Saturday, September 24, 2005

Murderball


Abandon all mushy sympathy, all ye who watch

Official Murderball Site
Documentary, Sports/General Interest
Players Mark Zupan, Joe Soares, Keith Cavill, Andy Cohn, Scott Hoggsett, Bob Lujano
Rated R (for language and sexual situations, brief nudity)
Running Time: 88 Minutes
Released:July 29th, 2005



4 Out Of 5 Bites

Consider, for a moment, what you think you don't know about the quadriplegic existence and recollect all the accident/survival/victory stories and vignettes you've read, seen or heard. Consider, even, the questions you may or may not have ever wanted to ask.....such as, 'How does a quadriplegic have sex?' (Who knew there was a medical video on the subject?) Murderball attempts to answer these and at once wants to move us into our discomfort zone so we not just appreciate the courage and admire their tenacity to rediscover a functional life. For those who are still functionally bi-pedal and perhaps don't have a quadriplegic close friend or relative, it is hard to grasp life as a "quaddie" (as some refer to themselves in the film). Murderball brings us closer than ever.

While it can be touted as a sports documentary, the sport of quad rugby- (it used to be called "murderball")- is really the vehicle that delivers the film's message that quadriplegics can have real lives with fulfilling challenges- often in ways one might not expect. But don't get weepy and sympathetic for them.....they just might crash you onto your bum.

Imagine a crash-up derby in hi-tech, redesigned wheelchairs that are plated, welded and strategically strengthened. Throw a ball into their midst and let the raucousness ensue. The catankerousness is compelling and the toppling wheelchairs spilling their drivers on the game floor are pictures that remain emblazoned in your mind.

Centered against the backdrop of US Olympic Wheelchair Rugby team's quest for a twelfth consecutive championship victory is mainly the sport's go-to guy, Mark Zupan. Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro do not go all out on the feel-good, spic-and-span track. With Zupan, you get a rough and tumble, cocky, yet confident "in your face" kind of guy and Murderball goes with him from beginning to end. His honesty is brutal sometimes, if not disagreeable. But you wind up respecting him for that, and much to the point of losing sight of the fact that Zupan is confined to a wheelchair. His necessary bravado and his leadership eclipse that much.

Zupan, the film's essential anti-hero, becomes the prototype for the parallel life-stories of not only the quad-athletes on the teams, but for their family members and loved ones. They become outside interpreters, allowing us a perspective on what might otherwise just be a documentary about quadriplegic rugby players. But, again, this is a film about life lived above potentially insurmountable blockades of body and mind. Additionally, the profile of a newly quadriplegic young man, Keith Cavill is highlighted as he is inspired by a visit from Zupan.

Zupan's condition is a result of a drunk-driving accident at the hands of one of his best friends. The tension between the two is resolved in a naturally (for the tenor of the film), unsentimental way. Opposing Zupan is Joe Soares, a former star on the US quad rugby circuit who feels shunned after being cut by the team. He bolts to coach the Canadian team against the Americans- and thus, Murderball has its instant and most obvious conflict to magnify.

Soares is perhaps the most compelling life we glimpse, especially if we are interested in how these people's lives are impacted beyond the athletic endeavor. At the outset, we don't know whether to hate him or sympathize with him. We can understand his competitive quest that almost costs him his life, but is he an athlete's Benedict Arnold? Certainly, he's a hard-nosed father, stony and resilient, but authentically loving to his son, who is a violin-playing polar opposite of dad. He successfully creates the sense of family amongst his Canadian players, talking frankly about such over meals with them. After suffering a heart attack, one might conclude that Soares' edge is softened but the depth of the man emerges.

The rivalry between the US and Canadian teams is obviously mirrored in the vitriolic rivalry of Zupan and Soares. Eventually, Canada does exact its revenge, and later, the US team does not go all the way in the 2004 Paralympic games. There is no Miracle victory for the US but all around, there are real people finding real purpose in spite of the circumstances they have been dealt. Life goes on behind the scenes even when the storied finishes do not pan out. The victories must be mined in the inevitable mundaneness of the life that follows for both the on-court victors and the vanquished.

