Justin Ellis (Portland Press Herald) and I on the new releases for 12/1/09

Around these parts we burn franchises to the ground and punch kittens. Sounds like we should get a TV/film development deal, right? OK, all will be explained later. For now just know that when new DVDs are released, Videoport Jones and I do the dirty work so you don’t have to.

Terminator: Salvation

Videoport Jones: “This seems like an overly-dismissive review of this week’s tentpole release, but…nope, not interested. I mean, who was interested in Terminator 3? Calculate that, and then subtract another 25% of my interest for this one. Look, the original ‘Terminator’ is great, at least partially by virtue of its low-budget grubbiness (seriously, look at the effects there – they are, especially in the end, endearingly dopey), and the second skates by on spectacle (it was the first film to surpass a $100,000,000 budget, so James Cameron had lots of toys to play with). But the third – I mean, who actually cared? And now the fourth, apart from the YouTube-aided dimwit scandal that only ridiculous no-life-having people cared about, hits the DVD, and, it’s just not on my radar. Following the trend of, oh, every movie series ever, the Terminator franchise is less and less rewarding as it goes on. As for star Christian Bale, well, I’m gonna go off on a small tangent. I like Bale, and admire his willingness to transform himself for a role, but I find my inability to picture a Bale performance in my head for any sustained period as indicative less of Bale’s chameleon-like abilities than his slight deficiency of charisma. It’s not crippling – he’s the best screen Batman (although, like all screen Batmen, he’s second banana to his villains), but part of the reason why he’s so effective in ‘American Psycho’ is that the joke that he’s indistinguishable from the rest of the 80’s Wall Street prettyboys hinges on that very fact. As for this movie itself – eh.”

Justin: “You know it’s a bad sign when a movie franchise is literally put up for sale. When even the most money-hungry and creativity-starved studio throws up their hands and says ‘We got NOTHING, sell it!’ And yet that is what’s happened with The Terminator. I’ll fess up: The ’splosion, robot, car-chase loving dude in me liked these films (though never saw 3, so your hypothesis holds up for now.). The first two were solid enough in a ‘keep the chase moving and don’t stop to think’ sort of way. And of course the awesomeness was upped in ‘Judgment Day’ by a butt-kicking Linda Hamilton and the creepy liquid Terminator (will Robert Patrick ever be anything other than the T-1000?). But this time around, with Terminator: Salvation they were looking to do too many things at the same time. Reboot (and revitalize) the franchise, give the story a new significance and weight and graft some star-power onto the whole affair with Mr. Bale. Unlike the others, this one takes place in John Connor’s future, introduces a bunch of characters we’re suppose to care about and while not using time-travel, nods to it as part of the plot. And oh, they brought in McG to run the ship. OK, there is nothing wrong with McG (well, his name is silly) in moderate, controlled doses, but it looks like they just cut him loose here. There’s NO SALVATION for this Terminator! Ha. OK, but seriously, this one does too much work for what should just be bang-splodey ridiculous. More Batman please Mr. Bale.”

A Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian

VPJ: “In lieu of reviewing this movie (a loud, dumb, moderately-amusing-in-small-patches sequel to its identically-mediocre forebear), I’d just like to say a few words in defense of its writers. Tom Lennon and Ben Garant have written these two movies, the Lindsay Lohan Herbie movie, ‘The Pacifier’ (or Vin Diesel’s own ‘Kindergarten Cop’), ‘Taxi’ (the Jimmy Fallon one), and ‘Balls of Fury’ (which had a few laughs in it). Obviously, that’s not the defense part; these movies are obviously indefensible. No, what I’d point out, and what will make me go to bat for these guys until the end of time (although if The Pacifier 2: Mr. Stinkypants ever comes out, I may have to reevaluate) is their other resume. Let’s talk founding members of the sketch comedy troupe ‘The State,’ founding members and stars of the improv-y greatness that was ‘Reno: 911,’ and the hit-or-miss loony weirdness that was ‘Viva Variety’. These are – clearly – hilarious, inventive, original comic thinkers (and brilliant comic performers) who have to pay the plumber. And don’t we all have to pay the plumber? So please, when you think of Tom and Ben, remember ‘The State’ and ‘Reno:911,’ and remember the plumber. Thank you. (Ben Stiller is also in this film, I believe).”

JE: “Wow. I don’t know if you were trying to convince the public this was OK, or yourself. It sounds like some serious over-justification there my friend. And that’s OK, whatever helps you sleep at night. As it stands those guys can’t seem to catch a break as their other projects seem to get submarined as soon as they’re green-lit (though Reno did last for 6 seasons of goodness.). The dirty little secret is that Lennon and Garant are not alone in their writing work on less-than-stellar movies. This is what comedy writers – all screenwriters really – have to do to get by. While I’m sure you can try and get by punching out what you consider your ‘best work,’ the reality is a pay day is always a nice thing. So if that means writing ‘The Pacifier,’ then go ahead. As for this sequel to ‘A Night at the Museum,’ we pick up (presumably) where we left off with Mr. Stiller, now at, as the title suggests, The Smithsonian. Wacky hijincks! Cameos! Icons of American history and pop culture! I’m sure there are worse things to watch with the family, but this one does have Bill Hader and Hank Azaria, so that’s a few pluses in my book. It gets a stay of execution…just don’t expect me to watch it.”

The Cove

VPJ: “I swear I’m not trying to turn this lighthearted, hip, edgy, cool guy movie column into an environmentalist, left-wing kook-fest, but it’s just that, well, people keep on raping the world and its creatures and other, nicer people keep making searing, outraged documentaries about said rape. This time, it’s our finny friends the dolphins who’re getting rogered but good, annually in a remote Japanese villiage’s dedicated dolphin slaughtering festival. The filmmakers, having to circumvent the security and secrecy, employed some seriously-manly, secret agent-type methods, risking life, limb, and a boatload of expensive equipment. It’s a really gripping hybrid of real-life adventure film and furious, do-gooder polemic, and therefore more exciting than the average documentary. Sure, there is – as ever – more complexity to the issues than perhaps the filmmakers are willing to admit. But, well, it’s tough to argue with the actual facts presented here.”

JE: “Dammit Jonesy what did I tell you about your left-wing propaganda! Another crack pot documentary like this and YOU’RE OFF THE CASE! OK, but jokes aside, I don’t know if I can watch this one if it skates too close to dolphin torture porn for the sake of making a point. In terms of cute Animals humans love,a movie about brutality towards dolphins might fare as well be as a documentary on punching kittens in the face. (BTW, I’ll be taking ‘Kitten Punchers’ to Sundance next year.) As horrifying as this film sounds at first glance there is a very touching story in it about Ric O’Barry, a one-time dolphin trainer who makes a 180 degree change of heart on the plight of the squeakers. If I have one quibble with documentaries like this (and I’ve said this many times before) it’s when filmmakers insert themselves too much into a story. There can be a tendancy to glamorize the director or their process, and I’m not interested in that. Unless a doc is about the filmmaker I don’t necessarily want their presence in front of the camera. But in this case the act of telling the story, the big how, is integral to the film. Seeing the depths of the subterfuge, misdirection and cunning it takes to just show the world this awful event makes the story that much more powerful.”

Paper Heart

VPJ: “Charlyne Yi is an indie hipster cutie pie. You might remember her, being an indie hipster cutie pie, in a small role in ‘Knocked Up.’ Well, here, she’s teaming up with perhaps the only person more of an indie hipster cutie pie than she, Michael Cera, in a deliberately-unclassifiable sort of romantic comedy/documentary/metatextual audience put on. ‘Paper Heart’ starts off as a documentary, with Yi being extra adorable, giggling her way through awkward cupie-doll-on-the-street interviews with people about the nature of love. As the film goes on, Yi finds herself at a party with ‘Arrested Development’s’ Cera, and they have one of the most painfully-adorable courting scenes ever. Sure, it sounds sort of predictable, but wait-and-see. In addition to being an indie scene-stealer, Yi’s also a standup comic and performance artist, and she and Cera were already together when they made the film. Or were they? See, when they started doing publicity for the movie, it was revealed that Cera had broken up with Yi. Or had he? Oh, and the on screen director of the film is named after a real-life friend and partner of Yi’s, but he’s played by someone else, while that real-life friend plays another character. It’s all a bit hazy, but it seems like there’s some sort of public-satirizing going on here, along with some Andy Kaufman-esque gamesmanship, and some actual, if adorable, exploration of what it means to be in love. And Yi and Cera do make a cute couple, their blush-y reticence ever bordering on twee, but staying on the right side. A weird little doodle that I enjoyed quite a bit.”

JE: “I may have to just push away from the table on this one. While it has all the hallmarks of a surprising little wonder (and who among us hasn’t described Michael Cera that way?), I think it would make my brain hurt just a little bit. The premise (on its face) is cute: what is love? I heard an interview with Yi where she talked about making the movie and how it sprung from her own thoughts and feelings on relationships and romantic love. This sounds interesting, no? Movies about personal questions and self discovery can be fun (or painful. or painfully fun.). But the more I heard about this, from the maybe/maybe not real relationship with Cera and the real character/fake character/real character thing, it just seemed too confusion. It’s not that I don’t mind a little meta-mind games from my movies. If I wanted that I’d hire Charlie Kaufman to make a documentary on cake-making.  But I don’t appreciate mind games if they feel sloppily put together. Maybe watching it will change my mind (most likely because it’s hard not to be won over by Cera’s hoodie-wearing charm).”

A Christmas Tale

VPJ: “Oh great, another holiday movie. Except, this time, it’s French (from director Arnaud Desplechin, maker of ‘My Sex Life, Or How I Got Into an Argument’), so instead of wacky in-laws and cute pets doing tricks, we get family dysfunction, dead children, long-buried resentment, and, oh yeah, cancer! Yup, it’s a French cinematic Christmas, with the legendary (and still stunning Catherine Deneuve) and ‘The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’s’ Mathieu Amalric among others, a generous helping of familial misery, and an ‘Amelie’-style side dish of magical whimsy. Sounds like Christmas to me, and it’s pretty darned moving, and less of a downer (slightly) than the description makes it sound. A rare current release presented by the Criterion Collection, who invariably know what they’re talking about.”

JE: “Could it be? Is this? A Christmas movie that doesn’t make us violently angry or depressed? OK, well the family drama may get us depressed, but the filmmaking may not! Now, before I go on to say rent this, I feel like I should say that this is not for everyone. In fact it may not be for most people. The common denominator between and good and bad holiday movies is family dysfunction, which is tolerable in a funny movie and unbearable in a bad one. This on the other hand is a good one, but may cut a little too close to the bone. We’re talking deep-seeded conflict and anger that doesn’t get easily resolved through a zany scheme or comical misunderstanding. This is what you are getting with ‘A Christmas Tale.’ ‘National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation’ it ain’t. And that is not a bad thing. See, sometimes what you get for all that emotional trauma is a more satisfying ending. It’s like a well-deserved payoff, or, since this is the season, a gift. And let me second my esteemed colleague here: Do NOT mess with the Criterion Collection.”

Lightning Round! Also this week: Five Minutes of Heaven (The ever-dependable Liam Neeson in a drama about an IRA murderer confronted by the brother of a victime some decades after the fact), Better Off Ted – Season 1 (“Arrested Development’s” Portia de Rossi stars in this satirical workplace comedy), I Sell the Dead (“Lost’s” favorite hobbit Dominic Monaghan stars in this dark comedy horror film about a condemned grave robber looking back on the grisly details of his life), Seraphine (A biopic about the life of French painter Seraphine de Senlis).

Parting shots:

- Where did the Terminator franchise go off the rails? Is it salvageable?
- Are we over-justifying (and condoning) bad movies because we like the writers?
- Is Michael Cera’s “hoodie-wearing charm” enough for you to see “Paper Heart?”

VideoReport #224

Volume CCXXIV- The Godzillas Must Be Crazy

For the Week of 12/1/09

 

Videoport reminds you that the holiday gift-giving frenzy is upon us and that you get a free rental for yourself for every movie that you buy from us. Let your relatives’ greed work for you…at Videoport!

 

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests taking some sage advice from great movies, like The Maltese Falcon (in Mystery/Thriller). First up, it’s Bogart’s Sam Spade, advising you on spotting a blowhard with “The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter”. Then she suggests this from Sydney Greenstreet’s Caspar Gutman, who cautions, “That’s an attitude, sir, that calls for the most delicate judgment on both sides. ‘Cause as you know, sir, in the heat of action men are likely to forget where their best interests lie and let their emotions carry them away”. Pretty smart for a crook.

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests Holiday (in Classics). First a word about boxed sets. Sure they’re a good way to obtain DVDs on the cheap, and in bulk, but, when you’re planning to rent them out to people who, understandably, want to know what each individual movie is about, well, they’re a pain. See, we’ve got to fashion recognizable cover art out of the less-than-voluminous information the set comes in, so Videoport owner Bill gets to work with tape, scissors, mucilage, string, computers, and his mighty son army and tries to cobble something together. Why do I mention this? Well, maybe you don’t know that Videoport even has this movie, since the cover art is, well, nondescript, shall we say. But I heartily suggest you search it out in the Classics section, regardless of how it looks from the outside- you’ll be scoring yourself a two-for-one in that it contains one of the best performances of their careers from both Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. The set-up: Grant’s an idealistic, freespirited guy with plans to make one big score in business and then take a couple of years off in order to, well, “figure out what it all means” is the vague idea. After meeting a pretty, seemingly-similarly-freespirited rich girl (Doris Nolan) and falling fedora-over-heels for her, he meets her family- rich, stuffy dad, sad, drunken little brother (Lew Ayres is pretty affecting), and tomboyish, actually-freespirited older sis Hepburn, whom Grant slowly (but we somewhat more quickly) comes to realize is actually the perfect match for him. Along the way to the (and I’m not spoiling anything here) happy eventually-getting-together, there’s some nicely-evocative talk about the nature of business, the loneliness of being spoiled and rich, and about hanging onto your dreams, even in the face of the demon pragmatism. The dialogue’s got that nice ‘n’ stagey literary zing that Hepburn and Grant’s clipped, inimitable diction can have fun with, and Grant’s vaguely-anti-capitalist stance is refreshingly lefty (he’s even called ‘un-American’ at one point). Sure, it’s a little unformed and naive, but it’s nice to hear nonetheless (the same benighted boxed set contains the lesser Grant film Talk of the Town, where he gets to articulate some similar liberalisms). And he and Hepburn are just great. She was, at the time, box office poison, which baffles me; as legendary film critic Pauline Kael memorably said, “Katehrine Hepburn’s wit and nonconformity made ordinary heroines seem mushy, and her angular beauty made the round-faced ingenues look piggy and stupid”. This accurately describes the distinction between Hepburn and poor Doris Nolan, although the movie makes Grant’s final decision seem less of a foregone conclusion, and the film’s less of a screwball romantic comedy than you might think; there’s some weight in the characters’ dilemmas, and Grant and Hepburn (and Ayres)’ pain is genuinely human. And Grant gets to show off his playful physicality (he was once a circus performer) with little bits of business (a couple of front-flips, a synchronized tumbling routine with Hepburn) which don’t come across as manic or showy but as an expression of his character’s restless free spirit. (Sadly, there’s an ever-present trapeze in the film, but he never plays with it). It’s not my favorite Cary Grant film (that’s be Notorious), but it might be my favorite Grant performance. Great movie. Rent it for free on Tuesday, you.

