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My Blueberry Nights - Wong Kar Wai - 2008

Inspired by a short film about a diner he’d previously made, Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar Wai, in his first English-language film, has fashioned a lush and gorgeous portrait of the American landscape, taking us from New York to Nashville, to Nevada and clear across to California. This is Elizabeth’s (Norah Jones) journey to take the long way to cross the street and find her soul again, after realizing her boyfriend has found someone else to eat pork chops with.

She spends much of her time in New York standing across the street from her boyfriend’s apartment, waiting to confront him. Them. But, the cold winter nights drive her indoors to seek refuge in a coffee shop run by Jeremy (Jude Law), who is a fellow lost soul. They bond as they realize this over pie, blueberry, of course, that goes uneaten every night. Stray pie to match the stray souls. His journey is very much the same as her’s in spirit, but is on a different set of tracks. Where she will eventually run to find herself, he stays still to be found.

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Posted by: Rob Smith on 07.01.08
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Numb

Harris Goldberg gives us an all too intimate glimpse into depersonalization with Numb, his first feature. It’s a change in pace from the, well, let’s face it, dreck he’s given us previously as screenwriter for Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo and Without a Paddle, but it’s a U turn so drastic that it’s a little bit jarring, like a change in filmic cabin pressure.

In it, Matthew Perry plays a screenwriter on the fritz, sent into a spiraling case of dysphoria triggered by excessive toking. His life is out of whack until he meets Sara (Lynn Collins), a production executive that Hudson and his partner Tom (Kevin Pollack) are pitching a script to. (more…)

Posted by: Rob Smith on 06.25.08
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Joy Division

In recent years I’ve heard the name “Joy Division” tossed around in the small circles of music aficionados I sometimes frequent. No aficionado of music myself, I let their fawning references pass over my head. I knew I had long heard of the band, but never gave much thought to it. Admittedly, I realize now the reason for my disinterest was my confusing of Joy Division – the seminal, upwrought dance-punk group of the late ’70s – with Pansy Division – a ’90s “queercore” band of much less repute. As a young teen flipping through the stacks of indierock at the Middletown Ear X-tacy, the cover shots of naked, eagerly smiling men stacked atop one another burned an unsought icon in my mind’s eye. Much later, when I heard Joy Division’s most popular single, “Love Will Keep Us Apart,” on a party mix, I thought perhaps either the queer-rock group’s audience had suddenly expanded beyond its expected boundaries, or I happened to be at a party whose host was well-versed in highly obscure rock bands.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I opened the package containing the newly released DVD documentary Joy Division and read the tagline, “The true story of the meteoric rise and fall of one of the most influential bands of our time.” Now call me an ignorant homophobe, but I had never presumed such an openly gay band would have garnered so lofty a stature. That’s when it hit me, and Oh! How very stupid I felt. Not only had I been completely unaware of “one of the most influential bands of our time,” but I had confused said influential band with another group whose music is most likely all but out of print (Though I don’t recall seeing those records ever missing from their trusty posts in the CD racks, so they still may be there). Well, what better way to learn about a cultural behemoth than to watch a documentary? Aside from listening to the actual music, that is. (more…)

Posted by: Derek Holt on 06.23.08
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The Hammer

Most reviews for Adam Carolla’s The Hammer typically contain some form of the phrase “No, it’s actually really good”. Critics accustomed to seeing him in lowbrow productions such as The Man Show are often shocked that he’s associated with something of quality.

The film tells the story of slacker Jerry Ferro (Carolla). He once showed promise as a boxer, but, for some reason or another, decided to quit and now works as a carpenter. He and his friend Oswald are fired from their gig working construction after Ferro sets up a Home Alone-esque booby trap that send a belt sander flying through the windshield of their overbearing bosses’ new truck. Once our protagonists’ girlfriends finds this out, she promptly leaves him. (more…)

Posted by: Wesley Johnson on 06.20.08
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The Incredible Hulk

Wow. Just wow. Let me explain something, I went to see The Incredible Hulk pretty much only because Iron Man ended up being so good. And to be honest, I thought to myself, “If they make this thing around a C+ I will be impressed.” The Incredible Hulk is just one of the characters I imagine is hard to sell in the live-action sense. Ang Lee failed miserably (not that long ago either) and now we get to start all over again. And the American Gladiators promotional episode ended up being utterly ridiculous despite my love for the show. But Edward Norton’s pretty cool. He’s really, really good at these emotionally troubled, on the run types with deep repressions of rage. Would he be enough to save this film? I wasn’t sure, even after the trailers (and five, count ‘em five, freaking regular commercials!) rolled.