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Friday, September 16, 2005

Just Like Heaven




Not bad, but it haunts for other reasons...




Official Just Like Heaven Site
Romantic Comedy
Starring Reese Witherspoon, Mark Ruffalo, Jon Heder
Rated PG-13 (for language and sexual situations)
Running Time: 95 Minutes
Released:September 16th, 2005


2 Out Of 5 Bites


In a market presently devoid of romantic comedies, Just Like Heaven will manage to pull its own weight. Now, it isn't a totally dead weight, mind you, but it does have trouble getting a grip on itself.

Reese Witherspoon (Elizabeth) and Mark Ruffalo (David) manage a sustainable- if not likeable- rapport together. Unfortunately, it is much too late in the film. She's a too-busy-to-have-a-life doctor striving for an attending physician's spot at her hospital. In this one day, she lands the position. And just before her overworked, under-socialized self can meet up with the nice man at the dinner party sponsored by her equally-as-frazzled sister, she piles head-first into a truck and voila, we have our ghost....sort of.

He's a bummed-out shell of a man, trying to hang on in an obvious cloud of despair. Moping around his new apartment while consistently clutching a brew, David encounters Elizabeth's spirit, who still thinks she's alive. From here, much time will be spent on the ways one or the other or both will try to: 1) convince her she's dead; 2) get each other out of the house; 3) find out why she's dead and who she is. The emotional connection that the two forge in the process feels like an afterthought, but seems forgivable since you know it will happen. Whether or not it is forgivable is another issue when considering the haste the movie made to get there. Ruffalo is often forced into comic parameters that don't time very well with his strained, but even keel, which for him, has been a trait of endearment (as in 13 Going On 30). In his proper flow and element aided by his requisite puppy-doggishness, he can be quite decent.

Suffice it to say that director Mark Waters and writers Peter Tolan and Leslie Dixon are not conclusively saying Heaven is what the afterlife is like. But some things may not work for the audience as it does for the story. If Elizabeth is so unconvinced of her own spectral status, how is it that falling out of a window only to instantly reappear behind David is not an existential proof for her doctorly mind that such a feat may be reserved for the otherworldly? Why does her shadow and reflection exist? Why can't she grab a phone but her bed indents when she is upon it? Perhaps Waters, et al, are convinced that a relatively unsophisticated audience won't be as attentive on these foibles, especially if there's a significant other to be ogled later in the adjoining seat.

And the worn images and soundbites of the Terry Schiavo case must certainly haunt the minds of some who partake in the film. It is no small feat to have assuaged the tenderness of that whole episode and to transfix an audience toward the comical around this issue. The comic relevance here waxes more tragic wherein the media bombardment of the Schiavo case may have produced a weary resistance to its central concerns. Maybe, the producers are just masters of timing.

Witherspoon seems to avert the inane premises and raises herself to the Sweet-Home-Alabama-ish chipper and charming sweet pot of a girl she can be, but she only flies well below the actress she really is and can be (as in her first comic winner, Election).

Jon Heder- as the floaty mediumistic adviser- would have been a riot, but anyone who has seen Napoleon Dynamite surely caught the Napoleon-esque mannerisms....the squint, the mouth agape, etc. This connection dulled his comic edge and reduces his significance to mostly un-funny one-liners. I felt compelled to laugh at him because I remembered him as Mr. Dynamite.

However, Heaven will pass on, perhaps immemorial to newly post-pubescent girls drawn to the workable, chitty-chatty allure of Witherspoon and the cuddly Ruffalo, but not for those weary from re-hashed, re-worked resurrections of ghosty movies past. Especially those films begging for fresh vision and wearing out a welcome in a genre with such well-known and predictable type-scenes.

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Sunday, September 11, 2005

The Exorcism of Emily Rose



BOO!



