorganic.
This is, of course, a good -- and doable -- thing, even if the handful of multinational companies that control the bulk of our nation's food supply won't be thrilled with Kenner's vivid portrayal of their near-Orwellian methods of doing business. The U.S. government doesn't get off scot-free here either.
The film also gives an eloquent array of writers, activists and farmers time to enlighten us about the perils on our plates, but not without offering hope for a safer future. "Food, Inc." is essential viewing.
Review
THE hills are alive with the sound of skiers screaming for their lives as they battle a battalion of Nazi zombies left over from World War II.
It's not that the seven horny young vacationers (one couple gets it on in an outhouse) weren't warned.
On their first night in a remote cabin in the Norwegian Alps, they have a visitor who cautions, "There's an evil presence here."
There sure is, and it takes the form of uniformed Nazi troops driven into the hills by locals during the war, never to be seen again -- until now.
Under director/co-writer Tommy Wirkola, "Dead Snow" recalls countless other splatterfests, especially Sam Rami's 1983 "The Evil Dead."
But Wirkola keeps the narrative taut, wasting not a frame; and he throws in funny moments, one involving a Nazi's icky intestine. Matt Weston's cinematography adds to the twisted charm.
