The year is 2018 and the world has been annihilated by a nuclear Holocaust unleashed by a network of artificial intelligence called Skynet. Few humans survive in the desert wasteland of twisted power lines and ruined skyscrapers. A resistance movement of the remaining survivors limps on with the hope that one man can bring victory, John Connor (Christian Bale). Connor survived two attempts on his life by time traveling robots called Terminators, and now, as the voice of the resistance, he has discovered a plot to kill his father, Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), who would be sent back in time in 2029 to protect John’s mother in 1984, and ultimately impregnates her. (No, it doesn’t make sense, so don’t worry about it—none of the three Terminator directors have either.)

Whereas Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines parodied the franchise—remember the ridiculous scene with the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) emerging onto a stripper stage?—Terminator: Salvation resurrects it. The first battle sequence sets the aesthetic tone for the movie, the grainy handheld camera shots, a washed-out sky, military fatigues, and haggard soldiers fighting robots in a field of gigantic radar dishes. The cavalcade of Salvation ’s action sequences satiates the hunger both of explosion-craving, old school action aficionados and quick cut, first-person violence voyeurs of Generation X-Box. With a Mad Max meets Children of Men style emboldened by car-wrecking chase scenes and intense first person shooter POV, Salvation presents an exciting alternative to standard issue action fare.

Behind the explosions and robots, Salvation’s story ventures into new and interesting territory that progresses the Terminator mythology into darker territory. When the dust settles from the introduction battle, a man covered in mud emerges from the earth. The man is Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), whose only memory is being on death row and participating in a cancer stricken doctor’s (Helena Bonham Carter) medical experiment. As Marcus tries to piece together what happened to the world in his absence, he meets Kyle Reese, played by the always charming Yelchin, who does an effective Michael Biehn (Kyle Reese from the first Terminator) impression.

Whereas Christian Bale does a good job as John Connor—he yells a bit, delivers raspy, gravel-in-the-throat monologues akin to his role in Reign of Fire—Sam Worthington delivers a more interesting performance as Marcus. As he grapples with identity, fate, and self-realization, Marcus infuses the mystery and wonder that made the first two Terminators great. Who is he, where’d he come from, and what’s his secret?

As the narrative shroud lifts, the story becomes less interesting, and the movie loses steam. Lacking the pacing of the masterful Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which alternates between moments of action and moments of rest, Salvation’s pacing is much quicker. It’s a problem of threshold. Action is only exciting when it is positioned next to stillness, otherwise the buzz of activity becomes a drone. But if it’s intelligent action you want, Salvation delivers it. And as the U.S. continues unmanned air strikes into Pakistan and Afghanistan, Terminator’s warning of warriors without hearts rings truer than ever before.

By Drew Tewksbury

from Artist Direct 5.21.09

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Such is the parable of Rudo y Cursi, the first offering from the production company of some of Spanish-language cinema’s finest directors: Alfonso Cuarón (Y tu Mamá También, Children of Men), Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth), and Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel). Its creative contributors—all notable figures in Spanish-language cinema—make it a heavyweight of a film, written and directed by Carlos Cuarón (who penned the Oscar nominated screenplay for his brother’s film) and reuniting Diego Luna as “Rudo” the tough goalie and Gael García Bernal as accordion-playing Tato.

As brothers, the actors bring their onscreen relationship from Y tu Mamá También to another level. On the surface they have become men, but underneath it all they still try to hold on to the dreams of their youth. Luna plays a father and husband living in an extremely modest home, where he occupies himself with a 1980s soccer arcade game. Bernal’s character sits outside the local bar serenading chicas with his accordion skills and longs to move to Texas. When they are faced with the soccer showdown, Rudo tells Tato to miss the goal, but due to some comic miscommunication, Tato wins and moves to the city to play soccer and get a record deal, too. His cheesy videos earn him the name “Cursi,” or “corny.”

Like the respected directors behind-the-scenes, the story gleans elements from each of their styles.The Cuarón brothers offer up the witty repartee; from del Toro it takes the twisted fairy tale structure; and it borrows Iñárritu’s philosophy of interconnectedness and violence. It is the American Dream, Mexican-style. As in America, sports and music are considered ways to advance in social class—the brothers just need to be found by the right person. Rudo and Cursi hope for the same, but when it happens, they get more than they bargained for. Like the real American Dream, nothing ever goes according to plan, but it is enjoyable to watch as the brothers battle it out on the soccer field and in their everyday lives.

Bernal steals the show, playing almost a caricature of himself: a Mexican heartthrob. Bernal’s singing career makes for some particularly hilarious moments of regional music videos and his (actually kind of good) cover of Cheap Trick’s “I Want You To Want Me.” While the film does not reach the visual beauty or the rich narrative of Y tu Mamá También, it is a (relatively) lighthearted look at destiny, chance, and how every dream comes a with a curse and a blessing in disguise.

By Drew Tewksbury

from Artist Direct, 05.06.09

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The film follows the lives of a drug-dealing white kid in love with his bougie art student client, an asthmatic seven-year-old, a young family on the verge of getting kicked out, and an a boy who tries to look smart to impress a girl. These characters are supported by some fine actors: Rosario Dawson as mom to asthmatic kid Bebo, Paul Dano as a part-time party ninja and wannabe actor, and Tariq Trotter (a.k.a. vocalist Blaq Thought from Philly’s own hip hop wunderkind, The Roots) as a prospective small business owner.

