Reviews of albums, films, concerts, and more from the Bay Area Music and Movie Nerds
As you watch The Hunt, you no doubt will pull your sweater just a little tighter around you to try and ward off the cold of the stark Scandinavian winter depicted in Danish director Thomas Vinterberg’s gripping psychological drama, but you will fail. Nothing can protect you from the emotional chilliness of the close-knit rural community portrayed on screen. Continue reading “Film Review: The Hunt”
Spotlights from the 33rd Annual San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF), which opens today and continues until August 12th. Information and tickets at: http://sfjff.org
Gideon’s Army
(USA 2013, 96 min)
Director Dawn Porter has made an absolutely stunning documentary highlighting the unheralded heroes of the U.S. legal system, young, underpaid public defenders in the Deep South fighting tirelessly for their clients, who are typically poor, uneducated, and out of luck. A Grand Jury Prize nominee at Sundance this year, the film won the Editing Prize there, “for skillfully crafting an unforgettable narrative through personal stories that luminate the larger issues of race and class in America’s legal system.” Compelling and timely, the film is a definite must see, and you will find yourself alternatively weeping, cheering, and shaking your head with disbelief and awe at these exceptional officers of the court who have made it their life’s work to uphold justice for each and every one of this country’s citizens.
Screenings:
– Friday, July 25, 6:50pm, Castro Theater, SF
– Saturday, August 10, 3:55pm, Grand Lake Theater, Oakland
Continue reading “SFJFF Spotlights #1: Gideon’s Army / Red Flag”
– What do you call an undead police force?
– The R.I.P.D. The Rest In Peace Department.
– Ha!
– They would be like the Men in Black.
– Yeah. Except instead of aliens, they’d be fighting hell’s escapees.
(…to be continued)
Although R.I.P.D. is based on a comic book series of the same name, first published in 1999 (after Men in Black), I can easily imagine the concept for this movie arising in the above fashion. I haven’t read the source material, and therefore can’t speak to it, but it’s a bit too easy to find the parallels between R.I.P.D. and MIB; every character, plot turn, and joke from the former has a close equivalent in the latter. It’s surprising that we don’t see the MIB writers getting credited for the R.I.P.D. story or screenplay. Perhaps I’m being too harsh. But for the sake of argument, perhaps extra time should’ve been spent polishing what ends up being a cheap clone of a concept already executed to a much more satisfying degree. The characters in R.I.P.D. aren’t well developed, the special effects look gummy at best, and the plot doesn’t take any unexpected turns.
Low expectations commonly yield better-than-expected results. In the case of Turbo, a charming result emerges from an incredibly lackluster premise. ‘A snail that goes fast!‘…Okay, not really piquing my interest. ‘And, he races in the Indy 500!’ Snails and racing? No thank you, I’d rather read a book. Turbo doesn’t break any new ground, nor is it distinctly memorable. Its straightforward story is respectable, its characters are pleasant, and the colorful visuals are good. Nearly every joke is about the ‘snails vs. speed’ theme at play, but luckily the movie never slows to a snail-like crawl. But despite the film’s drawbacks, audiences will still be rewarded by Turbo, if only because it’s just not as bad as it seems.
From here on out, every time I gaze up into the fog-filled night sky that enshrouds the top portions of downtown San Francisco’s office buildings, I’ll imagine a colossal Kaiju smashing through the buildings like tissue paper, the debris raining down upon the dimly lit streets…and a Jaeger behemoth emerging through the haze, crushing the Kaiju’s skull in with a downward punch and throwing the giant beast’s body down the length of Market street. This is the lasting effect of Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim. The film makes a solid effort to tell an emotional human tale in the midst of a near-future world at war with giant alien creatures. The effort is not lost, but takes a backseat behind the extraordinarily impressive battle sequences. As a science-fiction action movie, Pacific Rim delivers and then some.
The first truly great summer movie has arrived today with the opening of The Way, Way Back, a delightful picture that adults and teenagers alike are sure to love. Co-writers Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, (who also penned The Descendants), in their directorial debut, have made a sweet, charming, funny film that is destined to become a coming-of-age genre classic.
“Hi-Ho, Silver! Away!”…meh. When Hans Zimmer’s rehashed Sherlock Holmes score kicks into “William Tell Overture” mode, Disney’s new re-imagining of The Lone Ranger is at its best. Unfortunately, this only happens twice. What could have been (and should have been) a fun adventure ends up being an odd concoction of conflicting tones and a bloated story. This “messiness” worked well in director Gore Verbinski’s last effort, Rango, but that film was about an eccentric chameleon in the midst of an identity crisis who ends up tangled in a Chinatown-esque conflict in a wild west animal town. So, it was obviously poised to extend the limits of the bizarre. The Lone Ranger, on the other hand, is about fun adventures. Bad guys vs. good guys. The film is 150 minutes long and easily could’ve been 90 minutes. The few action set pieces are fun and well choreographed, but they lose their effect when they are bookended by a plodding story involving genocide, power struggles, and weird spiritual visions.
Gru’s minions are so gosh darn adorable and hilarious! The production team behind Despicable Me 2 knows this, hence the endless amounts of advertising for the film featuring the little yellow round bundles of gibberish-speaking joy. Despicable Me 2 lacks the overall charm of the original, choosing instead to focus on minion mayhem, a tireless string of jokes, and adorable slapstick humor. This isn’t to say the film lacks a clever story. In fact, Despicable Me 2 impressively avoids trudging down expected paths. However, the story doesn’t feature the same emotional core as the original, nor does it stay as focused. Despicable Me 2 meanders a bit, but never loses sight of the task at hand — to entertain and have a really good time doing so. Plus…those minions!
Is it possible for The Heat to be anything other than what you expect? Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy join together as the most lovable pair of odd couple style cops. Of course it’s going to be cheesy and predictable and, if everything goes as well as hoped, thoroughly entertaining. In the hands of director Paul Feig I don’t know how it could be bad. Continue reading “Film Review: The Heat”
We say a picture is worth a thousand words. If my math is correct, a two hour and seventeen minute movie, therefore, should be worth 197,280 words (at 24 frames per second). Why, then, when White House Down ended, did my friend turn to me and say, “There are no words…”, and begin conjuring up fantasies of what he could have been doing for the previous 2+ hours instead? The answer is that White House Down is a terrible movie that misses all of its marks. It is not the fun explosion-filled action spectacle we used to expect from director Roland Emmerich in the mid-late 90’s and early 00’s. It’s better than 2012 and worse than Anonymous, although comparing WHD to 2012 is like comparing dirt to mud. It’s a shame this movie falls so far short because it had all the right ingredients in place for it to be a loud summer escapist romp. Instead, White House Down belittles its own silly story by trading in ‘silliness’ for ‘stupidity’. It is chalk full of stale acting and uninspired thrills, complete with a genuinely shocking amount of unrealistic moments (yes, even for a film about the White House being hijacked).