However, I started to grin immediately. The intro is very cool. It gives you all the basics, and without saying a word. They did the right thing making it obvious that this was something new, but they also (correctly) assumed that we already know the deal. Bruce Banner can’t get angry or else he becomes a no-so-jolly green giant that smashes everything around him. Thanks for not spending 40 minutes on that. It is emotional and action-packed right from the beginning. Capturing the perfect mood for a comic movie as Iron Man did before it. And there is so much nerd content here, I almost couldn’t handle it all. In fact, after it was all said and done, I looked at the Hulk and Iron Man movie posters side by side on my way out of the theater and felt like I was ten years old! Let me tell you why (very, very minor spoilers after the jump). (more…)

Posted by: Brandon Miles on 06.16.08
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Control

In 1979, Anton Corbijn was a 24-year-old photographer for Britain’s New Musical Express when he was sent out on assignment to photograph the seminal post-punk foursome Joy Division. Now, 28 years later, he’s photographing Joy Division once again, but this time it’s for himself. His debut feature film, Control, out now on DVD, is a black-and-white biopic that follows the rise and fall of Ian Curtis (Sam Riley), the Joy Division singer and songwriter whose bills of mortality came due early with his suicide in 1980. (more…)

Posted by: Rob Smith on 06.04.08
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Grace is Gone

As much as small films tend to get lost in the shuffle of the holiday release schedule’s Oscar lead-in, and this film certainly did, the shorter DVD window for the very same films now offers only a second chance to be lost in the shuffle. And it has again. No one will be talking about Grace is Gone this week as it is released on DVD. The boys will be ~~talking about~~ complaining about Indy 4 and the girls are all already focused on Sex and the City. Even I wouldn’t have been thinking about it had I not gotten a screener DVD.

Winner of the Waldo Salt Screenplay Award and the Audience Award for dramatic films at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, Grace is Gone is writer/director James C. Strouse first feature in the hyphenate role. The film tells the story of a former soldier, who was discharged because of bad eyesight, who takes his two young daughters on a road trip from Minnesota to Florida in lieu of telling them that their mother was killed in action. (more…)

Posted by: Rob Smith on 05.27.08
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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

The name “Indiana Jones” is the simple definition of the term “popcorn yarn”, and it’s beyond important to have that in mind when watching them. Especially this one. Any childhood attachments to the original three are fine, but this is not high art we’re dealing with. It never was high art and it never will be. It’s a widescreen sock in the jaw, a revival of the artistically and creatively bankrupt Sunday matinée cliffhangers and serial stories, long since dead by the time the core audience of the Raiders pictures were conceived. They are the pictures that made movies fun again after the bleak and dreary 60s and 70s, that’s all.

Having not been duped by the too-Lucas-heavy and Spielberg-and-Fordless Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, it’s been a while. Nineteen years of patient waiting have passed now in order to get another Indy adventure. A long time for us to wait, but an even longer time for Indy himself to wait. The punches aren’t as swift or battering anymore, and the whip has a little less pop, but the fedora is just as cool and iconic as the man under it always has and will be, even if his hips are a little more creaky now. And more importantly, Marion Ravenwood is back. Even more importantly, Willie Scott and Short Round aren’t.

(Spoilers after the jump.) (more…)

Posted by: Rob Smith on 05.24.08
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Autism: The Musical

When I first heard of Autism: The Musical, I was half offended and didn’t want to review it. Because I didn’t want to watch it. Parker and Stone’s Cannibal: The Musical immediately came to mind, and I automatically assumed it was a spoof of some sort, poking fun at autistic people. My brother-in-law has Autism, and I often hear mindless comments about him (even from well-meaning friends and family) despite how mild his symptoms are. I did some research to see who was responsible for this film and was relieved to see that this wasn’t the case at all. Instead, we have a genuinely inspiring documentary about The Miracle Project, a non-profit “theatre and film arts program for children with special needs and their typically developing siblings and peers.” The project is headed by Elaine Hall, whose adopted son developed severe autism at an early age, and whose husband had left them after she refused to “put him away” or “send him back to Russia!” Their tale is heartbreaking.

The strong and caring Elaine sacrifices most of her life in order to help her son have the fullest life possible. This award-winning documentary outlines the lives of five specific children, all suffering from varying degrees of autism. Some with mild symptoms, others full-fledged and barely able to communicate. I sort of wish the film was called The Miracle Project instead, after the organization it focuses on. That way people would know up front what the film was about. It truly is a miraculous story. (more…)

Posted by: Brandon Miles on 05.23.08
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Encyclopedia Asthmatica

Asthmatic Kitty has a penchant for unsettling convention. Take their recently published Encyclopedia Asthmatica, a symposium of music videos compiled from the Michigan-based label’s cache of artists, including both the greatly beloved and the more obscure. Keeping in step with the encyclopedic theme, the DVD’s root menu opens up to a stack of books –small ones, and equally thin, suggesting perhaps that the artists have much more to write – each marked with one of nine of the label’s artists. As you open each book, you’re greeted cordially with a musical sampling and visual aid of what very well should be the artist’s own concoction. While the highly acclaimed (i.e. Sufjan, Shara Worden) are surely what’s driving the sales of this release, let’s not discount the less celebrated, since every artist has his or her own pen stroke to add. (more…)

Posted by: Derek Holt on 05.21.08
Posted in: DVD, Reviews, Music | Comments (1)

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