butchcorum1950 Reviews

Black Snake Moan (2006)

A solid, little second film...

[5/10 · 6 March 2007]

A solid, little second film...

As he demonstrated in his far superior Hustle & Flow (2005), Brewer has a solid feel for the milieu and vernacular of rural, working-class Southerners, black and white. There's a down- home, gritty verisimilitude to both that film and Black Snake Moan, which is only enhanced by Brewer's use of music for emotional texture. Unlike Hustle and Flow, however, Black Snake Moan is a vague and unfocused film, pitched uncertainly between steamy exploitation flick and character study, which promises far more than it delivers. Touching, albeit in cursory fashion, on long-standing social and racial taboos vis-à-vis the power dynamic between Lazarus and Rae, Brewer apparently loses his nerve at about the halfway mark, for the rough, sexually charged edge to their relationship dissipates, giving way to a safe, surrogate father- daughter bond. As it turns out, all poor little trampy Rae needs is a hug—ditto that for Lazarus, who rediscovers his love of blues by performing at a local juke joint. It's a simplistic and unsatisfying narrative turn, regrettably one of many in the second half of Black Snake Moan, a frustrating film that ultimately leaves you singin' the blues about Brewer's dual failure of imagination and nerve.

The Jacket (2005)

good stuff

[6/10 · 15 February 2007]

Adrien Brody is a vet of the Gulf War. He was discharged after recovering from "dieing the first time" in a horrible incident that left him shot in the head. Starks roams restlessly about the country roads (a la Rambo in First Blood) when he runs across a woman and her daughter stranded with a broke down truck. While the alcoholic mother is busy blowing chunks he and the girl named Jackie fix the machine. Jackie takes an instant liking to Jack and asks Jack for his dog tags. Being a softy for kids he obliges and all go on their merry way. Continuing on his cross-country trek, Jack accepts a ride that starts him on the road to his own personal hell. Next we see him on trial for murdering a police officer. He has no recollection of anything that day except the mother and daughter. Due to his mental condition he is tossed in an asylum. Dr. Becker (Kris Kristofferson) subjects Starks to a radical and unnerving procedure where he pumps Starks full of psychotropic drugs wraps him in an old and musty strait-jacket and throws him in a morgue locker for hours. During these claustrophobic "sessions" Jack somehow goes from 1992 to 2007 and during his brief visits to the future where he learns of his death and needs to find out how to prevent it. While in the future he meets and falls in love with a now grown-up Jackie (Keira Knightley).

Music and Lyrics (2007)

Okay

[5/10 · 14 February 2007]

A washed-up singer has a chance at a comeback with a reigning pop diva, if he can write a new hit in a matter of days. he rom-com hook is Sophie (Drew Barrymore), an ex-Eng Lit student, who helps out with potted plant maintenance in a half decent apartment block. Although a low grade hypochondriac and mini motormouth, she is the closest thing to normal in the entire film. You don't learn much about her, except she had a fling at college with an older guy, a successful author (Campbell Scott), before discovering he had a fiancée. After the split, he wrote a best selling novel about their affair, which made her feel worse than worse. Also, she has a sister (Kristen Johnston), who is tall, fat and a Pop fan.

When she comes to do Alex's flowers, he discovers she has a talent for lyric writing. She laughs it off and carries on killing the plants. He has been commissioned to write a song for Cora Corman (Haley Bennett), the hottest Top 100 chick of the moment, but he has to do it by the end of the week. He's okay with melody, but useless at words. He persuades her to help him out and, of course, she's a natural.

Journey to the End of the Night (2006)

Dark, Dirty, Degenerate and Fun!

[10/10 · 13 February 2007]

This is an interesting work in the film noir/gangster genre. The story has to do with the bad blood between father and son, played out over one night in Sao Paulo. The tone and mood of the movie seem to reference many more famous, high profile films that deal with the same topic matter. This one seems very interested in stylization over telling a completely coherent story. And its this stylization that sets it above regular crime dramas.

Bredan Fraser plays the loser, coke addicted son without any fear of looking bad. HIs performance is very emotional and wild. Not easy for any actor to pull off. His character is a villain without any morals. Made that way by his father, Scott Glenn, an initially likable, sympathetic sort, who, as the tale unravels, is not so nice a guy after all.