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests Saturday Night Live- season 5 (in Comedy). I’m interested to see how Lorne handles the future seasons of SNL-on-DVD; he (and essentially everyone important to the show’s beginnings) left after year five, leaving SNL in the hands of Jean Doumanian (for one legendarily disastrous year) and then Dick Ebersol (for five bland, decreasingly-vital ones) before he came back home. Will they come out at all? (I’d be sort of interested to see if the Doumanian half-season is as bad as I remember*). Interesting. Anyway, this is the last year of the original cast and the show was taking its toll on everyone. Chevy was long gone, Belushi and Aykroyd were gone, new addition Harry Shearer was brilliant but a royal pain in everyone’s ass, Bill Murray was the unquestionable star of the show now, with Gilda right behind, and Jane, Larraine, and poor Garret were the perpetual also-rans. The show became more uneven this year, as the burnout threshold was being reached by many, but there’s a sort of ragged glory to it for all that; I’ve said it before- the idea of putting on a live, 90 minute comedy show every single week, just getting through that, and then having to confront a blank page Monday morning, is show biz heroism, and a big part of the reason why I still love SNL, as shaky as it inevitably is.

*For a primer on these lost years, check out SNL in the 80s: Lost and Found in the Comedy section.

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> Andy suggests Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey (in Documentary). As a Beach Boys fan, I watched this documentary hoping to learn something about how the Theremin (the world’s first electronic musical instrument) came to be used in “Good Vibrations”. What I got was a fascinating documentary about the man behind the instrument, the people who loved him, and his mistreatment by the Russian government. And plenty of footage of Brian Wilson at his saddest and craziest, talking about how “scary” and “sexual” the Theremin sounds.

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>> Dennis suggests this simple, one step plan for ensuring that your DVDs (especially, but not limited to, childrens DVDs play well:

1. NEVER, EVER, TOUCH, OR LET A CHILD, MONKEY, OR IRRESPONSIBLE, INCONSIDERATE PERSON (OR MONKEY) TOUCH THE SHINY SIDE OF A DVD!

That is all…

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, Elsa S. Customer suggests some more movie-based advice, this time from Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Amy Archer in The Hudsucker Proxy (in Feature Drama): “Only a numbskull thinks he knows things about things he knows nothing about”.

>>>For Sunday, Dennis suggests The Devil and Daniel Webster (in Classics/the Criterion section). I almost made the case for shutting this movie off after about a minute and a half to the lovely Mrs. Elsa S. Customer. A hokey, obvious farmhouse set, some stilted, too-quaint dialogue from a dopey farmer and his wife, a wise old mama, some roughhousing with a pig- it just didn’t seem my cup o’ tea. Well, I should know better than to doubt the good folks at the Criterion Collection, whose nigh-unerring discretion pretty much guarantees any movie they put out will be worth your time (sure, I question their championing of The Rock, but their batting average is still stellar). The Devil and Daniel Webster really gets rolling as soon as the Devil shows up. Hope I didn’t give anything away there. Carrying his little black book of potential suckers through the New Hampshire countryside, ol’ Satan looks like a scruffy leprechaun and, with Water Huston playing him, he’s got beady little teeth in a huge smile, glittering eyes, and a rascally vibe that really livens up the old farmstead when he makes the beleaguered (and Jethro-dumb) farmer the old ‘heap o’ gold for your soul’ bargain. Soon, Jethro’s wearing fancy clothes, loaning money at usurious rates (the movie’s really hard on usury) to his former farmer pals, and building an ostentatious house on the hill for him, his spoiled-rotten brat son, and the kid’s saucy, wasp-waisted French nanny (Simone Simon was never more sexily feline) with whom he’s clearly doing things his sturdy New England missus has never even heard of. Things look pretty bad, especially when Jethro remembers that pesky soul deal he made and tries to weasel out of it, but luckily, said sturdy wife is on hand to call in legendary New Hampshire politician Daniel Webster who challenges the Devil to a jury trial for Jethro’s seemingly-worthless eternal essence. (This part was memorably parodied in a Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror where the jury of the damned was at least partly made up of the 1976 Philadelphia Flyers). All in all, this one’s a lot of fun, with some spooky effects, Huston’s devil stealing the film, Edward Arnold harrumphing memorably as Webster, and the sexy Simon embodying every French slattern stereotype with slinky abandon. You even get to like Jethro a little, and wish him well in his future life of simple toil and thrice-yearly, lights-off missionary coitus.

 

 

New Releases this week at Videoport: A Christmas Tale (nothing says holiday warmth and magic like an oddball French family drama featuring dysfunction, dead children, and, of course, cancer; seriously, though, this is a good one from director Arnaud Desplechin [My Sex Life, Kings & Queen] and starring the legendary Catherine Deneuve and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’s Mathieu Amalric), and you can find it in the Criterion section), A Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian ( hey it’s that sequel I’ll never see to that movie I’ve never sen about that museum!; written by two really funny guys ['The State' and 'Reno 911''s Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant] who specialize in writing some really crappy movies [The Pacifier, Herbie: Fully Loaded]- hey, everybody’s gotta pay the plumber), The Cove (thrilling, furious documentary about a sneaky film crew that snuck into the titular, remote Japanese village to capture footage of the massive, annual dolphin slaughter; half-real-life thriller, and half call to action on overfishing and ocean pollution), Paper Heart (indie hipster cutie-pies Charlene Yi and Michael Cera star in this quasi-documentary about a young, hipster cutie pie actress going cross-country to try to find out what’s the deal with love), Five Minutes of Heaven (the ever-formidable Liam Neeson stars in this drama about an IRA murderer’s confrontation with the brother of one of his victims some twenty-five years later), Terminator: Salvation (Christian Bale tries to save the past, the future, the present- the whole deal, really in this third sequel of the Terminator franchise), ‘Better Off Ted’- season 1 (I’ve heard pretty good things about this kooky workplace satire starring ‘Arrested Development’’s Portia de Rossi, so you should watch it, I think), I Sell the Dead (‘Lost’’s Dominic Monaghan stars in this comic horror ghoul-a-thon about a condemned-to-death 19th century graverobber looking back on his life of grime), ‘Sordid Lives’- season 1 (TV series based on the cult comedy about the, shall we say colorful, denizens of an hilariously-seedy trailer park), Seraphine (biopic about the life of French painter Seraphine de Senlis), Doctor Who: The Next Doctor (there’s a new doctor in the TARDIS for internerds to get all hot and bothered about).

 

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: Focus, Concent, and Love Letter (Videoport’s Andy recently donated these Japanese films to us, and you’re gonna have to watch them yourself, or ask Andy what the hell they’re about, as the DVD box is entirely in Japanese; for all you Japanese speakers out there, you’re fine…), ‘Buck Rogers in the 25th Century’- season 1 (the little boy in me got momentarily excited when I saw that this 80s sci fi series was coming to DVD; then the grown man in there remembered Twiki, and I got all sad inside…), SNL- season 5 (the last year of the original crew hits DVD), La Promesse (what? This wrenching French film has never been released on DVD in America? Have no fear- Videoport’ll get it for you…somehow), Rosetta (ditto for this wrenching French drama; don’t worry your pretty little head about it…we’ve got our ways…), I Woke Up Early the Day I Died (and, as for this whacked-out cult film, made from an unfinished script by the late, far-from-great Ed Wood, and starring Billy Zane as an escaped mental patient…similarly, the fact that it has never been released on DVD in this benighted country has not stopped Videoport from bringing it to you! We are the balls!), ‘The Vicar of Dibley’- season 2 (Dawn French returns as the beleaguered vicar of an eccentric village in this Britcom), A Far Off Place (check out widdle Reese Witherspoon in this 90s Disney nature adventure flick), And Then There Were None (classic film version of the venerable Agatha Christie whodunnit), Fire, Proven in the Northeast, and Isolated (three new ski movies hit Videoport’s Nonfiction Sports section).

 

YOU WILL GO TO THIS!

Former Videoporter/local filmmaker/cool guy Allen Baldwin’s newest film Up Up Down Down will have its first test screening at the Nickelodeon theater (right around the corner) on Thursday, December 3rd at 7pm and 915pm! Come and see the latest film from Allen’s Strongpaw Productions (you can see his great first film Twelve Steps Outside in Videoport’s Feature Drama section)! C’mon!

 

Park for free at Videoport! Yup, just pull into any downtown parking garage and then ask for a Park & Shop sticker from your friendly neighborhood Videoporter and we’ll get you a free hour of parking therein. (And remember: parking meters are off after 6pm, Monday-Saturday and all day on Sunday, and the parking lot behind the building is open for free one hour parking after 5pm Monday-Friday and all day on the weekends).

 

Videoport can get it for you! Assuming ‘it’ refers to any movie, TV show, or boxed set you want to buy for those knuckleknobs on your holiday shopping list. If it’s in print, we can get it (put your orders in soon so they’ll be here in time), and you get a free rental for yourself with each purchase!

Justin Ellis (Portland Press Herald) and I on the new releases for 11/23/09

Comedy! It’s just the cure for that mashed potato-malaise you know is coming this Thursday. This week’s new releases are a mixed bag as Videoport Jones and I are concerned about Judd Apatow’s latest film and rail against Dan Brown’s spooky DaVinci Empire. And again we’re forced to ask “Holiday movies, really Hollywood? Really?!”

Funny People

Videoport Jones: “I love Judd Apatow. ‘The 40 Year Old Virgin’ and ‘Knocked Up’ both served to revitalize screen comedy with their unique blend of improv-flavored dialogue (which practically tingles up there on the screen), a stable of nimble comic actors who specialize in such dialogue, and an audience-pleasing yet surprisingly-mature and resonant sensibility. Plus, they are two of the funniest damned things I’ve seen in a decade. (He’s so money that my friend, the estimable Guak, and I ritualistically greet each other, whenever the man and his films are mentioned, with the refrain “Apa-TOW!”) So, I was understandably, ridiculously excited for this, his third film, and, sadly, I must report that his streak is over. Now, I am not, at all, saying that ‘Funny People’ is a bad movie – it most certainly is not. I will say however, that in this case the delicate alchemy that turned his first two films into (in my humble opinion) two of the best comedies in recent years is off-kilter here, and the results are…mixed. The story of a spoiled star of such lowbrow, high-concept comedies as Merman and Re-Do (Adam Sandler, being pretty bold with the self-parody) who discovers he’s gravely ill and hires a struggling young comedian (a slimmed-down Seth Rogen) to help him return to his standup roots (and pursue the one who got away), ‘Funny People’ is nothing if not ambitious; a deconstruction of standup comedians, a buddy picture, a raunchy-yet-melancholy mediation on life and death, a chance for Apatow’s ensemble to show off their improv chops – check, check, check, and check. The film starts out very well indeed, with Sandler proving, as he did in ‘Punch Drunk Love’ and ‘Spanglish,’ that, lurking inside his doofus manboy persona lurks a more-than-passable dramatic actor (he’s especially good at hinting at the reservoir of loneliness underneath), and Rogen matching up well as the new assistant/companion who moves from hero-worship to ambivalent accomplice as Sandler’s condition causes him to make some questionable decisions. Sandler eases into the Apatow stable gracefully and he really holds the screen, at least until things start to get muddy about 2/3rds of the way through, when, chasing down his now-married real love (Leslie Mann) to her family’s home, he, and the movie, just sort of sit around her house and mope. In his director’s commentaries, Apatow is always candid about the fact that the success of his films comes largely down to the editing room where he, heretofore, has been adept at pulling together the masses of footage (he encourages his talented cast to improvise) into a cohesive whole. Well, this time, I think ‘Funny People’ gets away from him. Stil l- good work from Sandler and Rogen (who create a pair of surprisingly-complicated characters and aren’t afraid to be sort of unlikeable at times), Mann (until her character becomes inconsistent), Eric Bana (a hoot as Mann’s hunky Aussie husband), and Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman (slyly funny as Rogen’s more successful friends), and a noble attempt from Apatow to stretch himself a little.”

Justin: “I’d sum it up as ambitious but uneven. I don’t know how better to describe it, though some have said it’s almost like two movies. Which is fitting because Apatow is doing many things with ‘Funny People,’ but it’s largely a love letter to the world of celebrity stand-up comedy…with an ill-advised romance thrown in. This movie is unbelievably touching and funny (a trademark of Apatow) when it is dealing with Sandler’s character trying to come to grips with who he is as a person and as a comic. You’re right when you say that Sandler has some sneaky dramatic chops because in this movie he brings out a lot of raw emotion as someone trying to come to grips with death. This is all weaved together with a behind-the-curtain look at the world of comedy and insights on writing comedy, competition and the personalities in the comic world. And my GOD the cameos are too long and funny to list (though I will say once again Aziz Ansari knocks the ball out of the park in a minor role. See if you can guess who his character is lampooning). And then, suddenly, this all comes crashing to a halt and you wind up in this torturous romantic story which, if I’m being honest, is pretty poorly conceived and hard to watch. Apatow pushes the Sandler’s character too far in trying to redeem and fix his life, and really throws the movie off as Sandler tries to win back Mann. It’s surely a miss, especially when you consider the romantic plots in his other movies were executed almost seamlessly. Still, I’ll agree that this is not a bad movie. I repeat: This is not a bad movie. Just a flawed one. Rent it for the funny, not for the people. ZING!”

Angels & Demons

VPJ: “It’s the sequel to ‘The Da Vinci Code!’ That’s pretty much all we have to say, really, isn’t it? I mean, people who would want to watch this are already fanatical about doing so, and the rest of us, well, what would it take for us to actually sit through he whole thing? Money? Sure, I’d let someone pay me, say twenty bucks to watch it. Threats? That didn’t work with ‘The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.’ Sexual blackmail? Well, who’s asking? But I kid underperforming would-be blockbusters made from laughably-written pulp novels. Tom Hanks is back as the smarty-pants expert in all things spooky and church-y, uncovering poorly-researched arcane rituals, secret societies, cabals, and whatnot, with the requisite hotsy arm candy assistant (this time it’s ‘Munich’s’ Ayelet Zurer) by his side, and blandly-competent director pal Ron Howard blanding things up along the way. I dunno, it royally cheesed off religious types, which I can appreciate, but Dan Brown’s inexplicably-popular bestsellers have a distinct, laughable aura about them (check out this article examining some of his most laughable prose), and, as likeable as Hanks remains, I’m just not prepared to watch him dodge poison arrows like Indy in a hairpiece without getting the giggles.”