The residents of this Philly neighborhood try to better themselves or escape. Kaleef (Trotter) is trying to help his family by starting a health food store and instill upon his son, Helsin, the ethics of hard work. “When I get my biceps a little bigger I can finally relax,” Helsin says during one of his compulsive weight training routines. The young Demitri wants to impress a girl, so he dons glasses and carries books to make her think he’s smart. But others try to escape through drugs.

Whereas films like Amores Perros tie together multiple storylines into a tight network, Explicit Ills wanders from story to story, subtly emphasizing the points of overlap in their lives. Taking a stylistic cue from Jim Jarmusch, who executive produced the film and directed Webber in Broken Flowers, the movie emphasizes naturalness and realness. But this attempt doesn’t quite succeed as the characters fall into slightly archetypal caricatures. Like some of Jarmusch’s films, Explicit Ills loses its center as the plot slowly expands like the universe after the Big Bang.

The movie’s theme is concerned with an archetypal brand of activism that has been popularized of late. The message is simple: everyone is connected. This isn’t a new message, as it has been similarly espoused through many so-called social commentary movies like Crash and Crossing Over. The change is the landscape and the treatment of race in Explicit Ills.

American poverty is largely ignored in the media and in film, and Explicit Ills depicts it not as something aberrant or strange, but rather as a real environment that people are born into and must deal with however possible. No one is bitter about their fate, instead they just cope with it. “I saw a show about poverty, and it looked like my family,” Bebo says. The film’s treatment of race follows a similar trajectory: your race is also part of the landscape you’re born into and, ultimately, it’s your fate. In this casualness of showing black people as being people first and black second, Webber conveys a realness that rarely comes from a white director. His failure appears to be guilt, however, as evident in his portrayal of the “white” storyline of the drug dealer and his artist girlfriend, which follows a predictable dishing out of pot hazed ennui. For another example, refer to Topher Grace’s weed-glazed race rant in Traffic.

Webber’s has a unique personal relationship with Philadelphia. As a kid, he and his mother were homeless, living in cars and abandoned buildings. With this context, the film becomes a relatively interesting comment on Webber himself, as we see buildings and areas that he very well could have lived in as a kid. But the story must stand alone, regardless of Webber’s experience.

Certainly, Explicit Ills is a good looking movie. Many shots are strangely beautiful urban still lifes, but the visuals don’t save it. Overall, it feels like a troubled debut. Sure, Webber’s film movie is, visually, like a tenth outing for many budding filmmakers, but it falls victim to an attempt to be too hip. A cool score by a member of the Roots, “edgy” parties, and drug use—these are all “cool” on paper, but ultimately make the movie feel a bit juvenile. As a first film, Explicit Ills is mildly successful, but it is still gravely flawed. Webber shows great promise, so let’s keep an eye on him.

By Drew Tewksbury

from Artist Direct, 03.19.09

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Director Nikita Mikhalkov’s film about identity, race, and justice—based on Sidney Lumet’s remarkable 1957 film 12 Angry Men—filters the classic American legal drama through the Russian experience. In Russia, nothing goes according to plan. What begins as an exercise in devil’s advocacy quickly becomes an assault on the status quo as the objector pleads his case. “We’re talking about a human being. We just put up our hands, and that was it,” the nameless objector says much to the groaning disapproval of the other jurors, who were expecting a quick unanimous vote.

Cut off from the outside world, each of the 12 men represent different aspects of society. There’s the militant cab driver, the indecisive son of a TV mogul, a whimsical actor, a quirky surgeon with a troubled past, and Mikalov himself playing a retired older man who silently oversees the jury. The jovial nature of male social interaction begins to break down as the objector pleads his case to the other 11 men. One by one, the men change their minds in a Möbius strip of logic. The cab driver becomes the despot, seizing control of the jury and convincing them that the “Chechen dog” deserves life in jail. The introspective Jewish man pulls them back by sympathizing with the Chechen boy’s pariah status. The stuttering working class juror is caught in between as he tries to reconcile his personal experiences with the rhetoric of the well-educated men.

In that Moscow gymnasium, the men have no identity or past. They have no names to establish nationality, only accents and visual cues by which they judge one another’s authority. Like an adult version of Lord of the Flies, 12 dissects the structure of society and the social interactions of men. As the votes begin to change, each of the men describes the story of what led them to their conclusion. These remarkably acted and compelling monologues of heartbreak and loss, and triumph and tenderness, bind 12 together with the theatrical prowess of Lumet’s starkly minimalist film.

But 12 distinguishes itself through its vivid depictions of the Chechen boy’s life. Mikalov juxtaposes these images alongside the jurors’ heated discussions and guides the story along on parallel trajectories. As the film reveals the histories of the jury members, the boy’s life becomes clear, too. He was victim to a world of nebulous morality, the film pointedly (and maybe slantingly) argues. Without guidance, the boy is a pawn in the Russian/Chechen conflict. His heroes were neighborhood Chechen rebels when they were killed, and he was adopted by a Russian soldier who was responsible for the rebels’ death.