Official Exorcism of Emily Rose Site
Horror/Courtroom Thriller
Starring Laura Linney, Campbell Scott, Jennifer Carpenter, Tom Wilkinson, Shohreh Aghdashloo
Rated PG-13 (for language, violence and graphic depictions of demon possession)
Running Time: 114 Minutes
Released:September 9th, 2005


1 Out Of 5 Bites

The ad for the part must have read, "Must contort on cue, emit blood-curdling screams and be frightening-looking enough without much make up." If there is something that "gets" at you in The Exorcism of Emily Rose, it is the physical performance of Jennifer Carpenter (as Emily), and this is not a slam on her. She was able to lend to and bring to the part what she naturally had in physical performance and appearance. There were a few moments that were genuinely creepy, but not as grotesque as actually having sat through what seemed like a retarded Perry Mason Meets Old Scratch.

The Exorcist, this is not. Most of the movie flows from the courtroom and reminisces on the life and times of the family priest, Father Moore (Tom Wilkinson), as he came to assist poor Emily and her family in a botched exorcism that results in the 19-year-old's death. And then the fingers point at him. Agnostic attorney Erin Bruner (Laura Linney) is tapped to be the defense for Father Moore and the movie alternately likes to parallel her struggle with things spiritual as shady goings-on commence at her home. Sense the tension already? I didn't either- not under the overarching hokey pretense that is this movie.

Additionally, the prosecutor- (a stiff and stuffy Campbell Scott avec pet caterpillar, er, moustache)- is a "believer" who easily and apparently unreflectively co-opts any possibility of a demonic collusion for a better position from which to argue his case. And the resulting courtroom drama is rife with....well, staunch boredom and puffy witnesses whose dialogue has the mulled cadence of reading direct from cue cards as if to doe-eyed children. The smugness is needlessly suffocating. Every performer seems like they're "ACT-ING"....all the way down to the canned courtroom audience obviously feigning interest and mild shock....again, as if on cue.

Some younger audiences somewhat unfamiliar with the cunning of the Exorcist may be moved to fright from director Scott Derrickson and writer Paul Harris Boardman, who also collaborated on 2000's Urban Legends. But even then, this is only through low-grade and shoddy effects. Derrickson, et al, seem content to rest on the physical laurels of Jennifer Carpenter, and still yet you wonder just how scary can a chick continue to be who bends at the waist and wrists throughout the whole movie. Black a pupil here, dub a Latin speaking male voice there,....but you expect that.

From the fringe, the Catholic hierarchy seeks to manage its image through the hiring of Bruner to represent the good Father. But it seems ludicrous that they would not know whether she was agnostic or not. Maybe they were going on the fact that she was able to argue for the release of a muderer in a prior case who- (GASP!)- murders again while Rose's case is ongoing. But the biggest foible is in the laughable theology of it all.

Linney can only barely manage to tame what is otherwise an absurdity in progress. Her star witness (Oscar award nominee Shohreh Aghdashloo)- an "expert" on the science of possession- drops names like Carlos Casteneda, commensurate with the New Agey-goo-slop argument that "super-sensitivity" enables possession.

The convenient theology of Emily Rose is candy for the pop masses, but here are the lessons in errare:

1) You need the devil to prove that God...or Mother Mary....exists. (This is dualistic....God doesn't need an equally powerful opposing deity to validate God's own existence. But the movie easily by-passes the question of God/Jesus in favor of establishing the case for Mary. But this is a non-starter for the movie's Catholic take on the subject).

2) Encountering the devil is always a power encounter guaranteeing a big fight that you might just lose. (The scriptures are quite clear about a believer's victory in Christ over the devil. It isn't out of the question that if it is allowed, a demonic could act out. There is no reason for it though. The assumption of the victory and authority afforded to the believer by Christ over the devil trumps any and all of the shenanigans viewed in Emily Rose)

3) People can become possessed "automatically." (There is no exploration into the element of human behavior and choice, especially where Emily is concerned. There is no valid position scripturally that assumes one can be overtaken to the point of death by the devil outside of the choices one makes. Even when the scriptural narratives in the New Testament include demoniacs, there aren't always explanations as to causation there as well. Having said that, the case for "automatic" and coerced possession still isn't viable).