JE: “I think we’ll just have to sit in the back of the theater and heckle this franchise, because much like the Harry Potter phenomenon and (lord help us) ‘Twilight,’ this is a juggernaut that cannot be stopped by conventional means. Maybe we should start our own clandestine society to expose and stop these movies from being made? We can all wear cloaks and meet in scary locations. There will also be snacks. I feel this is a good plan. ANYHOO, this film has things I would usually like, including Hanks, Howard and Ewan McGregor. And I’m not afraid to admit I can get sucked into nefarious plot/alternate history/adventure riddle stories from time to time. The thing that turns me off is that it’s all presented a little too seriously. Somehow this whole adventure involves the Vatican and the Large Hadron Collider? And the only person to save the day is a ’symbologist?’ If you want me to follow an adventure at least give the hero a realistic sounding day job. Was anthropologist or archeologist not sexy enough? I’m with you on this one buddy, count me in for watching it only if it’s MST3K-style over a couple of beers. Also, those cloaks.”

Four Christmases

VPJ: “Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn are a very height-inappropriate couple; he’s listed at 6′5″, while she’s billed at a charitable 5′1″, and when she’s standing all pixieish and wee next to his hulking mass, it’s just plain incongruously-adorable. Why am I spending so much time on this height issue? Well, it’s either that or talk about the movie they’re in, yet another in the nearly-identical succession of seemingly-mandatory holiday comedies we are subjected to every year. This time, they’re a selfishly happy couple who successfully avoid their four divorced parents until, well, they don’t and the movie begins. Then we go see each of the four families in turn, and they’re wacky, and everybody falls down, and there’s at least one cute pet, and then there’s the hugging. Slumming older stars filling the parent quotient this time include Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Jon Voight, and Mary Steenburgen, while professional Vaughn pal Jon Favreau’s on hand to keep big Vince company. I laughed one and a half times. Enjoy.”

JE: “I really, really wish that Vaughn and Favreau could just get together and make another buddy flick and stop supporting each other when they’re slumming it. In some respects its admirable because they’re trying to help each other out (or make the other suffer as much as they are.) and that’s what friends do. On the other hand we end up with stuff like this and ‘Couple’s Retreat.’ I just recently caught part of ‘Swingers’ again on TV. Now aside from the fact that I watched this movie too many times to count in college and it was cornerstone of my relationship with my roommate, it’s a reasonably good film. Why? Because of the chemistry of Vaughn and Favs. Please guys, help us all out. And while I’m in a ranting mood, you know what the worst part is about these holiday movies? They subject the public to them in two big publicity pushes, because unlike regular DVD releases, holiday films only get dropped in theaters and on DVD once a year. December. It’s a magical season, where we get reminded, ‘Oh yeah, I had no interest in seeing that in the theaters, and I really have no interest in renting it.’ Hollywood, just do everyone a favor. If you’re not going to make better holiday movies at least just release them on DVD in the same time table as other movies? Don’t rub it in our faces in the name of yuletide spirit. Add holiday movies to the list of targets for our secret organization.”

Shorts

VPJ: “Robert Rodriguez is a cool story. Raising the money for his (still best) film ‘El Mariachi’ by literally selling his body for medical experiments, seeing that movie catch on, and then vaulting into the Hollywood big time (‘The Faculty,’ ‘Desperado,’ ‘Once Upon a Time in Mexico,’ ‘From Dusk ‘Til Dawn’) but using that industry cred to start his own production company to make a series of kid-centric adventure films – it’s a feel good story for the ages. I just wish I liked his movies better. Especially these special effects-heavy kiddie things (the Spy Kids franchise, ‘The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl,’ and this one, about a magical wish-granting rock…yeah). I hate it when mediocre reality gets in the way of my warm fuzzies.”

JE: “This is going to be one of those few occasion where we’ll have to disagree old chum. As Ron Burgundy once said, ‘Well, when in Rome.” While not terribly original, ‘El Mariachi’ was a fun, bullet-ridden movie. ‘The Faculty’ gave us one of the most memorable acting experiences of Jon Stewart’s career. (Seriously people go seek it out. Ranks very high on the unintentional comedy scale). And his kids movies aren’t half bad. The Spy Kids stuff and even ‘Shark Boy and Lava Girl’ were light, poppy fun that I would have no problem sitting through if I had a son or daughter and was looking to kill a few hours. Is it the best family fare? Of course not. Could it be a little less heavy on the special-effects? Sure. But it’s fun, and more importantly to parents, NOT ANNOYING. ‘Shorts’ runs along those same lines, light and more than likely forgettable, it’s a decent kids flick. As someone who apparently wants to make kids movies, Rodriguez could do worse. I just wish he would devote more time for stuff for us grown ups.”

PARTING SHOTS:

- Did Apatow fall short with “Funny People?” What do you think?
- Would you join a secret cabal to end bad movies?
- Is it time for Favreau and Vaughn to team-up for a buddy movie?

VideoReport #223

Volume CCXXIII- Happy Thanksgiving!

For the Week of 11/24/09

Videoport is stocked up with gift certificates, new and previously-viewed DVDs for sale, and can order pretty much anything you need in order to keep this holiday shopping season somewhat manageable. (Oh, and to that end, you get a free movie rental any time you buy a movie from us, rather than some hideous, soulless retail chain.)

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests The Stepfather (in Horror). Now that the theatrical release of its vastly, ridiculously, laughably inferior remake has come and gone from the less-discriminating theaters, this effectively-nasty little 1987 horror thriller has finally gotten a DVD release, so I guess we can be thankful the wan, lame, crappy remake exists for that reason anyway. Directed by Joseph Ruben (who also helmed 1984’s similarly-underrated sci-fi thriller Dreamscape), The Stepfather is mostly mediocre, with a truly weak leading lady (replacement Charlie’s Angel Shelley Hack? Really?) but can boast some decent tension throughout. Of course, the only reason to watch it is the titular performance from perennial utility character man Terry O’Quinn as a creepy, outwardly-chipper psycho serial murderer/marrier. Obsessed with the all-American ideal of ‘the perfect family’, O’Quinn’s patriarch marries a single mom, smilingly enrolls them in all manner of wholesome pastimes and activities, and, when they inevitably fail to live up to his ridiculously-unrealistic Republican expectations, well, he murders them all and starts over somewhere else. Sure, there’s some social satire involved, but the real attraction in O’Quinn. You know him (he’s had some juicy supporting roles, has played Howard Hughes at least twice, and is now almost actually famous for playing Locke on ‘Lost’). He’s one of ‘those guys’; you know-guys like James Rebhorn, Chelcie Ross, Raymond J. Barry, Richard Jenkins who are always just there, playing cops, mean bosses, a general or two. I love guys like that, don’t you? For all the George Clooneys in the world, the movie and TV industry would grind to a halt without those guys, and when they get a rare lead and run with it, as Mr. O’Quinn did here, it just gives me a nice warm feeling. Even when he’s killing a couple o’ kids.

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests To Live and Die in L.A. (in Action). A slice of 80s action pie, To Live and Die in L.A. is a sun-drenched, gritty California treat. Director William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist) brings his assured style and mastery of action sequences to this tale of an obsessed, morally-questionable Secret Service agent (Manhunter and ‘CSI’’s William Petersen) in dogged pursuit of a wily, creepily-decadent master counterfeiter (the ever-creepy Willem Dafoe). There is an epic car chase that even tops The French Connection’s. There’s some welcome authenticity of location. There are some truly riveting sequences showing exactly how you can make your own US $100 bills at home! There’s some really regrettable 80s-style music (from the band Wang Chung, of all people), and some equally-shameful Miami Vice fashions. There is some out-of-nowhere shocking violence, and a few nicely-gritty twists of slang and dialogue. For those looking for a solid, stylish, exciting follow-up after watching something like Heat or Ronin, this is your sun-drenched, thrilling answer.

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests ‘How I Met Your Mother’, Season 3, Episode 9- ‘Slapsgiving’ (in Comedy). HIMYM is a pretty average sitcom which I can’t stop watching. It’s largely due to the supporting cast, with Jason Segal (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, ‘Freaks and Geeks’) and Allyson Hannigan (‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’) and, of course, the incomparable Neil Patrick Harris as the ultimate horndog Barney. There are two other ’stars’ of the show who are…fine. Anyway, this third season Thanksgiving episode shows the three ’supporting’ characters to their best effect (the two leads’ relationship has a crisis, which is…fine). See, a previous season showed Segal’s Marshall and Harris’ Barney engaging in a bet where the winner got to slap the loser as hard as he could five times, doled out for the rest of their lives. Marshall won, and in a previous episode, he revealed a website to Barney called ’slapcountdown.com’ which is nothing but a clock, counting down to Thanksgiving day, showing when the next slap is coming his way. It’s a funny conceit, Segal and Harris play it up bigtime, and the whole thing even ends with a song. Happy Slapsgiving everybody!

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests “The West Wing” (in Feature Drama). Aaron Sorkin’s trademark comedy-drama set in the White House has, as you would expect, several well-crafted Thanksgiving episodes, but if you have to pick one, I suggest “Shibboleth,” season two, disc 2b (the flip side of the DVD). This episode particularly highlights the show’s knack at balancing big-issue storylines with downright silliness. As the West Wing staffers make their plans for Thanksgiving, President Bartlet faces a grim reminder why we should be thankful; The President must help decide the fate of a group of Chinese nationals who transported themselves to the U.S. under hellish conditions, perhaps only to be sent back for jail or worse. Family conflict at Thanksgiving is as traditional as pumpkin pie, and Leo (John Spencer) has to face it when his strident sister is considered for a prominent appointment. C.J. Craig discovers that the press secretary’s Thanksgiving responsibilities are less than dignified: she must arrange silly, folksy photo ops for the President, lead schoolchildren in song, and — oh, dear — select a properly photogenic turkey for the annual pardoning. Allison Janney really shows her comic chops in this episode; she’s a gifted physical comedienne with a refined sense of tone and timing, and here’s a rare chance to see those talents spotlit. If it’s been a while since you’ve watched the show (or even if you’ve never watched the show), no worries: this second-season episode was timed to pick up new viewers, and it opens with a fleeting recap of character’s names and positions for your convenience.

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests suggests you do yourself a favor during this week of Family Togetherness: rent a kid’s movie that the adults can enjoy, too. Take your Pixar, ahem, I mean: take your pick. I wholeheartedly recommend the following: Finding Nemo; Wall-E; Toy Story; Ratatouille; The Incredibles; Monsters, Inc.; The Iron Giant. You’ll be glad you did.

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, Dennis suggests sending your own movie reviews, movie lists, movie poetry, movie essays, movie rants, movie recipes, or, really anything remotely movie-related to us here at The VideoReport. Send your submissions to us at denmn@hotmail.com, our Myspace page www.myspace.com/videoportjones. Or, of course, you can just drop them off at Videoport or call Andy at home and dictate them to him in the dead of night; just remember, Andy’s a little deaf, so you’ll have to scream it to him.

>>>For Sunday, Elsa S. Customer suggests The Nightmare Before Christmas (in Feature Drama/Videoport’s seasonal Holiday section). Here it is, the week of Thanksgiving. That places us squarely between Halloween and Christmas on the calendar, and it means lots of us will be spending days with kids, grandkids, stepkids, niecekids, nephewkids, friendkids, or other kids of our acquaintance. It’s a perfect time to enjoy the dark whimsy of The Nightmare Before Christmas. Jack Skellington, the King of Halloween, learns about Christmas and becomes determined to spread Yuletide jollies… but he, uh, doesn’t quite get the whole Christmas spirit thing. It’s a giddy, spooky little tale with vivid design (as expected from co-writer and producer Tim Burton and director Henry Selick [Coraline, James and the Giant Peach]) and catchy tunes from Danny Elfman. Enjoy it with your leftover Halloween candy or with a premature glass of egg nog!

New Releases this week at Videoport: Funny People (the Judd Apatow comedy juggernaut steams on, with this funny/surprisingly-moving tale of a spoiled movie star [Adam Sandler, very solid] who finds out he’s sick and hires a struggling standup comic [a slimmed-down Seth Rogen] to write him jokes and assist him in reevaluating his life and pursuing the girl he lost), Angels & Demons (Tom Hanks is back as the smarty-pants hero hunting down all the secret thingies the Catholic Church hoped to hide in this sequel to The Da Vinci Code), Four Christmases (Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon are a very height-inappropriate couple out to survive the titular multiple family holidays in this most recent annual Xmas movie assault on us all), Shorts (maverick filmmaker/auteur/hobbyist Robert Rodriguez brings us this newest kid-friendly, special effects-heavy adventure, this time about a kid with a magical, wish-granting rock), The Maiden Heist (how is it that you’ve never heard of a movie starring Morgan Freeman, Christopher Walken, and William H. Macy?; is it a bad sign that this heist comedy has gone directly to DVD?; rent it and find out, if you dare…), Three Monkeys (Turkish drama about a family which chooses to deal with their problems by playing ’see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’- like those three monkeys, get it?).

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: Santa Buddies (we are cute puppies in Santa hats! You cannot resist us!), Chops (documentary about the annual Essentially Ellington Festival at hosted by Wynton Marsalis), Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (see, Disney does this great thing where they deprive little children of the movies they want to see for a period of seven years in order to drive up the demand for said movies when they finally deign to allow us to purchase them; in unrelated news, Videoport has now been able to purchase new copies of this movie!), The Exiles (groundbreaking, lost 1961 documentary follows a group of Native American teenagers living in Los Angeles), Wild Child (Julia Roberts’ niece stars in this movie as a spoiled rich girl sent to a strict English boarding school; hilarity ensues?), ‘Elvis Costello: Spectacle’ (I am in geek heaven as personal musical hero Elvis Costello hosts this half chat show/half musical performance show with guests like Lou Reed, Kris Kristofferson, Smokey Robinson, and other people usually too cool to appear on such programs), Skills Like This (a failed would be writer/slacker decides to instead pursue something he’s good at- crime, in this indie comedy with more than a passing resemblance to Bottle Rocket).

YOU WILL GO TO THIS!

Former Videoporter/local filmmaker/cool guy Allen Baldwin’s newest film Up Up Down Down will have its first test screening at the Nickelodeon theater (right around the corner) on Thursday, December 3rd at 7pm and 915pm! Come and see the latest film from Allen’s Strongpaw Productions (you can see his great first film Twelve Steps Outside in Videoport’s Feature Drama section)! C’mon!

Park for free at Videoport!