The act of the poor Chechen boy killing the Russian officer who adopted him becomes a transparent allegory of Russian history. But the meaning is unclear. Did the Chechens betray their adoptive fatherland, the Soviet Union, who graciously adopted the poor, Muslim region of Chechnya? Or is the message that Chechnya is an exploited child, wrongfully accused of being populated by killers and savages, and played as a card in a larger game of global politics veiled in an assault against their autonomy? Perhaps neither, or maybe both.

Although there are many culturally specific elements about Russia—the older men call each other “comrade” (still shedding the vestigial organs of Communism), the cab driver complains about feeling like a foreigner in his own town, the objector laments on Russia’s xenophobic relations with the West—12 effectively relates to an international audience. What is missed in the cultural specifics is made up by the evocative storytelling. The strength of the story isn’t in its setting—Lumet and Mikalov’s films could have been set anywhere from Kansas City to the Kamchackta Peninsula—it is in playwright Reginald Rose’s original treatment, which addresses the universal theme of how we orient ourselves in an ever-changing world. It asks the question: is anything beyond a reasonable doubt?

By Drew Tewksbury

from Artist Direct, 03.06.09

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Von Stauffenberg’s story is irresistible. In the final days of the war, many Germans had grown disillusioned with Hitler’s promises for peace. The German power elite recognized that Hitler had become out of touch and were eager for change. Seeing the flaws behind his vision, several resistance movements began to blossom in Germany. Von Stauffenberg’s was one of the most ambitious.

“We have to show the world that not all of us were like him,” von Stauffenberg says. An esteemed war veteran, von Stauffenberg lost his eye, hand, and several fingers previously in battle, rose through the ranks in the Nazi regime and gathered support from many other high ranking dissenters along the way. Von Stauffenberg’s plan—named Valkyrie—was extremely bold: kill Hitler, accuse the S.S. of treason, and use the military to take over the state. His personal involvement in the plan was extremely dangerous. He had to infiltrate Hitler’s highest command, gain personal access to Hitler himself, then personally leave a suitcase bomb next to the Führer.

Risky? Exciting? Yes. But history spoils the ending. The most effective assassination attempt against Hitler’s life fails. Von Stauffenberg’s plan almost works, but slips away. In-fighting and oversight in the resistance movement weakened their efforts. Valkyrie, the movie, falls victim to the same problems: glazing over important details and failing to create a well-realized plan. The film does not fail completely (and neither did the plan; Hitler committed suicide a few months after von Stauffenberg’s attempt), yet it never engages in the way it is supposed to.

Heist movies typically follow the same formula: drawing of the plans, recruiting the team, executing the heist, and dealing with the aftermath. Valkyrie is essentially no different in structure. Yet, it differs vastly from Singer’s exceptional L.A. noir The Usual Suspects, which masterfully ties together many characters and story into a tight knot.

Valkyrie, however, lacks the carefully orchestrated flow that The Usual Supects flaunts. Valkyrie creates a strange paradox wherein it feels like the expository scenes are hurried and overly long at the same time. The whole section leading up to the assassination attempt is wrought with an identity crisis as well. Should it focus on von Stauffenberg’s family, or perhaps his war record? How do you make a bunch of old men plotting revolution interesting? The fine cast of Tom Wilkinson, Kenneth Branagh, and Terence Stamp as von Stauffenberg’s Nazi co-conspirators certainly helps.

Valkyrie’s most compelling visions come during the actual assassination attempt and the implosion of their plan afterward. The scene of von Stauffenberg walking straight into the lion’s den with the bomb is pretty thrilling. The film’s coda picks up the pace as the coup designed by von Stauffenberg and his cohorts begins to unfold. The glimmer of hope that is Hitler’s Germany quickly dissolves. The dominos begin to fall, but stop at the last moment. Valkyrie does the same. As the movie starts rolling, it ends hurriedly, right at the moment it gets interesting.

Another curious directorial choice was forgoing German accents. No one in the film had one. Sure, films require a suspension of belief, but it becomes confusing when “Germans” have a polyglot of U.K and American accents. Then there’s Tom Cruise, whose accent and demeanor were unabashedly American. No matter how much you dress him up, Cruise is Cruise. At no point can you divorce him from his outlandish off-screen persona. It’s not that he does a bad job, but there are many actors that could have done much better. Maybe another actor could have even attempted a German accent.

This Americanization of German culture seems to be an intentional decision by Singer or the studio execs. It is distancing from the idea that the film is a “foreign” film and even pushes it away from an allegation of Nazi sympathizing. After all, on-screen Nazis are never real people; they are all evil. Valkyrie faintly tries to show Nazis as Germans who bought into an ideologically bankrupt political party. But, it never delves into the reasons why millions of Germans and other people around the world bought into the Nazi agenda. Nazism didn’t come out of nowhere, and millions of adherents didn’t just jump on the bandwagon.

The integrity of a historical film is founding its commitment to history, and Valkyrie is unwilling to look the social milieu that made everyday Germans become Nazis. It seems that Singer, and most likely the studio execs, were attempting to make the film relatable to “average American” audiences, not just history buffs. The “Tom Cruise Nazi Movie” is not blockbuster material, so Americanizing Valkyrie makes more economic sense. The lack of confidence in the film shows through in these directorial decisions. Ultimately, these oversights just take away from the realism of von Stauffenberg’s heroic acts. He was a brave German trying to win his country back. He was never the all-American hero.