By far, the film's hero, Mos Def (the only hero because everyone else is evil or not big enough to really know) gives a winning, career defining performance as a Nigerian immigrant who, out of loyalty to his employer, agrees to partake in a drug deal. The "raptor" gives a nuanced, thoroughly believable performance as wemba in maybe his best role as a film actor.

The other big star of the film are the colors. The nighttime images and camera. It appears to be heavily saturated and grainy and apparently enhanced through the DI process. Cinematographer aficionados will surely want to see this for the interesting lighting.

If the film has a flaw, I would cite an overall bleak and hateful tone of the script. Very anti- human being. The violence feels almost gratuitous with some shots of face slashing feeling too long or ultimately unnecessary. The squeamish will look away! But nothing very troublesome compared to the gore in the horror genre.

Recommended to those who like dark material.

Norbit (2007)

A film to see

[5/10 · 13 February 2007]

This movie is basically Eddie Murphy on a laugh parade. If there was a moral lesson, to be gained from this movie, it would have to be that no matter what its best to develop a backbone. That way you are never stuck in a terrible situation with a terrible girl. This was very much the dominant big girl dates the spineless gay guy, who is afraid of coming out or afraid to say no. Only in this case he was a straight guy who had real issues sticking up for himself, and that was truly painful to watch.

It did have a bit of a romantic interlude where Eddie Murphy (Norbit) had a crush on his elementary school and orphanage playmate Thandie Newton (Kate)

Again there are some funny scenes, but overall this movie was a real mild hang.

Now don't go into this movie expecting a GREAT storyline though. Another thing which kept me from a ten (other than the language) was the storyline. It kinda got predictable, but then sometimes took you to another route. Mostly the fat jokes are predictable a bit. You just knew that when a big person slides down a water slide she'll fly in the air. But then they took you to another route to save the joke. I still found it hilarious

Shortbus (2006)

Daring!

[8/10 · 5 February 2007]

James (Paul Dawson) and Jamie (PJ De Boy) are a gay couple dealing with the monotony of monogamy -- and, as we learn, the fact that one half of the couple is a bit more hopelessly devoted than the other. Couples Counselor Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee) is trying to help Jamie and James -- although when she reveals she's never had an orgasm with her husband Rob (Raphael Barker), the phrase "physician, heal thyself" flits through your mind. Jamie and James invite Sofia to a sex/performance space called Shortbus, where Sofia meets and befriends the Dominatrix Severin (Lindsay Beamish). Of course, these are contextual introductions: The film opens with James masturbating furiously before Jamie gets home, Rob and Sofia running through a gallery of positions like they're proofing the Kama Sutra with an imminent deadline and Severin beating the hell out of an annoying-yet-appealing client in a hotel suite overlooking Ground Zero.

Shortbus isn't just interested in how these characters have sex, even if they do a lot of it; it's just as interested in the connections of hearts and minds as it is in the mechanics of inserting tab 'a' into slot 'b' (and 'c' and 'd' and rubbing tab 'a' against tab 'e' and much more). By and large, Shortbus has as much to do with real sex as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory has to do with real confectionery: It's a bright-colored, fanciful, fun world of pure imagination. Although thinking about it -- specifically, a scene where a three-way includes a vocalization of The Star-Spangled Banner directly into another partner's tender bits -- 'pure' might not be the right adjective.

The Science of Sleep (2006)

Very strong and

[5 February 2007]

The Science of Sleep writer-director Michel Gondry is a happy mad genius. Like some auteurs of his mad-genius ilk, he acknowledges and touches upon life's morose side, but it's as if the sun is shining down on him even during his darkest moments. It's what gives Sleep its distinctiveness, insofar as the story succeeds, and it gave his Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind its eternal sunshine. Sleep is to be considered a sort of autobiography--and nothing short of pure genius. Gondry's story of pristine wonderment with the complexity of love and that complexity of love, in turn, spurring rampant subconscious activity seems highly personal and visceral.

Sans Soleil (1983)

a masterpiece without peer

[10/10 · 2 February 2007]

At the core of "Sans Soleil," it seems, is the way society chooses to remember things -- and what happens when assumptions are replaced by new facts and a new reality. If this sounds (to use a 1960s expression) "far out," that's because "Sans Soleil" does what few other nonfiction films have done before or since: Link disparate cultures (in this case, Japan, Iceland, Guinea- Bissau and the United States) through street scenes that range from the mundane ("banality," in Marker's on screen words) to the extraordinary.