Here’s how: 1. Parking meters are turned off after 6pm, Monday-Saturday and all day on Sunday. 2. The parking lot behind the building is open for free one hour parking after 5pm on weekdays and all day on the weekends. 3. Videoport participates in the Park & Shop program, which means we can get you a free hour of parking at any downtown Portland parking garage (including the courthouse garage which is, literally, a two minute walk away). Just bring us your parking stub, and we’ll give you one of our magic stickers!

Want some free movies at Videoport? Here are about a million ways…

1. Rent a bunch of movies. Every time you hit your next hundred rentals, we give you two free ones.

2. Rent a movie any day of the week. If you check page one of this here newsletter here, you’ll see that there’s a different special every day of the week where you get a free movie. You literally cannot come into Videoport without getting a free rental. Yeah…

3. Buy a movie. For every single movie you buy at Videoport, we give you a free rental. Now if that’s not the perfect cue to start whipping readers into a holiday buying frenzy, then I don’t know what is: this holiday season, when you’re spending all your hard-earned cash on a gang of glutinous, insatiable greed monsters (I mean your loved ones, of course), why not get a little something for yourself out of the deal? Videoport has a great selection of new and previously-viewed DVDs for sale right in the store and we can also order literally anything that’s currently in print. And, for every movie you buy from us, we give you, yourself (not them) a free rental that you can use any time.

4. Trade in your old DVDs. Got some movies or TV series that you don’t want cluttering up your shelves anymore? Bring them in to Videoport and we’ll turn them into free rentals on your Videoport account. It’s that simple!

5. Spend some money. Videoport has two different savings plans which, essentially, give you free money just for renting with us. Seriously. Put $20 onto your Videoport account and we’ll turn that twenty into $25 worth of rental credit. Pay $30 and we’ll give you $40 worth of rental credit. That’s five or ten free bucks worth of renting cash, if my math is right…yup, it is!

Justin Ellis (Portland Press Herald) and I on the week’s new releases (11/17/09)

I always know we’re up for some seriously good new DVD releases when I get an e-mail from Videoport Jones that starts with the phrase “BIG WEEK!” How big? Jim Jarmusch, JJ Abrams, Park Chan-wook and Sacha Baron Cohen. Bruno! Mr. Spock! Vampires!

The Limits of Control

Videoport Jones: “Videoport has gone big on this one, the new film by American indie maverick Jim Jarmusch, despite the fact that it is almost certain to puzzle, alienate, and confound most people. (A testament to how hip the Videoport renters are, or stubborn support of our heroes? You decide.) Unsurprisingly, I really liked this one; Jarmusch (‘Mystery Train,’ ‘Ghost Dog,’ ‘Night on Earth,’ ‘Down by Law,’ ‘Dead Man,’ ‘Stranger Than Paradise,’ ‘Broken Flowers’) is, to be certain, an acquired taste, but I have most definitely acquired it for his deadpan funny, mysteriously moving body of work. Here, Jarmusch regular, Issach De Bankole (he was the Parisian taxi driver in ‘Night on Earth’ and Ghost Dog’s only friend, the Haitian ice cream man) plays, well, who does he play, exactly? Impeccably dressed, he says very little (perhaps thirty lines of dialogue the entire film), and his striking face (which you’ll get to know very well indeed) reveals little more. He is sent on a mission of some kind, which takes him to Spain, and a decreasingly-luxurious succession of hotel rooms. He sits at cafes and waits, until a parade of eccentric contacts meets him, says cryptic things, seemingly unrelated to whatever his task is, and then he moves on, saying nothing, his eyes all-aware but impassive. There are hints, tantalizing clues: matchbooks, coded messages on immediately-swallowed slips of paper, two cappuccinos, in separate cups, a helicopter, wooden string instruments, paintings, a repeated code phrase. His contacts (intriguing turns by the likes of John Hurt, Youki Kudoh, Tilda Swinton, Gael Garcia Bernal, and others) all speak cryptically; usually they seem to be ruminating on art, film, music, their noncommittal asides full of literary and cinematic allusion. They seem to know more than he, but also hint that they, too, are on a mission they only partly understand. There’s some Beckett in the journey, a hint of Pinter, perhaps. A subtly building menace that creeps into the soundtrack as the films goes on. When the ending comes, it makes a certain amount of sense, if you make sense of it that way. Sure, it’s, as they say, ‘not for everyone,’ but if you don’t want it, I’ll take your share. A mystery. A puzzle. I was mesmerized.”

Justin: “It’s a riddle wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a tortilla, covered in a hard-chocolate

Cool cats.

shell. Delicious. Look, I’m not going to pretend to try and throw any conceived meaning on this movie because that would not only make me look foolish, but also do a disservice to Mr. Jarmusch. But how do you really describe such a lush yet sparse movie? A movie that captivates you because you’re studying every inch of the screen for action or meaning and gets you to stick around because every next scene could be THE scene that brings it all together. It feels a bit like a con if you think about it, but really, that’s imaginative storytelling and amazingly nuanced direction. This movie could be about absolutely nothing, but it’s crafted in a way that all you know is there is a strange sense of menace crawling up your back and you’ve got to keep watching to get rid of it. Don’t get me wrong, I am NOT saying this movie is about nothing and is such a sucker punch to the mind that it’s not worth viewing. No, I’m just saying know what you are getting into. And if you want a curious, untraditional movie that will challenge and surprise you, then this is the one. And needless to say if you’re a Jarmusch fan like my associate here, then you need no prodding.”

Star Trek

VPJ: “I’m a geek. This is no secret: comics, baseball, movies, Joss Whedon, you name it. But, while I’m fine with the whole Star Trek thing, I can’t say my geekdom extends that far. So, when aging TV wunderkind J.J. Abrams decided to reboot the franchise from the beginning, I wasn’t, like some geeks, burning up the interwebs sifting through the minutia of the plot for canonical errata, but was merely mildly interested, mainly because my main man Simon Pegg was going to live out his nerdy dream by playing the young Scotty. Upon seeing it- I gotta say I was pretty impressed. The movie is genuinely exciting and, what’s most surprising, it manages to avoid the whole prequel “it’s all in-jokes and safe fan-stroking” by introducing a whole time travel, alternate universe angle which allows for some actual peril for the once-sacrosanct characters. The actors all seem to be having some fun: Chris Pine is a cocky, fun Kirk (and the movie seems to take great delight in making fun of him), Zachary Quinto’s an excellent, surprisingly-sexy Spock, Karl Urban nails Bones’ irascible humor, and the Pegger is a hoot, while John Cho (Sulu), and Anton Yelchin (Chekov) are cool, too. Eric Bana has some fun as the main baddie, and, of course, even a semi-Star Trek geek like myself got goosebumps when a certain original cast member turned up. (So sue me). And, as for the whole “alternate universe so anything can happen reboot”, well, it was a fun idea, but (and here the comic geek in me rears his pimply head), such tinkering shenanigans can alienate even (especially) the most loyal fans, so we’ll see how long until the faithful turn on the whole (pardon me for this) enterprise (it’s the reason I stopped reading the ‘X Men’ after a while). All in all, a solid, fun action movie.”

JE: “Jonesy, set phasers to ‘OH MY GOD!’ I don’t know if I’ll be able to contain my raw geekery over this movie, but I’ll try and make it through the review…THE SHIP WAS SOOOO COOL! Ahem. This movie could have been a colossal failure simply by virture of being a reboot, not to mention betting on a largely unknown cast and playing the ‘young and sexy crew’ card very heavily. Aside from that you’re 100 percent correct about the power of fanboy rage, though not entirely deadly it can contribute to any reboot’s demise…WHAT THE HECK IS SPOCK DOING…sorry. And this is to say nothing of dabbling in time travel, which, as we’ve discussed recently, is a terribly messy affair that is typically avoided. And yet, this movie GOES BOLDY…ahem, sorry. This movie, you know what this movie does, it makes Star Trek fun for everyone. Sorry I had to say that fellow fanboys, but as someone who stuck with the franchise through multiple exploding Enterprises, sexy borgs and Captain Bakula, Star Trek stopped being fun. This movie is fun, a nod to the faithful…THERE GOES A RED SHIRT…and open to newbies (such as my lady, who’s rooting interest going into the movie was underrated John Cho as well as the Fantastic Mr. Pegg). There’s chemistry between the crew (OH MY GOD IS THERE EVER…again, I apologize), amazing special effects and a story that not only makes sense but moves along at a great pace. Abrams played the percentages well on this one, combining his knack for character plays with a little geekiness, some whiz-bang-pow-ery and excellent performances by the whole ensemble (including a great Bruce Greenwood doing a great ‘grizzled vet’ in a pivotal role). Is the movie perfect, well, no. But again, it’s about the percentages, and Abrams got it right…WARP FACTOR FUN! God, I am so sorry about that. Let’s move on.”

Bruno

VPJ: “Sacha Baron Cohen likes to make people uncomfortable. Politicians, small town bigots, celebrities, Eminem, me. Especially me. Man does he make me squirm, a rictus of anxious anticipation on my face as I wait for his next assault on my inner calm. Which is a compliment, of course. Like Andy Kaufman and similar agents provocateur before him, Cohen has the genius (and the brass cojones) to devise situations which, more often than not, provoke reactions in unsuspecting subjects which bring out their, and their society’s, underlying prejudices, fears, and hang-ups as adroitly as any sociology textbook. Plus, he’s about a thousand times funnier. As with Borat (and his other alter ego Ali G), though, Bruno walks the fine line between insightfully funny and just plain mean and offputting, which makes the whole experience sort of a queasy affair for me. When his flamboyant gay fashionista picks the right targets (he’s largely concerned with America’s slavering desire for fame, and its equally slavering homophobia this time), ‘Bruno’ is horrifyingly transcendent (his stunt with a bloodthirsty MMA crowd is a classic), but sometimes the whole enterprise comes off as pointlessly mean. I dunno – I’m glad Cohen’s around (the world could due with being kept on its toes), but he just plain makes my tummy hurt.”

JE: “More than any other comedian who has played the ‘agent of chaos’ role, Cohen is disturbingly good at playing around in that icky, uncomfortable, assumption-challenging place. Here’s the thing, it’s relatively easy to GET ALL UP IN PEOPLE’S FACES, because we see hacks and so-caled pranksters do it all the time. They’re like the kids who would repeatedly whack at bee hives during school recess.  It takes big brass ones to get yourself into a character, create a window to get through to people and then savagely provoke them…and get out of every scenario alive. Cohen deserves credit for that first and foremost, but also (as anyone who has suffered through a bad SNL-skit-turned-movie), drawing a movie out of a sketch comedy idea or character is not easy. Sure ‘Borat’ and ‘Bruno’ use the same convention of a character with a camera crew, but instead of the movie looking like a series of sketches laced together poorly by a few transitions, you have an actual film from beginning to end. Now, having said all that, I don’t care for this one. As much as I like Cohen and appreciate what he does, I had enough with ‘Borat’ and honestly the schtick feels a little thin. Of course I may just be less willing to deal with the case of the wiggins Cohen inspires than you Jonesy.”

Thirst

VPJ: “Before reading this review, if you haven’t seen the Korean movie ‘Oldboy,’ go to Videoport right now and rent it. I’ll wait… There! Now you want to see everything director Park Chan-wook has ever done, so why not continue with this, his most recent film, about a saintly priest who, in attempting to help cure a deadly virus, volunteers for a medical procedure which, well, kills him, resurrects him, and (side effect!) turns him into a vampire. Oops. Like ‘Oldboy’ (and the director’s other films like ‘Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance,’ ‘Lady Vengeance’), ‘Thirst’ combines the standard beats of the action or horror genre with haunting performances, virtuoso direction, and grand themes to create incredibly intense, mesmerizing cinema. As the hero confronts his new existence, finds himself drawn to a beautiful young woman, and, yeah, drinks a lot o’ blood, his journey becomes something epic, operatic, and profoundly moving. Destined for cult status like the director’s other films, ‘Thirst’ is haunting.”

JE: “MORE vampires? Snooze! But I joke, mostly because vampires are becoming so damn ubiquitous that it’s a joke. Aren’t vampries supposed to be secretive, mysterious and elusive? Then how come I SEE THEM EVERYWHERE?! Ok, had to get that out of my system, and with good reason because here we have an interesting take onthe vampire movie. Not only does Park Chan-wook provide a novel and almost (but not really) explanation for a vampire, but he takes time to give us the wrenching, tragic and frankly un-pretty bits of suddenly discovering you’re a vampire. It’s not all sexy black clothes, flights and fights kids. In my opinion, and it’s one I think you’ll share, the best vampire flicks (or shows with vamps *cough-cough* BUFFY *cough-cough*) are the ones that carefully contrast the idea of being immortal yet-removed from society, and oh, the basic fact that you’re like a big ol’ parasite with fans and good clothes. And yes kids, do as Dr. Jones says and rent the rest of Park Chan-wook’s work. We’ll wait.”

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

VPJ: “Check out this comedy all-star lineup: Jeremy Piven, Ed Helms, Craig Robinson, Kristen Schaal, Ving Rhames, Tony Hale, Rob Riggle, David Keochner, and even a cameo from Will Ferrell. Dang – how could this possibly go wrong? Well… The story of a band of mercenary used car salesmen who sweep in to save dying lots by any means necessary, “The Goods” is going for a rambunctious, free-for-all workplace comedy and it is certainly trying very hard. Too hard. The

"Okay, we're all funny, so who needs a script, right? Who's with me..."

word ‘desperation’ comes to mind. There’s a special kind of sadness that creeps into a film like this when you can see so many talented, funny people running around with no one at the reins; you can actually see the performers withering up there on the screen. It’s a bummer, too, because of the collective talent involved and because I’m still sort of happy that Jeremy Piven has become a household name. Formerly just another F.O.C. (‘friend of Cusack’), Piven has, thanks to some adept scene-stealery and, of course, ‘Entourage,’ become a bankable star in his own right and, while I’m happy for him, he’s always had to be cautious that his fratboy cockiness didn’t curdle into offputting obnoxiousness. He was not cautious enough here.”

JE: “Sounds like another ‘Semi-Pro’ if you ask me. And we all know how well THAT turned out. Here’s the thing about ‘The Goods,’ and I’m not being an apologist (because I have not watched it.), but it’s a first-time effort from director Neal Brennan, a dude most of us may be familiar with because of his work on ‘Chappelle’s Show’ and yes, ‘Half Baked.’ OK, sure, you’re saying, but what about the writing Justin? Well, there I got nothing for you. The writers are also two first-timers, and maybe a frenetic ensemble flick was not in their best interest. Could it be that the assembled talent may have eclipsed the actual script here? If you’re a writer or director you KNOW the likes of Piven, Hale, Rhames, Keochner (can this guy get an Oscar for best second-bananna of all time?) are going to deliver, so could that be a crutch? I may not be an expert on screenwriting, but if you hand an actor a half-hearted script even the best thespian can’t pull it to success. This all reminds me Jonesy, we need to get to work on that rambunctious workplace comedy involving a video store employee and a reporter. Comedy GOLD!”