—Drew Tewksbury
For Artist Direct: 12.22.08

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Liberia’s roots began somewhat idealistically, a dream for freed American slaves who returned to 19th Century Africa. In 1847, Liberia became an independent nation, and over a century later, the country fell into complete civil and political collapse. The eruption of two civil wars in the 1980s and the 1996 “election” of warlord Charles Taylor as president (one of his campaign slogans: “He killed my Ma, he killed my Pa, but I will vote for him”), should have left the people of Liberia hopeless. But the women of Liberia prove that hope is not lost, as a group of Muslim and Christian women decided to take a stand against Liberia’s tumultuous present. Pray the Devil Back to Hell unleashes their story on the world.

The riveting documentary follows Leymah Gbowee, a Liberian peace activist as she recounts her 2002 mobilization of ordinary Liberian women against the brutal Democratic farce of Charles Taylor. In response to the merciless rapes and crimes perpetrated by the warlords, Gbowee brought together a vigil of Christian women to decry Taylor’s tactics of terror and destabilization. When Taylor agreed to enter peace talks with the warring rebel groups, Gbowee and her group joined with a Muslim women’s association to protest outside the compound where the Liberian leaders met. When the negations seemed to go on forever, Gbowee and her strong group of women took action into their own hands, performing a momentous and unforgettable act of civil disobedience.

Director Gini Reticker forges this exhaustively researched documentary from nearly unbelievable footage of Liberia alongside interviews with the women who organized against Taylor. Gbowee’s lucid narrative ties together the nearly flawless story, juxtaposing images of child-soldiers and sprawling urban warfare on the streets of Monrovia. This footage of Liberia fills in the nebulous territory demarcated by the news media across the world. The images of children with machine guns, stalking the streets for enemies, represent the plight of child soldiers and corrupt regimes across the world. This is the “war torn region,” the warring place outside our reality from which we construct our own concept of peace. It is seemingly home to the Other, the people that are not “us.” Liberia is certainly one of the worst, but countless others exist, to the complacency of many “Western” cultures. But when these regions are explored by documentaries like Pray the Devil Back to Hell, change happens. Never again is Africa just a forgotten headline, it is a real place where people like Gbowee enact real change through a passionate thirst for justice.

For a film about such heavy subject matter, Pray the Devil Back to Hell never relies on the shock value of body counts or corpses (although the unceasing warfare claimed nearly 200,000 lives). Instead, Gbowee’s captivating narrative, filled with her hope and dream of a better Liberia, infuses the documentary with an uplifting spirit. Gbowee is a testament that in even in the harshest environments, the voices of the voiceless can be heard. The Devil doesn’t always win.

—Drew Tewksbury
12.03.08
Artist Direct

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When Andrew Bagby was killed on November 5th 2001, he left behind much more than his memory. Childhood friend and filmmaker Kurt Kuenne set out to create a loving documentary about Bagby that illustrated the life of his quirky friend for the child he left behind, Zachary. The result, Dear Zachary, is as an emotionally captivating snapshot, seven years in the making, that examines Bagby’s life and death through Kuenne’s all-encompassing lens.

Bordering on journalism, Dear Zachary comprehensively interviews nearly everyone in Bagby’s sphere to create a full picture of the man who once starred in Kuenne’s childhood films. Bagby made a exceptional bad guy on Kuenne’s prototypical home movies, but in real life he was a really good guy. He was once a med student in Canada, he gave great wedding toasts, and everyone had a funny story about him. But it was the brutal story of his murder that left his friends and family reeling.

On a November day, Shirley Turner, a much older woman Bagby recently dumped, allegedly shot him in a park, ending his life at the age of 32. His death opened a new chapter for those around him. For Bagby’s parents, his death catalyzed their own struggles with the legal system to hold the woman accountable for her actions and vindicate the memory of their son. They achingly discover new meaning in their own lives as court dates fly by and Turner is released on bail. Then she drops the bombshell: she’s pregnant with Bagby’s baby.

For Kuenne, his cross-country memorial to Bagby evolves into an evisceration of Bagby’s killer and an indictment of the Canadian legal system’s failure to keep Turner from future violence. Through countless interviews, camcorder home videos, and exhaustive legal explorations, Dear Zachary investigates the interconnectedness of friendships and family, and examines how we know the people we know. It also dissects the nature of grief through Kuenne’s visual and literal narrative. Kuenne himself enters the story as someone suffering, too—someone who, like Bagby’s parents, is trying to make sense of it all. As he says, “This is my last movie with Andrew.”

Although Dear Zachary mainly focuses on Bagby’s parents’ inexhaustible thirst for justice and limitless capacity to bear a weighty emotional burden, Kuenne’s own pain sometimes takes the movie off message. Instead of just telling the story, his own attempts to drive a point home through visual quirkiness and stylistic nuance lessen the impact of the film. Kuenne’s sharp editing style, which sometimes borders on cheesy news magazine shows a la A Current Affair, moves the film along quickly but at times feels more like his home movies than a feature film. Despite a little slight case of melodrama and sensationalism, the true story of Bagby and the emotional strength of his parents is a compelling insight into the endurance of the human soul.