Would that the good Father Moore could exorcise us of this flick.

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Thursday, September 08, 2005

The Constant Gardener

Official Constant Gardener Site
Drama/Thriller
Starring Ralph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, Danny Huston, Hubert Kounde, Bill Nighy, Gerard McSorley
Rated R (for language, violence and sexual situations/brief nudity)
Running Time: 129 Minutes
Released:August 31, 2005


3 Out Of 5 Bites


From out of Africa (and the John le Carre novel) comes the latest scourge with which Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles would have us embrace with our righteous indignation. Here, the nefarious beast- not as primal as the African landscapes that contain the blood spilt by it- is multi-headed, immeasurably wealthy and indiscriminately cold and obtuse when pushed to serious inquiry.

Meirelles must conjure from within our imaginations a gorgonian monstrosity- a drug company- from a sea of multi-national pharmaceutical corporate conglomerations that he hopes is playing there in the dark somewhere. He can at least bank on the audiences' familiarity with "Big Oil," "Big Energy" or a Big "Anything." Now, it's "Big Drugs" that towers over the small with greedy and murderous sticky fingers.

The Constant Gardener lays its bet on the contemporaneousness of the plaguing problem of giant pharmaceuticals having to somehow make financial ends meet while the poorest of the poor wither away, drugless. Or, in this case, drugged like guinea pigs on safari, but with vile, deadly toxicity. And if you want poor, sick and desperate, look to Africa, which is what Gardener does in order to expose the pharmaceutical's conspiratorial scheme.

The story opens with a murder we don't see and from there, relies on backtracking, reflecting and remembering to plant the plot. Ralph Fiennes plays British-diplomat-to-Kenya, Justin Quayle. He quickly becomes ensconced with Tessa, (Rachel Weisz), who stands up at the end of one of his presentations and hurls upon him a load of idealistic, political counter-point vomitus. The emittance clears the room, save for a very understanding Quayle, who more than cleans up; he lands a lover and very quickly, a wife. And the transpiration toward their wedded bliss seems contrived on her part, as she poses the question to him as he is embarking to Africa. From this scene, she establishes herself more as the expedient and deft politico between the two of them. It might not be said that Tessa doesn't think she loves him, she just may not be aware that she loves her growing cause more. Did she hook up with him for this convenience, or does the marriage and the location provide a fertile soil for her idealism? The credibility of their being together isn't helped by her "I feel safe with you" posited to him after their lust-romp.

However, her secrecy will not let him protect her, as we see Quayle's boss and friend, Sandy Woodrow (Danny Huston), inform him of his wife's death. Yet the story plows away into the deepening mystery of Tessa's life, once blind to Quayle but now as openly insidious to him and his compatriots as a gnawing chinch bug. Here is where the ethos of her presence is questionable, right down to the liasons she has with the African doctor (Herber Kounde). Her pig-headed quest even leads her to morally reprehensible possibilities that seem a bit implausible in the context of what should be a caring marriage. What is left is the nest she stirred up by outing the drug company, which was the incitement to her murder and Quayle must finish what she started to honor her memory.

But as the veil falls away, and while Tessa's shrewdness is what Gardener relies on as the antithesis to the quietude of Quayle, it is the latter who anchors the garden. Fiennes has an ability to compact his character so deeply inward that one strains to elicit from him what he knows there. The tamed exterior of Fiennes' Quayle belies a welcome vulnerability that subtly and effectively plays on his countenance (as in the shot where he learns of Tessa's death). The emotional reveal there is from a learned containment, and it leaves the audience with the task of finishing the emotions and words for him.

When Quayle returns to Europe with the puzzle pieces in position to fit before him, he connects to his pain outside the London apartment where he and Tessa were first together. This is the most wrenching and honest moment of Fiennes' and of anyone else in the movie for that matter. He carefully understands the moment and luckily hasn't overexposed his character up to that point so that emotionally, he has somewhere to go. All this with the background of the learned evil intentions of a goon of a corporate magnate (Gerard McSorley) and Bill Nighy as a British lord. Their contributions to the film are noteworthy as well.