Speed Round! Since it was such a tremendous week on new releases Videoport Jones offers some quick takes:

Is Anybody There? Michael Caine warms your heart (perhaps gainst your will) as a cranky oldster befriending the requisite little tyke; Ballast, Acclaimed indie drama about a poor single mom trying to protect her family against the violence around her, and a secret from her past; Humpday, Indie comedy stars “The Blair With Project’s” Josh Leonard and mumblecore maven Mark Duplass as two straight friends who double-dog dare each other into making a gay porno); How to Be, Prettyboy “Twilight” hunklet Robert Pattinson stars as a pretentious would-be artist who tries to be less of a smelly hippie; Enlighten Up, A yoga skeptic puts on his unitard to test out the stretchy discipline’s merits in this documentary; My One and Only, Coming of age dramedy starring Rene Zellweger and based on the childhood of Hollywood tanning legend George Hamilton, of all people; Margaret Cho: Beautiful, New standup from the saucy/filthy comedienne; Only the Brave, A fact-based WWII film about the all-Japanese American battalion who single-handedly shamed our entire country for putting them and all their relatives in American prison camps; Spread, Ashton Kutcher is a money-grubbing Hollywood prettyboy who makes his living by seducing older women; he also made this movie- zing!

Parting Shots:

- Are you a Jim Jarmusch fan? What’s your favorite flick?

- Did the Star Trek reboot work?

- Does Sacha Baron Cohen schtick still work?

VideoReport #222

Volume CCXXII- I Am a Gamera

For the Week of 11/17/09

Videoport gives you a free movie every day. Any objections? No- we didn’t think so…

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests that, this weekend, why not have a triple feature of thematically related films to compare and contrast? For sci-fi alienation, try Alien, The Thing (the John Carpenter version), and the 1978 production of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. All three are chilling portraits of alienation — literal or figurative — and the horror of encroaching forces beyond our understanding. All three can be studied as deep metaphorical narratives of isolation, crumbling faith in institutional and social systems, and a pervasive fear of the treachery of others, but all three can be simply enjoyed as rip-roaring tales, too. Have a fun, frightened weekend — and keep looking over your shoulder.

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests you join in the fun and send us your movie reviews (essays, best of/worst of lists, etc) to us here at the VideoReport! Yup, Videoport’s weekly newsletter is a place for all of us in the Videoport community to talk about movies, share ideas, and basically just run off at the mouth, so don’t be shy! Send your submissions to us at denmn@hotmail.com, our Myspace page www.myspace.com/videoportjones, or just drop them off here in the store. (Obviously, Classics or Action reviews would have been most welcome this week…)

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests sticking with the real deal in the Foreign section. Sigh. It drives me crazy that Hollywood feels the need to remake excellent films just to have an English-language version. To be honest, it’s not the remaking itself that makes me so nuts, but that all too often, the geniuses down at the Hollywood studios decide they have to tinker with the story that was so enticing to begin with… and we, the audience, end up with a watered-down, lackluster reworking of something that was once great. Here’s a tiny list of foreign-language films that outshine their English-language remakes: Insomnia, Spoorloos, Shall We Dansu, Solyaris (though Soderbergh’s remake is mighty good, too, it’s not up to the original), Abres Los Ojos, Wings of Desire, Mostly Martha.

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests engaging in an Al Pacino orgy! Videoport, in its never-ending quest to sustained awesomeness, has just acquired the new boxed set of Pacino rarities…you’re welcome. First, and most excitingly, up, there’s the legendarily lost The Local Stigmatic! Why the exclamation point, you ask, well, here’s what IMDb.com has to say about it: “Al Pacino donated a copy to the Museum of Modern Art with the stipulation that it can only be shown with his

You know you want more of me...

permission. A small number of screenings have taken place since 1990.” And now, thanks to us, any time you want. It’s the story of two nihilistic English sociopaths (Pacino and ‘CSI’’s Paul Guilfoyle) who decide to beat the crap out of an actor for no apparent reason, and, yes, apparently, Pacino does essay a Cockney accent, which should, if nothing else does, make this one worth watching. Next, check out Chinese Coffee, where Pacino and the late, great Jerry Orbach play a couple of struggling writers arguing about, well, everything, really, for 99 minutes. Another excuse for Al and a talented costar to act the hell out of an obscure theater piece? Yes, please! After that, why not check out Babbleonia, a documentary where Big Al dishes on his long career, acting, and other stuff Pacinophiles will want to check out. Then, to top things off, take home the long-awaited DVD release of Looking for Richard, Pacino’s heartfelt and insightful documentary about his quest to play Shakespeare’s Richard III, as well as to understand what Shakespeare means to him. All in all, it’s a cinematic wet dream for the fans of that actor…what’s his name again? It’s on the tip of my tongue…

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>> Adam S. Customer, 4, suggests Cars. He told his auntie, “You should watch it! Watch it! Watch it!” before patting her hand and adding in a gentle tone, “It gets a leeetle sad, but then it gets better… Watch it! Do you want to watch it right now?”

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, Dennis suggests checking out Videoport’s new acquisitions from the smoky, sultry, doom-laden world of film noir! We love to buy cool, old stuff in bulk, so this recent boxed set (“Colombia Picture Film Noir Classics”) of heretofore-mostly-unreleased films noir hit the market, we scooped it up, created some unfortunately-nondescript-looking cover art (boxed sets are a real pain that way), and brought them to you, you lucky bastards. FIrst up, there’s The Big Heat (which we already had, but, hey), a true genre classic, with Glen Ford as a desperate cop out for revenge; great stuff, with Ford, Lee Marvin, and the kittykat Gloria Grahame doing great stuff with guns, bombs, and hot pots of coffee. Five Against the House has the titular five college chums deciding to plot the perfect crime, a complicated heist against the titular casino. Things may not go according to plan, especially when femme fatale Kim Novak is around. The Lineup features a young (not that he ever looked young) Eli Wallach as one of a pair of hitmen forced to kidnap a mother and daughter so they can explain to a big mob boss that they accidentally destroyed the fortune in heroin the hitmen were supposed to be delivering. I’m sure he’ll be understanding. From director Don Siegel (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Dirty Harry). The Sniper is a 1952 thriller about a depressed, woman-hating jerk who, unsurprisingly, can’t get a girlfriend. Perhaps more surprisingly, he gets a high-powered rifle and starts shooting seemingly-random people as the cops try to chase him down. And Murder by Contract features “Ben Casey” star Vince Edwards as another hitman, this time running into trouble when he finds himself having those pesky qualms when it comes to his next target, a pretty lady.

>>>For Sunday, Dennis suggests Martin (in Horror). Finally coming to us on DVD, this 1977 sort-of vampire film is a forgotten gem from zombie-meister George A. Romero. The title character is a pale, sensitive young man who is lonely, orphaned, and tormented by his religious nutball old relative, constantly tells the boy he’s an evil, bloodthirsty vampire. Well, to be fair, Martin does attack people (mostly women) and drink their blood (after drugging and raping them)- but he doesn’t have fangs, so… The film nimbly dodges the question of what, exactly, Martin is, and concerns itself more with a study of who he is, and why he does what he does. Aided immeasurably by a sensitive, troublingly-sympathetic lead performance by a young guy named John Amplas (he’d show up in small roles in other Romero movies), Martin is a weird, disturbing, and mostly pretty fascinating character study, with a little horror and sleaze thrown in for kicks. Romero here, reveals a particular facility with staging (see especially the virtuoso sequence where Martin plays cat-and-mouse with a couple in their home), and coaxes some decent performances (always a weak spot in most of his films). Martin (along with his weird ‘knights on motorcycles’ drama Knightriders) is one of those oddball non-zombie George Romero movies that have achieved cult status and are well worth a rental.

New Releases this week at Videoport: It’s a huge week for new stuff, gang! Hang on tight… The Limits of Control (it’s the new film from indie god director Jim Jarmusch! An enigmatic mystery starring all his favorite actors, and destined for a cult following, which is why Videoport has twelve copies! It’s great, by the way), Star Trek (the big-budget, youth-injected reboot of the venerable (creaky) sci fi franchise is actually really good, for nerds and non-nerds alike; but mostly nerds…), Thirst (you liked Oldboy, right? Well here’s the director’s new film, a sexy Korean vampire film that all the cool kids are gonna be watching right now), Humpday (2 straight slacker friends double-dog-dare each other to enter an internet contest by making a gay porno with each other; costarring Josh from The Blair Witch Project and mumblecore pioneer Mark Duplass), Is Anybody There? (guaranteed heart-warming stuff starring Michael Caine as a cranky old coot in a retirement home who begrudgingly befriends the requisite little kid), It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: It’s a Very Sunny Christmas (the worst people in the world make the funniest Christmas special of the year), Margaret Cho: Beautiful (she’s saucy [filthy, really] and funny…what more do you want?), Enlighten Up (a yoga devotee/filmmaker decides to film her skeptical friend as she immerses him in the wild world of, well, yoga), ‘Andy Barker, PI’- the complete series (yet another funny, inventive, and immediately-cancelled sitcom starring the ever-welcome Andy Richter; this time, he’s a mild-mannered accountant who starts taking on the clients of the detective who previously inhabited his new office; it also stars Tony Hale, veteran of the similarly-unfairly-cancelled ‘Arrested Development’), Only the Brave (fact-based WWII film about a battalion made up of Japanese American soldiers who, despite having their entire families sent to concentration camps by the American government, earned about a million medals and single-handedly shamed the entire nation), Spread (Ashton Kutcher is a money-grubbing Hollywood prettyboy who makes his living by seducing older women; he also made this movie- zing!), Franklyn (the Incredibly Strange Section welcomes this bizarre thriller which includes: parallel universes, religious dictatorships, masked vigilantes, and all manner of weirdness), How to Be (Twilight heartthrob/prettyboy Robert Pattinson watches this indie drama about a drippy would-be poet/musician who seeks out the guidance of a self-help guru in order to stop being an insufferable hippy poseur; does he succeed? We can only hope and pray…), My Sister’s Keeper (tearjerkery drama about a young girl who seeks emancipation from her parents, just because they only bred her to be a blood bank for her [one presumes] better-loved ill sister; starring the long-missing Cameron Diaz), The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard (certified funny fellas Jeremy Piven, David Koechner, Ving Rhames, Ed Helms, Tony Hale, Ken Jeong, and Rob Riggle star in this ensemble comedy about the desperate times at a used car lot; take it on a double feature Wednesday with the very funny 80s forebear Used Cars, starring Kurt Russell), My One and Only (in the week’s oddest biographical film of the week, this coming of age dramedy starring Rene Zellweger is based on the early life of leathery Hollywood laughingstock George Hamilton), Bruno (if a flamboyantly effeminate Austrian fashionista cornered you in the past year and started making you very uncomfortable by exposing your, and your country’s innate prejudices, you’re probably in this movie), Ballast (acclaimed drama about an embattled single mom trying to keep her family safe in the face on violence and her own past), ‘Primeval’- season 2 (Videoport’s Sci Fi/Fantasy section adds the second season of this series about a team of Brits trying to find out why the hell dinosaurs have started popping up all over the place).

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: The Stepfather (the original horror thriller about a serial-marrying psycho who kills his families when they fail to live up to his exacting standards, starring ‘Lost’’s Terry O’Quinn; watch it before the crappy remake hits DVD any second now), ‘Tom & Jerry’s Greatest Chases’ (the greatest hits of the popular yet thoroughly-unfunny classic cartoon characters), The Agony and the Ecstasy (DVD release of the Charlton Heston-as-Michelangelo biopic), Martin (see the Sunday review on page 1 for the lowdown on this little-seen George Romero vampire flick!), Babbleonia, The Local Stigmatic, Chinese Coffee, and Looking for Richard (see the Thursday review of all these recently-acquired Al Pacino rarities), Murder by Contract, 5 Against the House, The Lineup, The Sniper, and The Big Heat (see page 1’s Saturday review for the skinny on these new film noir classics joining the Mystery/Thriller section at Videoport!), ‘Race to Dakar’ (Charley Boorman ditches his far more photogenic pal Ewan McGregor and rides his well-worn motorcycle in the titular grueling race), Torso (thank Videoport’s loveable Andy for the addition of this 70s Italian sleaze/horror fest; Videoport’s nearly-as-loveable JackieO watched it and suggests that the title should be changed to “The Upper Part of the Female Torso- The Booby Part”), Pray the Devil Back to Hell (documentary about the brave women who successfully fought to have their home country of Liberia’s government not be such a haven for corrupt jerks), Homeboy (sort of a proto-Wrestler, this 1988 movie saw Mickey Rourke playing an aging [though still sort of pretty] boxer fighting for one last shot).

YOU WILL GO TO THIS!

Former Videoporter/local filmmaker/cool guy Allen Baldwin’s newest film Up Up Down Down will have its first test screening at the Nickelodeon theater (right around the corner) on Thursday, December 3rd at 7pm and 915pm! Come and see the latest film from Allen’s Strongpaw Productions (you can see his great first film Twelve Steps Outside in Videoport’s Feature Drama section)! C’mon!

Videoport regretfully informs you...

That the holiday shopping season is upon us. I know. Well, we here at Videoport want you to know that we feel your pain- here are some easy, affordable gifty solutions for your holiday blues

1. Videoport Gift Certificates! Available in $10, $20, and $30 increments, these make the perfect gift for the movie lover on your list you have no earthly idea what to get.

2. Movies! Duh! Videoport’s got a pile o’ DVDs (both new and previously-viewed), all at low prices. Which is nice and all, but here’s the real good news- for every movie you buy from us (instead of some soulless mega-chain), Videoport gives you, that’s you personally, a free rental for yourself. Yeah! Who says you shouldn’t get something out of this whole greed-filled holiday shopping experience? You deserve it, don’t you? Plus, Videoport can special order any movie, TV series, or boxed set currently in print, and we do it for free (none of that ’shipping and handling’ nonsense).

3. We now have really, really big boxes of jelly beans. People like those.

Free Money at Videoport! $20 buys you $25 worth of rental credit, while $30 buys you $40! Makes sense.

Justin Ellis (Press Herald) and I on the week’s new releases (11/10/09)

Oh joyous day! We’ve been counting down the weeks for a while now and Videoport Jones and I finally get to talk Pixar! The animation juggernaut has produced another winner, but sadly (and expectedly) Katherine Heigel has not. All that and some “The Big Lebowski” talk in this week’s new DVD releases!