One example: Marker shows sleeping Japanese passengers on a ferry, then a subway framed by Tokyo's skyline, then a bird walking serenely on water, then an African woman smiling, then a cat temple in Japan where families pray for felines. "We do not remember -- we rewrite memory much as history is rewritten," says the film's erudite narrator as she reads a letter supposedly written by Sandor Krasna. In truth, Krasna is actually Marker, who invented the person of Krasna to ... well, it's anyone's guess because Marker doesn't give interviews and prefers to let his work speak for itself. Here's one guess:

Marker, who's never seen in "Sans Soleil," doesn't want to take full credit for a film that draws from so many displays of public rituals.

Like Edward Steichen's "The Family of Man" photography project, "Sans Soleil" captured lives and moments that were ordinarily overlooked -- though instead of a team of photojournalists, it was just Marker who roamed various continents for the material in this unforgettable movie. Few other filmmakers but Marker would travel to the outskirts of Guinea-Bissau, take pictures of working-class people, then juxtapose the footage with a rolling commentary about the country's revolution that toppled Portuguese rule. That revolution inspired revolutionaries in Europe, but as Marker dryly notes, "Who remembers all that? History throws its empty bottles out the window." In reading Marker's lines, actress Alexandra Stewart ("Exodus," "Day for Night") cites everyone from the Japanese poet Basho to Marlon Brando. (Marker's footage of San Francisco was inspired by Hitchcock's "Vertigo.")

Factory Girl (2006)

Interesting Visuals

[7/10 · 2 February 2007]

Miller bears an uncanny resemblance to Sedgwick and gives a striking, emotionally raw performance that deserves a much more richly imagined and vividly rendered narrative backdrop than the superficial one provided by Factory Girl.

Sienna Miller captures much of Edie's physical manner and some of her voice (though she's nowhere near deep enough), but there's nothing she can do with material that requires her to mope and pout for the bulk of her screen time.

A spectacle of bad accidents, VH1 aesthetics, sketchy (almost nonexistent) period detail, and armchair psychology. Directed by George Hickenloooper from a screenplay by Aaron Richard Golub and Wonderland scribe Captain Mauzner, Factory Girl is generally more engaging than either Basquiat or I Shot Andy Warhol, but it's also more problematic, stemming, to no small degree, from the creative battles reportedly waged over its hastily assembled final cut. Although down-to-the-wire film-making almost never turns out well, performances are what save the day here, notably Sienna Miller's magnetic turn as Sedgwick. One could easily sell the performance short — Sedgwick herself was a fairly shallow individual and an absolutely terrible actress, the Paris Hilton of her day. But Miller plays it straight and never for undue sympathy, fashioning Sedgwick as a tragic victim of circumstance who further compounded her own misery.

Smokin' Aces (2006)

worth seeing

[5/10 · 1 February 2007]

Joe slo-mo Carnanhan made a killer debut with the movie Blood Guts and Octane back in 2000 and Narc in 2002. Now with Smokin' Aces Carnahan affirms his directorial chops with a slick, stylish modern thriller that while it evokes many comparisons, in the end it's all his. After two acts of snarky, over the top violence, the third act of Smokin' Aces becomes a hardcore drama in which Ryan Reynolds' FBI agent steps forward and takes over the picture.

Reynolds has action hero ; but here, in the final scenes of Smokin' Aces, Reynolds matures quickly and shows the ability to take over and dominate a scene with something other than snappy one liners. The former Van Wilder is a true badass who will leave many an audience either cheering or simply floored by his bravado and brut force charisma.

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Classic

[7/10 · 1 February 2007]

A film shot entirely in and around Pittsburgh, FBI neophyte Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) cautiously befriends brilliant, criminally insane Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) to enlist his help in solving serial kidnappings and murders. Breathtakingly suspenseful and eerie.

I don't want to give away too much. But its darn right creepy and atmospheric. Finely intuitive depiction of the friction between Jodie and Anthony was Oscar heralded and allowed Foster to reinvigorate her audience and ratchets up the tension.

Stands as the finest period documents of Pittsburg. The Silence of the Lambs is a 1988 novel by Thomas Harris, his second to feature sociopathic psychiatrist and cannibal Dr. Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter. In the novel, Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee, is sent to see the imprisoned Lecter in order to ask his expert advice on catching a serial killer given the name Buffalo Bill, who is abducting women and skinning them.