—Drew Tewksbury,

Artist Direct 11.19.08

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The holidays are meant to be joyous occasions where families come together to rejoice in each other’s company—in theory, at least. In practice, families are far more bizarre than the outside world could ever know. The holidays can be a time of awkward encounters, airing of family drama, and the cataclysmic mixing of outsiders. A Christmas Tale (Un conte de noël), captures family awkwardness and absurdity in a well-built story that is, well, totally French.

The film tells the intricately woven tale of Junon (played by French national treasure Catherine Deneuve), an aging mother of three who has developed leukemia. The family is not unfamiliar with the disease; many years earlier Junon and her husband Abel (Jean-Paul Roussillon) had a child with leukemia that their daughter, Elizabeth (Anne Consigny), was unable to donate her bone marrow to. In an attempt to provide a new donor, the couple had a third child, Henri, but before they could use his marrow, his afflicted brother died. Now, many years later, Junon contracts the disease, and she brings her feuding family back together for the holidays for one last visit and an attempt to find a new donor who can extend her life.

Tonally more akin to Rachel Getting Married than, say, Meet the Fockers, A Christmas Tale Frenches up the family-drama drama. As you can expect, the French philosophical trio appears in the film: existentialism, ennui, and angst (that’s actually German, but who’s counting). The marvelous Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Munich) plays the adult Henri, a self-destructive self loather who visits the family after being “banished” for five years by his sister Elizabeth. As in many family dramas, Henri is the knife that cuts the ligature of their community. His wreckless behavior eventually takes its toll on his mother when it is revealed that his blood could be compatible for her, but his lifestyle made him fragile. Luckily Junon’s meek and tormented grandson Paul is also compatible, but will he accept the responsibility for her life?

The emotional, relatable story is grounded in the refreshing normality of the characters, which keeps the film from being an experiment in the excruciatingly depressing. In addition, the magic realist moments and forays into style-heavy visuals dampen the serious subject matter. The film begins with a sort of silhouette theater (much like the films of artist Kara Walker), to imaginatively show the genetic destiny of the family. Strangely beautiful clips of cellular growth become a sort of ballet within the body as cells split to an orchestral score. Far from being distracting, these moments act as interludes between the emotional action.

Unafraid of death, the film bravely confronts it head on, as Junon manages her fate with great courage. It shows that no matter what you do, your family is still your family. You can abandon them, fight with them, and deny them, but that changes nothing. Family is all about blood.

—Drew Tewksbury, Artist Direct

11.19.08

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The very name of the film evokes an immediate reaction and recalls an unforgettable series of images: the shower curtain, the screeching, the scream, the knife, the spiraling blood down the drain, the dead eye looking back at us. The movie is subsumed into this singular slice of the film: the shower scene. The best art redefines the way we perceive the world and the objects in it. Psycho does just that by forever altering a sacred space. Before Psycho, the shower was a place of vulnerability and isolation; it was one of the only places where you could truly be alone. After Psycho, nothing is sacred. You are never truly alone. From behind a curtain or from darkened spaces, someone is watching you. Someone is always watching you. Sigmund Freud calls it the Superego (later expanded by psychoanalytic film theorist Laura Mulvey who makes Hitchcock the basis of her theories), but the rest of us call it totally terrifying.

The shower scene is the pivotal lynchpin holding together the two parts of the film: the getaway and the investigation. Like great works of art, Hitchcock’s masterful direction obfuscates the lines of genre. Is it a heist film? A mystery? Detective flick? Or perhaps a pulp fiction fetish film? Psycho is all of these and more. Wrought with voyeurism, perversion, and bloodlust, the 48-year-old film reveals more twisted layers with each viewing.

Now with the Special Edition Universal Legacy Series DVD, the film lifts Psycho’s hood to uncover the engine driving it. The DVD includes storyboards of the shower scene by the highly imitated graphic designer Saul Bass, who also created many of Hitchcock’s movie posters and title sequences. These storyboards reveal how the tightly constructed narrative leads us effortlessly through the buildup, the tension, and the climax. In addition, newsreel footage of Psycho and behind the scenes featurettes illuminate the making of the historic film and Hitchcock’s legacy. After all, Psycho is not just a movie; it is a cultural phenomenon, a part of the filmic canon, and an extremely enjoyable traumatic experience.

—Drew Tewksbury
10.09.08

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In the movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3, the radical turtles find a magic scepter that accidentally transports the fearsome fighting team to 17th Century Japan. The turtles learn some important lessons about watered down Asian philosophies and make some snarky comments while kicking people in the face. In The Forbidden Kingdom, a kung fu obsessed American teen (Michael Angarano) finds a bowstaff in a pawn shop (quite possibly the same shop from Gremlins), which transports him to ancient China, where he meets a snarky kung fu master (Jackie Chan) who teaches him watered down Asian philosophy. Oh yes, face kicks ensue.