UP

Videoport Jones: “Part of me wants to just write ‘It’s the new Pixar movie. Rent it. Duh’ and let it go at that. Sure, that might be the lazy part of me, and there’s no way you’d go for it Justin, but still… ‘A Bug’s Life,’ ‘Toy Story’ 1 & 2, ‘Cars,’ ‘Finding Nemo,’ ‘The Incredibles,’ ‘Monsters, Inc,’ ‘Ratatouille,’ ‘Wall-E.’ For one company to create nothing but ‘the best children’s movie of the year’ every year it puts one out, set the new standard for kids’ entertainment, and absolutely bury their lumbering, wheezing parent company (cough…Disney), their record is just unprecedented. And now it continues. ‘UP,’ the story of an old man who decides to float his house to South America with a bunch of balloons, is, in a lot of ways, Pixar’s riskiest venture yet. A crotchety old (albeit adorably-rendered) person as the protagonist, a long (but stunningly-economical, and heartbreaking) wordless montage right at the beginning of the movie to set up the story, some genuine danger and tension (memo to parents: conflict, and even fear, are necessary in art, and nothing to protect your little angels from, at least in this case), ‘UP’ is a funny, exciting, and challenging adventure movie that just happens to be for kids. In some ways, it reminds me of Terry Gilliam’s ‘Crimson Personal Assurance’ short film from Monty Python’s ‘Meaning of Life,’ where the downtrodden oldsters at an antiquated firm rebel against their young corporate masters and transform their building into a pirate ship; like Gilliam’s film (and most of Gilliam’s films, really) ‘UP’ centers on a premise of willful absurdity. But, unlike most Gilliam films, it doesn’t fall apart in its second half (sorry, Terry, but it’s true), instead launching itself into the sky with the dazzling visuals, nuanced voice acting (Ed Asner, ladies and gentlemen), thrilling action scenes, and the minutely-observed behavior that have been the Pixar trademark from the beginning. It’s not my favorite of their movies (that’d be ‘The Incredibles’), and, yeah, maybe the ending is a little rushed and the antagonist (Christopher Plummer, having fun) might be a little under-motivated, but those are the most minor of quibbles. Plus, there’s a funny dog – everybody loves a funny dog! As the lovely Ms. Videoport Jones said to me, ‘When I started watching it, I was sad that I wasn’t watching it with a child; then, as the movie went on, I realized It had returned me to my childhood.’ Sure, she’s a cheeseball, but she’s my cheeseball, and she’s absolutely right. One of the best movies of the year.”

Justin: “There is so much right with this movie and so much right about the way Pixar does its job that I struggle to know where to start. We are indeed gigantic, unapologetic fanboys for Pixar, but it’s like the saying goes ‘it ain’t braggin’ if you’re the best.’ And no one can possibly challenge Pixar for that title belt right now (most certainly not their parent company). I was caught off-guard by the raw emotionality of ‘Wall•E,’ with its sort of disparate, desolate tale of humanity and this cute, awesome little robot at the center of it all. ‘UP’ was another unexpected emotional sucker punch of a story. The plot seems like the perfect story for a family movie, involving talking animals, fantastic exotic places, action and humor. And while it has all those things it has a story that is so heartfelt and moving that it surprises you and makes the whole feature that much more captivating. As we were talking about the recently, Pixar has enough talent and technical skill that they could easily mimic reality in their stories, but then you’d end up with ‘The Polar Express.’ Instead they create a sort of ‘hyper-reality’ where the characters and settings occupy this rich universe that is cartoony but ultimately incredibly human. Looking at Ed Asner’s character you’d think he was a Happy Meal toy, but he’s this fully-realized person that seems as genuine as the person next to you. This is helped in no small way by the voice talents of Mr. Asner. Overall just a wonderful, winning film that families of all types (that means those with kids and those of us without) can enjoy. I’ll go a step further than Jonesy: Buy it.”

The Ugly Truth

VPJ: “Gerard Butler plays a macho, chauvinistic TV personality whose popular on-air advice is challenged by his headstrong feminist producer Katherine Heigl, who sets out to prove him wrong by following his guy-type advice to, um, prove him wrong, I guess? They may or may not fall in love in the end (I don’t want to spoil anything), perhaps when each of them learns the value of moderation in their formerly-hidebound views on the battle of the sexes. Sigh. This, if any of you readers is over sixteen, was the exact plot of approximately seven hundred rock Hudson/Doris Day movies, and was pretty successfully parodied/deconstructed in ‘Down With Love,’ about six years ago. And yet here it is again, as if the makers and its lukewarm fans had never seen a movie before. In lieu of further beating on something so slight I’d actually feel a little guilty for doing so (not really), I’d like to ask a few questions about its stars. Does anyone else have trouble remembering what Gerard Butler looks like? I mean, he’s a pleasant enough fella, and the man can wear a leather jerkin, but his actual physical appearance escapes me when I try to think about him – he just will not stick in my mind. (Other people who do this: Mark Hammill, Paul Walker, Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, pretty much anyone named Jessica. It’s weird). And Heigl – man is there a less likable female lead in movies right now? (I mean, Joan Crawford’s dead.) Whom hasn’t she

We hate you.

thrown under the bus? She was the weak link in her biggest hit, the very funny ‘Knocked Up,’ and then accused Judd Apatow et al of being sexist (only to choose as her next project a movie – ‘27 Dresses’- where she’s a pretty, pretty girl who’s all sad because she can’t find a man). The only reason anyone knew who she was in the first place was due to ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ whose writers she publicly trashed in the press in order to try and get out of her TV contract (a tactic she employed years earlier on ‘Roswell’). Plus, she’s not very good. Oh, and my colleague Regan assures me that there’s a scene in the surprisingly-smutty ‘The Ugly Truth’ where she is brought to orgasm by a nine year old boy. Despite that fact, Regan also assures me that the movie is really weak.”

JE: “Presenting for the People vs. Katherine Heigl, Mr. Videoport Jones. You could give Sam Waterston a run for his money my friend. Still, half of your argument has one weak link: Hollywood will never stop producing crappy ‘will they/won’t they’ romantic comedy. Producers have an unhealthy lust for these type of movies, which wouldn’t be a bad thing if there was any thought put into them. Think of what made those Rock Hudson/Doris Day movies (or, Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, etc) good was likable (and talented) stars, a smart-but-light plot, some comedy and CHEMISTRY. Now producers are more likely to bank on stars and neglect the rest of that list. And that’s how you end up with all these movies that don’t just feel vaguely similar but ARE completely similar, just swap in Matthew McConaghey, Harry Connick Jr., or Colin Firth and Renee Zellweger, Kate Hudson or Sandra Bullock. This may sound like a joke but stop and consider it for a minute. Go ahead, I’ll wait…See? The biggest complaint I have with these type of movies (or the recent iteration of them) is that little attention is paid to making it seem plausible the romantic leads WON’T get together. Isn’t that the inherent drama here, what people are paying for? If you come in and after 15 minutes say ‘yup, she’s gonna sleep with him,’ then what’s the point. It’s like they’re making a cake off an old recipe that’s missing a few ingredients. As for Gerald Butler I still have faith he can make a career for himself in either smashing things or switching gears and doing comedy (he seemed to have the potential to be funny on a recent ‘SNL’). As for Heigel, my thoughts on her really aren’t fit for print in a family publication. She’s the worst kind of actor, worst kind of person and typifies everything you think of with the word ‘celebrity.’ If she contracted some mysterious illness that forced her to leave acting forever this would not be a bad thing. She cannot fall out of favor with producers fast enough.”

The Achievers

VPJ: “Sometimes I love America. Not so much when we’re torturing people, stuffing 25% of the world’s natural resources down our ever-widening gullets, and denying basic civil rights to gay people. But I love America when we use our unique American ingenuity and lack of real problems to come up with sublimely-ridiculous wastes of time like Lebowski-Fest. Created as a joke by some rabid (yet mellow) fans of the Coen Brothers’ ‘The Big Lebowski,’ the Fest has grown over the years, drawing in bathrobe-clad, White Russian-sipping devotees of the Dude, Walter, Donnie, Maude Lebowski, Nihilists, Jackie Treehorn, and The Jesus to pay homage to one of the most bizarrely-beloved films of all time. Sort of like a ‘Trekkies’ for ‘The Big Lebowski,’ the film is, like ‘Trekkies,’ amusedly affectionate towards its subjects, guys who, it seems, have taken the Dude’s half-Zen/half-stoned philosophy to their slovenly hearts. The Dude abides, and ‘The Achievers’ is a testament to, well, abiding.”

JE: “And I’ll gladly STAND-UP, next to you and defend her still TODAY! Cause their ain’t no doubt I love this lannnnnnnnnnnd! God BLESS the USA!…Sorry. I got a little teary-eyed there. You actually have hit on something interesting (as you often do), which is this quirky ingenuity we seem to have a trademark on in America. The kind of inventiveness that astounds you because you never thought someone would devote so much time to a movie or TV, but you get scared at the thought of what if they used those powers for good? In that same vein it seems this is becoming a sub-genre of movies, the ‘fanatic documentary’ that follows these people and their passions. As for ‘The Big Lebowski,’ consider me a big fan (and obnoxious over-quoter). It could be my favorite Coen Brothers flick (‘Miller’s Crossing,’ ‘O Brother Where Art Thou’ and ‘Raising Arizona’ all trade that top spot too.). Though I don’t know if I’m fan enough to dress up as Karl Hungus in public. Maybe. Bangor recently had a sizable Lebowski fest and I think Portland is due for its own. Could I interest you in a White Russian my friend?”

And get ready for the SPEED ROUND of the rest of this week’s releases, or, as Jonesy puts it “movies not quite interesting enough for me to have seen this week.” But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth your consideration:

Bela Fleck: Throw Down Your Heart: “Beloved musician tours Africa in this documentary!”

Lake Tahoe: “Hapless teen meets quirky weirdos while trying to find someone to fix his family car on the QT in this indie dramedy!”

The Accidental Husband: “Uma Thurman is back in this difficult-to-explain comedy about a guy who pretends that he and Uma’s advice guru are secretly married to get revenge on her for advising his girlfriend to leave him! (Told you it was confusing…)”

The Merry Gentleman: “Michael Keaton is back! He directs himself as a tortured hitman falling in love with the lady from ‘No Country for Old Men!’”

PARTING SHOTS:

- Seriously, why is Pixar dominating animated family features?
- Is the drama gone from “will they/won’t they” movies?
- Would you suit up for a Lebowski Fest in Portland? Who’d you be?

VideoReport #221

Volume CCXXI- How I Met Your Mothra

For the Week of 11/10/09

Videoport thinks that fully 47% of you are wonderful. But you all may have a free movie every day. Because we at Videoport believe that everyone should have the same rights. To a free movie. And other things…

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests Graveyard Shift (in Horror). The lovely Mrs. Elsa S. Customer and I have been catching up on our crappy horror movies lately. Why do I mention that in connection with this Maine-set 80s Stephen King adaptation? Umm… This one has sort of a legendary reputation of wretchedness which had kept me away for a long time, which is weird, because I actively seek out bad horror movies in my free time. Well, we decided it was about time and there were some admittedly minor points of interest: the ever-welcome Brad Dourif* is on hand, hamming it up with customary glee as a psychotic Vietnam vet/ exterminator, it was actually (unlike most King adaptations) filmed in Maine (Bangor, Brewer, and Harmony, to be exact), and, well, that was it, really. The story of an ancient, run-down textile mill that is basically OSHA’s worst nightmare, dilapidated and swarming with rats!  Rats!!  They’re actually pretty cute, but there’s a big, rubbery, blubbery thing down in the bowels of the place that keeps killing off sweaty workers (which no one seems to notice, even though there are only about twenty people in the town). There’s an evil boss (Stephen Macht’s Maine accent is easily the most fascinating thing in the film), some completely-unmotivated character turns, and, um…yeah, it sucks, although perhaps slightly less (maybe 12%) than advertised, but still… yeah, it’s terrible.

*Editor’s note: Brad Dourif’s career is really strange. He started off like gangbusters, with an Oscar nomination for playing Billy Bibbitt in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and then, after exactly one high-profile lead (in John Huston’s fascinating, underrated Wise Blood- available in Videoport’s Criterion section), he has worked tirelessly, and almost exclusively, playing over-the-top weirdos, bug-eyed psychos, and, well, cuckoos in low-budget genre films.  And, unlike some actors who fall to that sort of role because that’s the true level of their talent, Dourif is always great.  Look at (mostly awful) movies like Exorcist III, Dune, Critters 4, Color of Night, Alien Resurrection, even the Chuckie movies, (and that episode of the ‘X Files’ he was in)- he never phones it in, is always in there, giving it all he’s got.  And more often than not, he’s the best thing in the movie. (Even when he took a role in the biggest hit trilogy of all time, The Lord of the Rings, he was playing a squirmy weirdo… and knocking it out of the park.)  His acclaim playing a slightly less-repellant guy than usual on ‘Deadwood’ hasn’t stopped him from accepting work in upcoming films titled things like Death and Cremation and Junkyard Dog.  Great actor, deliberately odd career.

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests The Terminator (in Action). The now-legendary 1984 sci-fi action flick that cemented the reputation of director-writer James Cameron and transformed a hunk of affectless Austrian meat into a bankable movie star, The Terminator is built on compellingly simple narrative tension.  For heroine Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), it’s a nightmare scenario: you’re going about your everyday business, just trying to make ends meet and maybe go on a date, and suddenly you are pursued by a murderous entity (Arnold Schwarzenegger) whose only reason for existence is to destroy you. The film’s special effects reflect the low budget, and in this case, they just plain work.  Let’s face it, even state-of-the-art effects from 1984 would look dated to our eyes; where Cameron relies upon low-tech, on-set effects, the film runs smoothly without jerking the viewer out of the film. (Admittedly, there are also attempts at high-tech effects here, and those look just as silly to a modern eye as you’d expect.)  Much of the film’s dialogue, grown stale with repetition over the years, is refreshingly in context.  Man, who knew “I’ll be back” could be so funny?

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests State and Main (in Comedy). In a break from his usual heist-and-hostility routine, David Mamet brings us a movie about movies: temperamental talents, deeply hidden secrets, and the panic of production delays.  The premise: the entire cast and crew of Hollywood production The Old Mill has been booted out of the small New England town where they’re filming. As the frantic director tries to hustle another town’s mayor into signing on as their new location, the clock is ticking away.  And time is money, people.  Writer-director David Mamet’s dialogue is pointed, clever, witty, and utterly despicable.  With its quick, smart humor and characters running the range from “wretchedly angst-ridden” to “utterly vile,” State and Main feels like an Aaron Sorkin show set in Hell.  William H. Macy plays director Walt Price with whiplash virtuosity, slipping effortlessly between unctuous gladhanding and vicious rants.  Philip Seymour Hoffman turns in another masterful performance as the first-time screenwriter improvising like mad despite his almost total lack of confidence; Hoffman takes the sad-sack role and transcends it.  Alec Baldwin delivers here one of his nastiest comic roles as the big-name movie star with a loathsome yen for underaged girls.  And here’s a sneaky little in-joke: the small-town mayor (perfectly played by Charles Durning) is named George Bailey — a poke at Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life.  As Mamet no doubt knows, Capra’s view of small-town life was far from the whitewashed sentimentality we celebrate in the film today.  It’s a Wonderful Life gave us a glimpse of village life’s underbelly, and State and Main would like to pick up when Capra left off, plunging farther into the ghastly depths than Capra ever dreamed.  With its vicious wit, its depravities, and its rapid-fire plot complications, State and Main is a screwball comedy of the darkest shade.