Though not USA for Africa (or Great Britain for Africa for that matter), the movie might tend to hang around like a cheesy 80's leftover single, were it not for Fiennes' performance. The tapes rolled, the stars sang and the world looked for a moment and then moved on. The African backdrop here unintentionally eclipses the much larger plight in reality, and Gardener leans a bit self-serving in some of its preacheriness. It paints a tragedy, but it is a finger-painting and our fingers are messy and wet. What's worse, we haven't been told how we can begin cleaning them.

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Friday, September 02, 2005

Transporter 2



Transporter fans will be sated, but whether or not a cinematic establishment is born is another issue

Official Transporter 2 Site
Action
Starring Jason Statham, Amber Valetta, Kate Nauta, Matthew Modine, Allessandro Gassman
PG-13 (for intense and graphic fighting scenes, sexual situations)
Running Time: 88 Minutes
Released:September 2, 2005




1 Out Of 5 Bites

It wants to be James Bond, but it smacks of Kung Fu theater minus the poor-but-loveable, English voice-overs.

Transporter 2 did arise to a level of entertainment that may have been unintended. So out-loud-laughable at times were the physics of the movie and so conveniently successful was Mr. Transporter in his multiple rows and fisticuffs that one might easily conclude that they weren't taking themselves too seriously as a cinematic endeavor, if not for anything but the film's sake. You could actually relish the choreography and direction of, respectively, Cory Yuen and Louis Leterrier. Jason Statham's chisel-chinned, blue-steely-gritted-brand-can of arse-whuppin' really does work. His "gig" is his raspy, soft-spoken presentation that belies a man that could both care deeply and turn on the bad-ass in the next second. So the fights with the malcontents wax very slick and careful and are indeed full of quick-paced (if not overproduced) action.

The plot is basically the bristle before the meat and the movie tries to make it somewhat sensitive and important, but it is out of a void. You're there for the gusto. Frank, (Statham), is a former Special Forces commado in Miami carting around Matthew Modine and Amber Valetta's boy, who manages to be kidnapped by some ultra-nasties, headed by Alessandro "Dang-If-I-Ain't-Benicio Del Toro" Gassman and his heroin-chic, blonde, butt-kickin' sadistic bombshell, Lola (Kate Nauta). She likes to rain bulletts whilst in only her skivvies, if for no other reason than to tamper with the hormones of the newly post-pubescent viewers who'd protest the least anyway.

Gassman and Nauta's goon-cast are Neanderthals and warm meat for Frank to only pare through on his way to showing us that there's this real mean virus (in green, glowing vials, of course) that is planned on being released via the little boy. It's okay though....just more plot-as-excuse for the tail-tacking to come.

The baddest bad guys abound and are there only to get their noggin rung (or worse). There truly isn't anything or anyone that will touch Frank. And that is unequivocal. Special pains are taken to parade the discipline Frank has over his own libido, not only to the film's credit, but as a welcome diversion from the lust-driven predecessor to which T2 aspires. Make no mistake, that which Frank denies himself is made up for in the film's anti-hero, who- from her neck up- looks like Maybelline Mascara division's practice bust.

But T2 tries to elicit some scintilla of emotional ground in the story that begs for attention from the outside like a yappy rat-mutt. It can only pass as whimsy in light of the fantastical imagery from the fight sequences that are almost enthroned as parodies of themselves. The comic relief is not in the mildly irritating Francoise Berleand in his reprise of his Transporter role, as we are led to believe. What isn't tolerable is the buffoon of a police force holding Berleand and that they let him piddle around at will. This only a device of convenience for the plot, but it is hardly endearing.

The relief is there when the movie unnervingly resorts to the very poor CG effects of the chopper and the plane (the latter of which I almost could have sworn a green screen and plastic toy would have fared better). I don't know how that could pass in this age of technological movie magic.

Transporter fans will be sated, but whether or not a cinematic establishment is born is another issue, especially with so much fluff undergirding it.

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