Stomp the Yard (2007)

okay, okay

[5/10 · 1 February 2007]

t's good enough to make you wish that director Sylvain White had taken a documentary approach to the material, something along the lines of David LaChapelle's 2005 film Rize, about the rigorous, gravity-defying street-dance styles of krumping and clowning.

Instead, White's movie focuses on young, surly DJ (Columbus Short), who moves to Atlanta from Los Angeles after his younger brother (R&B singer Chris Brown) is fatally shot in a fight.

There he attends the fictional, historically black Truth University, where the fraternities and their step competitions dominate the social scene. DJ's raw moves cause the school's top two houses to compete over him, and although he initially balks ("I don't step, man, I battle"), he eventually gives in, is broken down and built back up as a better man.

Short's performance is surprisingly free of melodrama, and that's really him doing all his own dancing. He began his professional career with the Broadway tour of Savion Glover's show Stomp, and he makes it look easy. But the script itself (credited to Robert Adetuyi but based on a screenplay by Gregory Ramon Anderson) unfortunately isn't nearly so straightforward; the overlong ending grows increasingly ridiculous with its twists and coincidences involving years of generational grudges and jealousy.

Meagan Good co-stars as April, the most preternaturally gorgeous woman on campus. (White's camera shamelessly ogles her in slow motion bending over for a sip at the water fountain and jogging in pink short-shorts.) April also happens to be the daughter of the snobbish provost and the girlfriend of a cocky, high-ranking member (Darrin Henson) of Mu Gamma Xi, which has won the national step competition the past seven years.

None of this deters DJ from pursuing her - and he doesn't give up even after some totally implausible plot twists intended to keep him away. Instead he joins the rival Theta Nu Theta (all these fraternity names are made up, by the way) and helps jazz up their routines by adding his freestyle moves to their structured lines.

White leans heavily on his background of directing commercials and music videos during a dance battle at the beginning, in which he is incapable of staying with one shot for more than three seconds. But he calms down as the film progresses and lets the dancing (choreographed by Dave Scott) speak for itself, even as Stomp the Yard drags toward its eventual predictable conclusion.

Irreversible (2002)

Bold, brash and brave!

[10/10 · 31 January 2007]

Irreversible opens with the credits running backward. A strange man (Philippe Nahon) states, "Time destroys everything." We are then thrust into a scene of revenge. Alex's lover, Marcus (Vincent Cassel), and her ex-boyfriend Pierre (Albert Dupontel) enter a gay S&M club looking for the rapist and end up -- as the camera swirls among writhing bodies and hard-ons - bashing in the head of the wrong man with a fire extinguisher, a moment so brutal as to prompt walkouts even before the rape that follows.

You can't see Gaspar Noe's Irreversible without starting a heated discussion with someone else who saw it, or part of it. Many viewers walk out midway through, during the nine-minute scene in which Alex, played by the beautiful Monica Bellucci, is beaten and anally raped in the lurid red light of a Paris underpass as Noé stations his camera and watches. It would be easy and convenient to dismiss Irreversible as blatant sensationalism. But Noe's bruising film is too artfully crafted to write off as exploitation. To see it is to absorb it, even against your will. Noe, the acclaimed French director of Carne and I Stand Alone, tells his story backward, as in Memento, but offers nothing as comforting as amnesia.

It's the last third of the film that eases up. We watch Alex, Marcus and Pierre at a party where Alex and Pierre quarrel and she leaves, heading for the underpass. Noe then tracks further back to Alex and Marcus in bed, naked and tender with each other. Bellucci and Cassel, married in real life, give these scenes an erotic charge laced with affection and delicacy. It's this harmony that time destroys, except, of course, in Noe's film, where time is at the mercy of the filmmaker. Noe's considerable accomplishment is to examine the relationship between

The Fountain (2006)

pretty freaking' ambitious!

[8/10 · 31 January 2007]

Some hate this movie. It happens these days when the ambitions of a filmmaker, in this case Darren Aronofsky soar above the crap that Hollywood poops out. H. Jackman portrays a medical researcher trying to stop a brain tumor from killing his wife (the lovely Rachel Weisz). He's also playing a sixteenth-century Spanish explorer on a quest for Queen Isabel (Weisz again) to discover the Tree of Life. And he plays a twenty-sixth-century astronaut. In telling a tale of love across time, Aronofsky is sometimes guilty of creating arty, pretentious psycho- silly stuff. But in aesthetic terms, he's trying to explore really raw stuff. I like the intention here. This is a movie worth seeing.