Although Forbidden Kingdom does share some similarities with TMNT (unfortunately not the Secret of the Ooze featuring “Ninja Rap” by Vanilla Ice), it bites more from Hong Kong kung fu flicks that have been recently regurgitated for U.S. audiences. Like TMNT, this movie is obviously meant for kids (which screenwriter John Fusco explains in the DVD special features, of course, while performing karate on the beach at sunset) and to introduce some alluring Chinese fables to impressionable young Americans. Jason, the American teen, travels through time and discovers that the bowstaff he found must be returned to its rightful owner: the Monkey King. An entourage of travelers join Jason in his quest, including a silent monk (Jet Li) and a scorned karate babe (Crystal Liu Yi Fei). In a good-natured, but not very effective attempt to find middle ground between Asian and American cultures, they teach him kung fu skills. Don’t worry, Jason will have a chance to practice these skills later on some bullies back home, a la The Karate Kid. These attempts to explain Chinese myths through flashbacks and highly stylized fantasy sequences bog down the film and make it clunky. Directed and written by Americans, The Forbidden Kingdom also seems to lack a genuine sense of understanding of these myths. But then again, it is a movie for kids. Sometimes the comic book version of classic story can be a good introduction for young ones.

For us not-kids, the film does succeed in presenting a view of the real China—the stark deserts, forests bathed in sunlight, and lush rice patties—that is as visually interesting as it is beautiful. The sets and costumes, as with many of the recent contributions to Chinese crossover films, are stunning. The special features of the DVD include featurettes that detail the production. From touring the gargantuan Chinese studio that encompassed many of their ornate sets to traversing the magnificent locales across the country where they shot, these short films are more interesting than the movie itself.

Ultimately, The Forbidden Kingdom will appeal to a younger audience with a familiarity and an existing love for this Hong Kong-styled kung fu film. But for everyone else, this movie moves slower than a turtle (one that is not teenaged, mutant, or a ninja).

—Drew Tewksbury
09.09.08

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The story is as complex as sukiyaki’s taste. The Red and White clans have holed up in a desolate town and battled themselves to near extinction. When a fast-shooting gunslinger shows up, they each try to recruit him to end their war forever. But he is the lonesome cowboy—he don’t stay nowhere for long—and reignites a cataclysmic feud between the clans. As the action cools, we are served sukyaki Shakespeare, as the few women of the town are caught in star-crossed love under the fire of magnificently staged shootouts. Though Samurai swords clash with bullets—Samurais were Japan’s cultural equivalent to the rough riding outlaw—the fight scenes are not the floating dances of Hong Kong cinema. Sukiyaki’s rapscallions retired the karate kicks for good ol’ fashioned American brawls.

Sukiyaki Western Django pays homage to midnight movies and Spaghetti Westerns, most notably Sergio Corbucci’s ultra violent Django (1966), but also to Western culture entirely. In each allusion to Shakespeare and Rambo, Sukiyaki reveals a distinctly Asian look at (and appropriation of) American and Western culture. The English dialogue is delivered by Japanese actors, who don’t originally speak the language, placing a musical cadence onto familiar phrases traditionally found in Westerns. “Y’all,” “skivvies,” and “reckon” find new meaning when uttered from a Japanese mouth. Many of the actors phonetically sounded out the words, and ultimately make a never-before-heard dialect that only exists in Miike’s West.

The broken English is just another twist of the genre—not to mention outlaws who wield Samurai swords like six-shooters and wayfarers with didgeridoos instead of harmonicas—but it all makes sense if you choose to play Miike’s game. And make no mistake, in Miike’s world you’re with it or against it.

In a preamble to the action, Miike admirer Quentin Tarantino introduces the film (almost as a warning: Abandon all hope of normalcy ye who enter here) as a pancho-wearing cowpoke, stirring sukiyaki on a two-dimensional set of Mt. Fuji and a blood orange sunset, while telling the yarn of the battle of the Reds and Whites. But this is not a Tarantino movie and certainly not just another Kill Bill sequel. Instead, Sukiyaki is a post-punk rock Western and a stylishly fun jolt of life kicked into the dusty genre’s world.

—Drew Tewksbury
09.15.08

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Battle in Seattle provides a multi-angled, fictional view of the activists, cops, and government officials who clashed in Seattle during a protest against the World Trade Organization (WTO). The WTO is an international organization that controls much of the trade in the world. It is essentially the UN for big businesses, and urges free, largely unrestricted trade. The actual “Battle in Seattle,” as the media dubbed it, was a culmination of international dissent against WTO policies: excluding/bullying poor countries, ignoring environmental concerns, and squashing labor rights.

The film weaves together the events of the protests by providing vignettes that portray many dimensions of the WTO story. We follow environmental activists (Jennifer Carpenter, Andre “3000” Benjamin, and Martin Henderson) as they prepare for the protests. On the other side, the film shows the establishment: Mayor Jim Tobin (Ray Liotta), who tries to reconcile free speech while including the conference, a riot cop (Woody Harrelson) whose pregnant wife (Charlize Theron) gets caught in the protest, and an intrepid reporter (Connie Nielsen).

Battle succeeds in documenting the various failures of both the establishment and the anti-establishment when the nonviolent protests turned into chaos resulting in tear gas canisters being released, police batons being brandished, and over 600 people arrested. The scenes of the protest are vivid and even more compelling as brutal footage from the real event breaks down the passivity of the movie watching process. These scenes show the selfless passion for justice, and the undeniable power of people committed to an ideal.

Yet, like the squabbling of member states of the WTO and the polyglot of activists groups, Battle’s plot suffers from too many voices. The characters are glossed over archetypes: the cop fighting to do the right thing (Harrelson), the struggling love story, the man with a personal tragedy and a vendetta. This over-dramatization waters down the impact of the true story and the historic nature of the civil disobedience that occurred on the streets of Seattle. In addition, the WTO is an incredibly complex organization—international economics is never an easy thing to understand—and the numerous characters just muddy up many of the film’s concepts.