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests Patton Oswalt: My Weakness Is Strong (in Comedy). Reviewing a standup comedy special is usually pretty dull. I mean, apart from ‘boy this sure was funny’, there’s not a lot of places to go usually.  So here are some random thought’s about this new one from hipster darling/hobbit Oswalt.  He is very adept at mining laughs from seemingly absurd analogies which, upon immediate reflection, make a great deal of sense (comparing George W. Bush to sodomy demons, for example; you’ll just have to see it).  He is remarkable at donning very specific comic personae; not that he’s an impressionist, he’s just very in control of his instrument/voice, and the comic effects he wants to elicit; (see his impression of himself as a fat[ter] guy and that of a startlingly well-drawn Southern bartender).  He’s got some nice, Carlin-esque takes on ’serious’ issues (specifically religion in this one) where, like Carlin, he spins a very funny argument (in this case how religion came into being) which is hilarious, insightful, and makes enormous sense all at the same time.  Oh, and this is really, really funny.

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>> Andy suggests Escape From the Planet of the Apes.   If you’re looking for the excellent sci fi classic Planet of the Apes, you’ll find it in the Sci Fi/Fantasy section.   You also find the pretty good first sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes and Tim Burton’s dull remake in Sci Fi/ Fantasy. But when you’re done with those, I suggest you turn your attention to the Family section and check out the second, third, and fourth sequels for some fun, G-rated, if pretty violent, Apes action.   The third film, Escape From the Planet of the Apes, is by far the best of these.   The plot involves the apes from the first film traveling back in time to our ‘present day’ (1976) or so and trying not to mess up the future while sticking up for ape rights or something.  It’s all in fun, in the same vein as Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.  You can tell the producers were trying to save money by shooting on location instead of building futuristic sets.   Budget problems don’t prevent Escape from being an entertaining sci fi adventure, but with the fourth (Conquest of the Planet of the Apes*) and fifth (Battle for the Planet of the Apes) films in the series, there is a noticeable step down in production value. (Still…free rental folks.)

*Editor’s note: Andy’s very right about the later films, but Conquest, which shows how the apes first rebelled against their human masters with zombie invasion-like single-mindedness really creeped me out as a kid. Creep out your kid today!

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, Dennis suggests sending in your movie or TV reviews (or movie essays, best-of lists, etc) to us at the VideoReport! (So we can fill this review space with actual, you know, reviews and stuff.) Just drop them off at the store, send them to denmn@hotmail.com, or our Myspace page www.myspace.com/videoportjones or our Facebook page “Videoport Jones”! And, aw heck, while you’re on the intra-nets, why not stop in at our movie blog www.videoportjones.wordpress.com!

>>>For Sunday, Elsa S. Customer suggests Delicatessen (in Foreign Language).  Vividly textured, richly ambiguous, and darkly comic, Delicatessen opens in a ramshackle tenement hazily located in a French town in some unspecified dystopian future.  Food is scarce, yet the butcher shop occupying the building’s first floor never seems to feel the pinch too badly. I think you see where this is going… but the new tenant does not.  His name is Louison (played by oddly charming rubber-faced actor Dominique Pinon), he’s a former circus performer, and he delights the neighborhood children with his clowning antics, which are cartoonishly impressive.  Indeed, Delicatessen has a cartoonish quality that meshes weirdly but successfully with its grubby, dark setting and its gruesome premise.  This is the first feature film of co-directors Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who also co-directed the great City of Lost Children.  Jeunet is now perhaps best known as the director of Amélie, and it’s easy to see Amélie as the indirect descendant of the grotesqueries of Delicatessen. Both films immerse themselves in a whimsically embroidered narrative built around the laborious quirks of its characters, and does so with an aplomb that magically weaves a potentially overwrought, incoherent mess into a beautifully balanced composition of humor, compassion, sorrow, and wonder.

New Releases this week at Videoport: UP (it’s the new Pixar animated film, about an old man who floats his home with a mess o’ balloons; if you watch it, it will thrill you, move you, and make you happy- so you should watch it), The Ugly Truth (Gerard Butler and Katherine Heigl are a mismatched couple who may, or may not, overcome their differences and fall in love; I’m on pins and needles myself), The Merry Gentleman (Michael Keaton directs himself and No Country for Old Men’s Kelly Macdonald in this tale of a troubled young woman who falls in love with a troubled hit man, who may, by definition, be more troubled than she), Ink (dark, upsetting fairy tale film about the war between good and evil that takes place when we’re asleep; compared favorably to Dark City by more than one reviewer…), The Accidental Husband (a disgruntled firefighter, angry at the advice guru whom he believes caused his girlfriend to leave him, somehow (the details are a little unclear) convinces said guru that they were secretly married, even though she’s all engaged and stuff; convoluted comedy comes to us from director Griffin Dunne and stars Uma Thurman, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Colin Firth), Lake Tahoe (from the renting-like-hotcake Film Movement series comes this indie dramedy about a hapless teenager who turns to help from a wide variety of eccentric characters when he accidentally wrecks the family car), Hurt (creepy horror thriller about a single mom who moves into the salvage yard home owned by a crazy uncle, finds a seemingly-adorable orphaned child, and then…well, I’m not tellin’),

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: Pageant (fifty gay men battle for the right to be crowned Miss Gay America in this documentary), Bela Fleck: Throw Down Your Heart (documentary follows the titular musician as he makes a tour of Africa), The Thing (From Another World) (the Howard Hawks original alien from space classic finally gets a DVD release; trivia time: although Hawks’ longtime editor Christian Nyby is credited as the film’s director, it’s pretty widely accepted that Hawks himself actually directed the film but allowed pal Nyby to take the credit), Eddie Izzard: Live from Wembley (British comic [and now sought-after character actor] Izzard is as quick on his feet and free-from as Robin Williams, only Izzard is still funny and doesn’t make you want to just slap him as hard as you can so he’ll finally shut up), Where God Left His Shoes (John Leguizamo tries to tone down his undeniable innate creepiness in this heartwarming story of a homeless dad trying to get a job on Christmas Eve so his family will qualify for an apartment), The Achievers: The Story of Lebowski Fans (documentary reveals the story behind the birth of Lebowski-Fest, a growing gang of guys turning the Cohen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski into a cult film by dressing up as The Dude and drinking White Russians), The Chaser (sleazy-looking Korean thriller about a dirty cop-turned-pimp who discovers that his hookers are being killed off by a serial killer), The Bunker (Anthony Hopkins is Hitler! In this movie, of course…), My First DVD (new to Videoport’s kids section comes this program designed to introduce your little angel to the wonderful world of DVDs; lesson one: DON’T TOUCH THE SHINY SIDE OF A DVD EVER!!!!!; lesson two: DON’T LET A CHILD TOUCH A DVD, ESPECIALLY THE SHINY SIDE!!!! IT’S CALLED PARENTING!!!!!).

YOU WILL GO TO THIS!

Former Videoporter/local filmmaker/cool guy Allen Baldwin’s newest film Up Up Down Down will have its first test screening at the Nickelodeon theater (right around the corner) on Thursday, December 3rd at 7pm and 915pm! Come and see the latest film from Allen’s Strongpaw Productions (you can see his great first film Twelve Steps Outside in Videoport’s Feature Drama section)! C’mon!

Justin Ellis (of the Press Herald) and I on the week’s new releases (11/3/09)

We’re back in business baby! This week’s new releases on DVD finally give Videoport Jones and I a reason to do the Snoopy Dance for the first time in a long time. Not only do we get to breakdown remakes, talk food choices and bash my devotion to 80s pop culture, but Will Ferrell makes a triumphant comeback! That’s something we can all be happy about.

You’re Welcome: A Final Night with George W. Bush

Videoport Jones: “Now this is more like it. After a string of subpar film outings that, frankly, were trying the patience of even his staunchest supporters (being you and me, Justin), Will Ferrell busts out with this, a filmed record of his one-man Broadway show, and all the ‘Semi-Pros,’ ‘Land of the Losts’ and ‘Blades of Glorys’ are washed away in a tide of welcome, teary-eyed belly laughs. Ferrell as Bush was one

I...am...the balls.

of SNL’s characters for the ages, a nigh-perfect comedic storm of actor, impression, satire, and just all-around lunatic weirdness that was utterly bananas while capturing the essence of its subject. Ferrell’s narrow-eyed, blinky, malaprop-prone, blusterous Bush was sorely missed after Ferrell left SNL (sorry Will Forte, but your Bush sucked out loud), and now he has treated us to an entire evening’s worth of his best parting shots at our worst president. Is it trenchant, insightful political satire? Well, that’s not really the point, although I maintain that a comedic portrayal as lunatically-inspired as this one can get to the heart of its subject with as much insight as any laboriously-footnoted biography. Plus, this is just simply one of the funniest things I’ve seen all year; and at 115 minutes, it handily defies the notion that Ferrell’s impression is only suited for a five minute sketch. Ferrell wrote it for himself, thus reaffirming my notion that he should only appear in things he’s written; he blends fact with loony, manic fancy, spinning his monlogue out into the absurdist stratosphere before snatching it back with some surprising moments of real emotion. Will Ferrell is back.”

Justin: “Oh thank the MAKER! He has emerged from the wilderness, and we’ll welcome him with open arms. I remember when he originally kicked off this show on Broadway and people ate it up. (Let’s also not forget he was, indeed, nominated for a Tony Award.) You could argue that this is just another turn on the madcap man-boy that Ferrell always plays, but in this case it works so, so well. The reason his George W. Bush was funny was because it was over the top. Heck, it took a rocket sled and boomed past being just a simple impression. Ferrell took all the small mannerisms and tweaked the former president’s tone just a bit and what he ended up with was hilarious. In the same way Darrell Hammond’s take has become short-hand for a Clinton impression, so has Ferrell’s Bush. If you’re looking for all the best bits of Ferrell, just nailing the impression, you’ll get it here as we get flight suit hero Bush, brush-cutting cowboy Bush and of course, confident commander-in-chief Bush. We get the snickering laugh, the nicknames, the odd anecdotes and plenty more. If you weren’t a fan of Ferrell as Bush then this is not for you. But if, like me and Jonesy, you thought it was comedy gold, then you can’t pass this one up. I’m happy to recommend a Will Ferrell movie again.”

GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra

VPJ: “I’d like to start off this review by stating that when a movie’s credits begin with the phrase “in association with HASBRO”, you know it’s gonna be quality. Yup, it’s the second week with a toy-based mega action blockbuster hitting the Videoport shelves in a row. I think we’ve done something wrong. And are being punished. (A sidebar: which genre is the most hellish on us viewers?: the ‘based on video game movie’ (‘Street Fighter,’ ‘Doom,’ ‘Super Mario Brothers,’ ‘Mortal Kombat,’ etc), the ‘based on a board game’ movie (‘Clue,’ ‘The Mutant Chronicles,’ the upcoming ‘Candyland’ film – god, I wish I were joking), the ‘based on a Disney theme park ride’ movie (‘Tower of Terror,’ ‘The Haunted Mansion,’ and don’t get me started in the interminable ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ franchise), the ‘based on a TV series movie (a list too depressing to go into here), or this, the ‘based on a toy line’ movie? Man, I sort of liked ‘Clue,’ so it can’t be that category, but…wow, “big, dumb, loud, dumb, and dumb” pretty much sums up both ‘Transformers 2′ and this thing. There are actors in it, and they are all, without exception, awful (even the talented among the cast, like Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Christopher Eccleston, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and Jonathan Pryce come off like they’ve just been whammed with a ball peen hammer before filming). There is “action” in it, but said “action” is ossified into numb lethargy through judicious applications of CGI and limp direction. There is, like in Transformers, a George Lucas-style idea of humor which necessitates minstrelly black guy comic relief (surprise! it’s a Wayans!) and winking in-jokes that would be funny to, um, who? I know I’m overanalyzing a completely inconsequential film, but, hell, if I has to watch this dispiriting mess, then I’m gonna take out my frustrations. On all of you. Sorry.”

JE: “Well at least you didn’t pay money to see it in a theater. I am indeed, a sucker, and some might say powerless, to childhood nostalgia. How else can I explain seeing both this and ‘Transformers 2′ in theaters this past summer? I’m a masochist. I don’t know what to say about this movie to give a sense of how truly, powerfully, irredeemably bad this movie is. There was a moment, a window of possibility, where I thought this movie could work by not taking itself seriously and providing ridiculous amounts of action porn. Not the best attraction for a movie, but not too high of a bar to reach for. But no, they couldn’t even manage that. The action is an incomprehensible miasma of CGI, jump cuts and noise. And when you can’t hang your hat on the action, you start to notice all the other glaring flaws. More than anything what disappoints me about this movie is that unlike Transformers, GI Joe could have been a successful 80s-powered update. The premise is simple: a US special forces/counter-terrorism team fights bad guys to save the day. And oh yeah, ninjas are involved. This should have been a home run and instead its a mess. Seriously, think about it. How many countless TV shows and other movies have you seen dealing with the same premise that worked just fine? I don’t know if it was a horrendous script, tinkering from Hasbro, studio-think or just a combination of all these things that contributed to this mess. I’d be lying if I didn’t say it hurt a bit as a child of the 80s to watch this.”

The Taking of Pelham 123

VPJ: “Let’s just get a few things out of the way before the review proper: firstly, let’s just stop all this ‘the remake is better than the original’ jabber right in its tracks. Director Tony Scott (more about that guy later) and a lot of reviewers are taking potshots at the 1974 original, which is great. Matthau. Robert Shaw. Gritty, unglamorous pre-beautification NYC locations. Shaw’s final scene. Great final line. It’s a good movie. Rent that one. As for this one – it’s…fine. Directed by Ridley Scott’s vastly-less talented little brother (check out this roll call of flashy mediocrity: ‘Deja Vu,’ ‘Domino,’ ‘Spy Game,’ ‘Enemy of the State,’ ‘The Fan,’ ‘Days of Thunder,’ and, of course, ‘Top Gun’), this remake, about a hijacked subway car, employs all of the flashy, superficial tricks in his glossy arsenal. And I mean all of them. This might be the spazziest film in recent memory, catering to the attention span of, I guess, Red Bull/meth addicts. Whip pan! Slow motion! Fast motion! Smash cut! Just…slow…down, buddy, we’re trying to watch a movie. As to the movie itself, it’s the Denzel vs. Travolta show, of course, and their battle of wills is…fine. Denzel, playing the conflicted subway controller, shows that he’s, well, still Denzel. He’s good in it, as usual, although he was better in the similar, but better, ‘Inside Man.’ As for Travolta, he’s fine. I mean, he’s very, very boring, as he has been for about fifteen years, but he’s hamming it up with all his might. It’s not convincing, but, well, at least he’s, um, loud? There’s the collection of good character actors (Michael Rispoli, John Turturro, Luis Guzman) that you can afford when you’re making a big-budget, slightly above average action blockbuster. It’s fine. Watch the original.”