Despite these missteps, Townsend’s directorial debut achieves what it sets out to do. First, it shows that the WTO exists, and that it has a large hand in whether countries thrive or become impoverished. It also raises important questions: Is democracy effective? Do protests work (remember, 36 million people across the world protested the Iraq War in 2003)? What effects has global trade had on the world? And lastly, it also shows what Karl Marx calls praxis—the movement of a philosophy into action—and the ability of everyday people to change themselves and the world.

—Drew Tewksbury
09.22.08

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Guy Maddin (Erik Steffen Maahs) returns to an abandoned Canadian island to fulfill his mother’s dying wish to repaint a lighthouse, which was home to his family and the orphanage they ran. With each brushstroke, Maddin falls into his recollection of growing up in the lighthouse with his flighty sister, workaholic father, and totalitarian mother. In his memory, the young Maddin (Sullivan Brown) discovers a diabolical plight befalling the orphans with whom he shares the lighthouse, and tries to come to terms with the bizarre reality he has found.

Like the brushstrokes the fictional Maddin makes on the lighthouse, the real Maddin created a film that is painterly and undeniably artful. Shot in the black and white style of silent films and the surreal environments of the German expressionist era, Brand breaks the paradigms of modern film. Complete with title cards, chapters, and jarring edits, Maddin pays homage to the simplicity of early film. Like Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and Salvador Dali’s films, the mind is left to decide what lies in the shadow-saturated images.

But the film does not only rely on its darkly beautiful style. The narrative also opens like a black rose, slowly revealing the dark secrets hiding in Maddin’s lighthouse. Crouching in the haze of Maddin’s memory lies forbidden love, ravenous greed, and fantastical nightmares. He weaves the narrative like sci-fi and cult films: carefully juxtaposing the shocking with the mesmerizing. The real pleasure is watching the characters react to the outlandish environments and people that they encounter. There is a gender-bending sleuth, an orphan insurrection, and even an underground vampiric plot. And when things become too intense, the young Maddin almost faints, allowing the viewers to take a breath with him.

Maddin also released the film in a series of live events, complete with a live orchestra and Foley artists—who put sound to each footstep and every door slam—as well a esteemed cadre of celebrity narrators including Isabella Rossellini and Crispin Glover. The Criterion DVD release allows the viewer to choose from the many actors to narrate Maddin’s imaginative fairy tale. The orchestral score also soaks this postmodern fable in an eerie Tom Waits-in-Eastern-Europe flavor. Also included on the beautifully produced DVD are Maddin’s shorts—shot exclusively for this release—about the artists who brought these live shows to life.

Brand is not an easy film for the uninitiated. But it is a film that challenges expectation, rewards patience, and delivers an undeniably unique love letter to emotions stirred by cinematic history.

—Drew Tewksbury
09.04.08

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The best of Westerns (and some Samurai films) involve the attempt to return to normalcy and restore the status quo after an outside source destroys it. Red is no different. The hulking Ludow is an anachronism—he doesn’t have credit cards, his custard yellow truck is tinged with rust, his empty house lacks a TV—but when three young men try to hold him up during his afternoon fishing session, Ludlow is thrust into the present. “You don’t have credit cards,” asks Danny (Noel Fisher), the blonde trust fund urchin, as he holds a rifle near Ludlow’s face. Then Danny pulls the trigger on Red, Ludlow’s 14-year-old dog, and destroys the center of Ludlow’s life.

He wraps Red’s body in his flannel and buries him in the yard by the rusted swing set that lays derelict in his front yard. The authorities say they can’t do anything to the boys. So, Ludlow then begins to search for the boys in town, paying personal visits to gun stores with the shell that killed Red, until he discovers that Danny is the son of a rich businessman, Mr. McCormack (Tom Sizemore). After paying Danny’s father a visit to make sense of the boys’ actions, the heartless Danny denies that anything happened, while his remorseful brother and cohort Harold (Kyle Gallner) remains silent.

When a local reporter (Kim Dickens) coaxes Ludlow to bring the story into the open, after Ludow reveals the tragedies he endured in the past, the boys begin a campaign of retaliatory violence. Like the Western, when the cycle of violence begins, it can never be stopped. There is no return to normalcy.

The true strength of screenwriter Stephen Susco’s script emerges as Ludlow’s story unfolds at the pace of small town life. Communication is made face to face, in storefronts and door jambs. The only secrets in a small town are the stories you choose to ignore, so Ludlow wanders the town and makes his story known. Cox’s polite and strained performance of Ludlow carries the film, like the weight of trauma that Ludlow carries on his own back. In his silences and shuffling feet, Ludlow expresses the strength it takes to move on and to fight against seemingly insurmountable forces of injustice. Sizemore’s blank-eyed, emotionally vapid performance as the disaffected, wife-beating father reveals that a family is not a vacuum; no action goes without consequence. His own inaction and coldness became the catalyst for Danny’s evolution of cruelty. Ludlow isn’t just vindicating his dog’s death, he’s trying set right the balance of their universe, where every action should have an equal and opposite reaction.

Although the film wasn’t visually stunning, Norweigan director Trygve Allister Diesen’s English language debut succeeds in creating a Western that shows the heart’s capacity for strength and the way men inscribe meaning onto objects of love—on our wives, on our sons, and on our dogs.

—Drew Tewksbury
08.28.08

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At dusk, right before the sun sets, there is a moment of complete indiscernibility. Figures become shadows, darkness and light melt into each other, and for an instant day and night share the same space. Argentine director Lucía Puenzo’s visually arresting and emotionally affecting film XXY celebrates this liminal space in-between: a place of indiscernible truth.

XXY shares the life of Alex, a knobbly kneed, 15-year-old Argentine girl (Inés Efron) who is an unusual intersection of genders: her body is home to both male and female genitalia. Her family attempts to keep her condition hidden by living in a coastal town in Uruguay, where her marine biologist father, Néstor (Ricardo Darin), treats the wounds of endangered species. As puberty progresses, Alex becomes physically more like a man everyday, eventually jeopardizing the secret beneath her clothes. Unbeknownst to Néstor, Alex’s mother invites her friend, a surgeon from Argentina, to their home to explore the possibility of “correcting” their intersexed daughter. Alex meets the surgeon’s son Álvaro (Martín Piroyansky), who doesn’t know of her condition at first, and they begin a tumultuous relationship that challenges the tolerance of their town.

In the hands of a lesser director, XXY could have been an insensitive farce or an over-dramatized movie of the week. Yet with the subtle pacing, beautiful imagery, and strong performances, Puenzo creates a movie as rare and unique as the free spirited Alex herself. Efron’s phenomenal performance effuses the sexual frustration of a person caught between two worlds. “If I’m so special, why can’t I talk about it,” Alex says. She is a blooming, androgynous Lolita who doesn’t fit into the binary of her world, where well-defined gender roles surround her. Instead she breaks the nose of her male best friend, showers with her female friends, and defies the sexual conventions placed upon her. In Efron’s alternation between aggression and playfulness, she reconciles Alex’s desperate desire to be touched and loved with her unwillingness to be defined by her own body.

But Alex’s very existence confounds these limits, daring to challenge the power plays of sex and love with her malleable sexuality

Visually, the film equally explores the starkness of the Uruguayan sand dunes, coastline, and broken beachside fences as it does the landscape of Alex’s body: her unbridled hair, xylophone ribs, and gently sloping spine. After all, the film is about all about bodies and the way they define the world we are born into. Boys will be boys, girls will be girls. But Alex’s very existence confounds these limits, daring to challenge the power plays of sex and love with her malleable sexuality. “In all vertebrates, including the human being, the female sex is dominant in an evolutionary and embryological sense,” Alex reads from a biology book her father wrote.

Outside of Alex’s own journey of self-awareness, her father grapples with his unwavering love for his daughter and the inability of their town to accept her. “From the moment I laid eyes on her. Perfect,” Néstor says. He wraps himself in a cloak of science by researching her condition and finding a local intersexed man who was forced to have the surgery that is being considered for Alex. Unlike Tiresias, the mythological Greek prophet who was turned into a woman for seven years, Alex has complete control of her gender choice and ultimately her destiny.

With Darin and Efron’s artful performances, alongside Puenzo’s meticulously crafted direction, the film shows the beauty that lies in the anomalous and infinite possibilities of teenagers sprawling in the dawn of their lives.

—Drew Tewksbury
08.18.08

Read Interview with Martín Piroyansky

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Two dudes + ice skates = comic gold

By Drew Tewksbury

Metromix March 30, 2007

The phrase “great comedic pairs” may bring to mind Abbott and Costello, Sonny and Cher or even Bush and Cheney, but Ricky Bobby and Napoleon Dynamite? Fortunately, the inspired combination of Will Ferrell and Jon Heder creates an epic odd couple in the ice skating comedy “Blades of Glory.”

Ferrell stars as Hasselhoffian bad-boy Chazz Michael Michaels, a sex-addict on skates, while Heder plays his blonde, by-the-books pretty-boy rival Jimmy MacElroy.

A nasty and unsportsmanlike brawl on the ice gets the two champions banned from the sport they love, forcing them into the lowly world of shoe salesmanship and ice wizardry. Their only hope for a comeback requires teaming up as the first men’s pair to compete in figure skating.

“Blades of Glory” has all the signs of the latest product in the Will Ferrell franchise, including the usual underwear-clad strolls, but the performances of the supporting actors truly set it apart. Heder’s mastery of physical comedy, as well as his rad dance moves, bolsters a fearless headfirst dive into his ridiculous character. MacElroy really believes there’s nothing unusual about performing an ice dance in a sequined peacock costume, and Heder entertainingly and unabashedly commits to the portrayal.

Real-life married couple Will Arnett (”Arrested Development”) and Amy Poehler (”Saturday Night Live”) steal their scenes as evil brother-sister skating duo, the Van Waldenbergs, and deserve even more screen time than they receive.

The film does exploit the homoerotic humor you might expect from any comedy with two male leads, but it devolves into much funnier sibling rivalry–style humor, perhaps modeled on the real lives of “Blades” screenwriter brothers Jeff and Craig Cox.

In the spirit of “Zoolander,” “Kingpin” and “This Is Spinal Tap,” “Blades of Glory” succeeds as a seriously funny spoof on an industry that takes itself a bit too seriously.

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