JE: “Let me echo my esteemed colleague’s words: ‘Watch The Original.’ It’s really that simple. Now, I should admit that I am a big, big fan of the gritty NYC movies of the 70s. Something about the look, feel and ambition of the filmmakers, not to mention the great characters, makes for great cinema. I’m talking about ‘The French Connection,’ “Serpico,’ and the original ‘The Taking of Pelham One-Two-Three” to name a few. What makes the original so great, aside from the grimy, claustrophobic backdrop of New York at the time, is the strong characters like Matthau and Shaw, but also great bit parts from character guys you’d recognize like Martin Balsam and Lee Wallace. It’s the story of an every-day subway controller who gets sucked into this tense hostage negotiation. It’s the everyman in wrong place/wrong time. With the update/remake, its harder to buy from The Denzel, mostly because, well, he’s Denzel. Like you say Jonesy, he’s good and reliable (like a classic car), but that doesn’t always make him the best for the job. And as for Travolta, well, good for him for still getting work. Do yourself a favor and rent the original, then rent this remake. While there’s nothing wrong with it, you’ll get a glimpse at what they were trying for…and how they fell short.”

Food, Inc.

VPJ: “I’m a vegetarian. I try not to be one of those vegetarians, though. You know the ones: strident, self-righteous, lecture-y. The ones that hurt the cause of vegetarianism every time they open their mouths. That being said, it’s easier to keep your opinions to yourself when there are people making documentaries like this one, about the megacorporations who control virtually all of the food production in the world. Their methods are about what you’d expect (driving small farmers and entrepreneurs out of business with amoral capitalistic glee), but it’s the meat production stuff that…man. I won’t go into it (I don’t want to be one of those), but this movie will make you angry, queasy, and really, really upset. That’s entertainment!”

JE: “Dammit Jonesy, I thought we had an unwritten agreement we wouldn’t talk about your…condition. Yes Maine, it’s true, I, the bacon-loving crown-prince of carnivores, am good friends with a…vegetarian. We can achieve peace in our time. That said, I like to think of myself as an enlightened meat-lover, who realizes the bad, reprehensible and otherwise icky things that get done in the name of getting a Black Angus ‘55 oz Lost Mesa HE-MAN steak slab!’ (Apologies to Mr. Patton Oswalt) I say this because I feel like flicks like this and books like ‘Fast Food Nation’ (but not the movie.) make meat-eaters developer a sort of Catholic-esque guilt about loving the meat. Those feelings aside, if you are someone (like me) who likes learning about where products come from, how industries work and the ways all these things impact you, then check out this movie. Michael Pollan, who appears in this flick, is no stranger to the workings of the food industry and all things eating-related, and I think he makes a more compelling storyteller than say, oh, I don’t know, Michael Moore. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go have a debate with my sandwich over whether I’m going to eat it.”

Lemon Tree

VPJ: “A symbolic drama about a resolute Palestinian widow who tries to keep her new neighbor, an Israeli defense minister, from having the titular beloved tree cut down. It’s exactly the sort of heartfelt, allegorical drama that makes me feel sad and powerless as a would-be artist. We can write all of the humanistic, lovely little films and stories in the world addressing that world’s biggest, most insoluble problems with insight, sensitivity, and love of our fellow man, and some jackass with an exploding vest or a cruise missile renders it all irrelevant and pitifully silly. Maybe I’m just having a bad day…”

JE: “Come on old chum, turn that frown upside down! But you have stumbled on the dirty little secret of good art my friend: even when it conveys a powerful message, it can live in a vacuum, and ultimately effect very little. And that’s a little disheartening. Whether it’s poverty and civil war in Africa or the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, the best movie in the world can only do so much. In this case the story clearly serves as an allegory for the whole conflict around the West Bank. But when that story is brought to life with such rich characters and told in such a moving way, the story becomes something else all together. Ironic, eh? A movie conveys such a strong, poignant message, and yet how much can it actually change? So, uh, hey, wasn’t ‘Clue’ an awesome movie?”

Finally, Videoport brings you the following movies without comment: “I Love You, Beth Cooper,” “Aliens In the Attic,” “Command Performance” (with Dolph Lundgren!), “The Answer Man,” “The Tournament,” and, of course, “Sand Serpents.”

PARTING SHOTS!
- Will Ferrell’s George W. Bush: Funny, unfunny or overrated?
- Why won’t Justin learn his nostalgia for 80s pop culture is hurting him?
- What’s the best remake you’ve seen lately?

VideoReport #220

Volume CCXX- November Rain

For the Week of 11/3/09

Videoport gives you a free rental every, single day. You’re welcome…

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Ed the Renter continues his perilous A-Z journey through Videoport’s Incredibly Strange section. Hold on tight:

Alien Prey- A couple of lesbians get attacked by a carnivorous alien. What more needs to be said! Rent now!

The Adventures of Barry Mackenzie- Pretty good especially if you thought Crocodile Dundee needed more comedy and crossdressers.

The Alarmist- Not very impressive but begs the question “who decided the best way to advertise this disc was with a picture of Stanley Tucci tied to a chair with David Arquette leering over him”? Hey, if the phrase “Stanley Tucci in bondage” is your thing, go for it.

The Anarchist’s Cookbook- This could have been much better but fell into the whole “rebelling isn’t really such a good thing” mold- boring.

Andy Warhol’s Trash- Yeah that pretty much sums up all those films for me. I hate Warhol, never understood his appeal, and pretty much hold him responsible for ruining modern art. But if you’re feeling pretentious certainly check these out.

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests you take ACTION, and rent a free CLASSIC today! (Apologies for the shameless pandering, and the bad wordplay, but the deadline looms, and the inches must be filled. If you want to avoid such unpleasantness in the future, send in your own movie reviews, movie lists, or anything else movie related to us at denmn@hotmail.com, our Myspace page www.myspace.com/videoportjones, or our Facebook page “Videoport Jones”. SO take ACTION today and…oh, forget it…)

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>> B.S. Eliot suggests Local Hero (in Comedy). As I waited for the frigid arms of Death to cradle me into the Infinite Slumber, I popped in Local Hero, hoping that the main menu screen would have some peaceful music that I could die to. Guess what? Totally shafted? Turns out it’s one of those old-ass DVDs that not only doesn’t have peaceful main menu music, but also it just starts playing the movie after a couple minutes, whether you like it or you don’t like it. Indignantly, I hurled the empty bottle of Aleve at the television and took a haul off my Bud Light/Clamato beverage. Paralyzed by laziness, I was forced to watch Local Hero. However, 111 minutes later (allegedly, according to the back of the case), this tale of strange and subtle charms had restored my will to live, my hunger for adventure, my sex drive, and, most importantly, my devotion to Gorgon, the disembodied voice that commands me to steal alcoholic Clamato beverages from 7/11. I give this film a B+.

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> Anime Ed suggests these selections from Videoport’s collection of Japanese animation:

Shigurui- This is the best anime I have seen in long time. Very dark samurai drama, concentrating on the madness and violence of the life instead of the whole honor and bushido thing. Highly recommended!! Banzai!

Hell Girl- Man the Japanese sure love revenge. This series is all about that and the price paid for exacting it. A little repetitive at first but pays off towards the end. Hell Girl’s so cute when she dispatches folks to purgatory, I just want to hug her! Banzai!!

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>> Dennis suggests that you don’t allow your little darlings to handle DVD until they learn that you never, EVER touch the shiny side of the disc with your adorable, jam-smeared fingers. Maybe when they’re ready to head off to college…

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, No More Mistress Nice Mommy suggests ‘Leverage’ (in Mystery/Thriller). If you’re anything like me, you have literally stayed awake all night, thrown into adrenalin-fueled insomnia with thoughts of revenge. You don’t want anyone to get hurt and you can’t get caught, but someone needs to get ruined. You’re an average, hard-working, dirt-poor American like me; you’ve had a boss who screams at you no matter how hard you work, an ex- who tries to brainwash your child, or maybe you’ve even been physically hurt by someone. I feel your pain. This is the show for you. Three men and two awesome women (all former “loaners”) form a multimillion dollar, philanthropy-type operation that specializes in getting back at really bad guys who totally victimize really super nice people like you and me (who are totally innocent!!) Suspend your disbelief for 42 delightful, campy minutes an episode with this very satisfying show. A great cast and ‘Mission Impossible’- type action make up for the preposterous storylines. I guarantee this show will entertain you and take your mind off all the bad people for a while.

>>>For Sunday, Elsa S. Customer suggests Twin Falls Idaho. If ever an indie film had all the false hallmarks of being an exploitative mess, Twin Falls Idaho is it. The film opens in a hotel of Lynchian dim seediness where two shy, faltering conjoined twins receive a visit from a zany young prostitute named Penny. The film soon introduces a substory with an ambiguous doctor (played with ironic distance by Patrick Bachau, veteran of many vampy and vampirific Eurotrash roles*), and its turning point is a misunderstanding at a Halloween party. This sounds like a voyeuristic peepshow or a maudlin mockery… but instead Twin Falls Idaho manages to be a tender character study, a solemn, sweet tale about love and interdependence and loneliness. It’s a mournful little story with some gently touching performances. Mark and Michael Polish, writer and writer-director brothers, also star as Blake and Francis Falls, and they convey their closeness with a (quite literally) quiet intimacy: the two murmur confidingly to each other as if they have, indeed, spent a lifetime only inches apart. Michele Hicks is brash and gentle by turns, a convincing portrait of a hard-bitten young hooker struggling between self-interest and compassion. And Lesley Ann Warren** turns in another of her remarkable small supporting roles here, wrestling with a really unlikeable part and giving it her all. The whole film is a very successful oddity. It’s tentative and slow, almost peaceful in its startling way — a meditative and lovely study that pushes the audience to consider an experience completely outside the scope of most daily lives and simultaneously makes us realize how very alike we are in our desires and our limitations.

*Editor’s Note: Such as his suavely villainous turn in one of my all-time favorite movies Choose Me.

**Editor’s Other Note: Also from the cult classic Choose Me!

New Releases this week at Videoport: GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra (for the second week in a row, we get a big budget action flick based on a line of toys! We are clearly being punished for something!), Lemon Tree (metaphorical drama about a Palestinian widow trying to keep her new neighbor, an Israeli defense minister , from having the titular item cut down), The Taking of Pelham 123 (John Travolta and Denzel Washington team up with soulless action-meister Tony Scott to remake the 1974 thriller about the hijacking of the titular New York City subway train; this one is fine, but please ignore the dismissive comments made by the dingbat Scott about the original- that one’s better), Will Ferrell: You’re Welcome America- A Final Night With George W. Bush (filmed version of Ferrell’s one man Broadway show as the former, um, president, I guess you’d have to call him; this is absolutely hilarious, by the way), Food, Inc. (as a vegetarian, I try not to be all self-righteous about eating meat; it’s easier when someone makes as harrowing a documentary about the unspeakably horrifying methods corporate food producers use to get that yummy meat to the table; was that a little snotty? Sorry), Aliens in the Attic (some adorable little moppets have to fight off the aliens invading their beach house; starring former SNL pals Tim Meadows and Kevin Nealon, and at least two tweens named Ashley), I Love You, Beth Cooper (hen the nerdy high school valedictorian proclaims his love for the most popular girl in school, she shows up at his house and gives him the best night of his life in this teen comedy undoubtedly written by a lonely one-time valedictorian), The Answer Man (Jeff Daniels plays a reclusive self-help author who finds out that real life is a little more complicated than he’d thought when he meets troubled single mom Lauren Graham), Command Performance (Dolph Lundgren is back! He punches a bunch o’guys! What else do you need to know!), Sand Serpents (the guy from Iron Eagle fighting, well, serpents, that live in the sand, I guess), Fears of the Dark (check Videoport’s Foreign Language section for this new, animated anthology film where sic of the creepiest dudes in cartooning work together to give you the heebie-jeebs), The Tournament (overqualified actors Ving Rhames and Robert Carlyle lend their seemingly-currently-unvalued talents to this direct-to-DVD action flick about an assassin tournament where assassins try to assassinate each other), ‘Monty Python’s Almost the Truth’ (comprehensive documentary where all the surviving Pythons dish on how they became the funniest human beings in the history of the universe).

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: The Dead (absolutely lovely; John Huston’s final film saw him directing daughter Anjelica and doing justice to James Joyce’s short story, which I maintain is the single most beautiful thing ever written by anyone, ever), The English Surgeon (documentary about the titular doctor, working at an underfunded Ukraine hospital, and the wrenching decisions and compromises he must make on a daily basis), Black Devil Doll (where do you find a willfully-offensive horror comedy about the spirit of a black militant who comes back in the body of a murderous, horny ventriloquist dummy? Why in Videoport’s Incredibly Strange section, of course!), Strip Nude for Your Killer (the all-time worst advice? Perhaps, but see for yourself when you rent this 1975 Italian sleaze- and murder- and boob-fest, starring the queen of same, the sluttily-lovely Edwige Fenech), ‘Private Century’ (filmmaker Jan Sikl spellbindingly edits together forty years of home movies from ordinary people in order to tell the modern history of Czechoslovakia through their eyes), Unmistaken Child (documentary follows a young Buddhist monk who embarks on a years-long journey to find the child who he believes is the reincarnation of his beloved teacher; touching and all, but, since that child’s parents might not believe in spooky ghost nonsense, also kind of creepy, no?), Paraiso Travel (a seductive young woman with dreams of riches in New York City and the puppylovestruck young man who’s devoted to her attempt to travel illegally from their home in Colombia to America in this one), The Hellbenders (this 1967 Spaghetti Western starring Joseph Cotten is beloved of Quentin Tarantino, so you are gonna watch it; also, check out the informative documentary The Spaghetti West to find out what that whole deal was all about), ‘Edge of Darkness’ (when his nuclear activist daughter is killed, a straightlaced British father is forced to confront his country’s nuclear policies in the 80s in this British miniseries), Earth 2100 (speculative [translated: terrifying] documentary posits how our current glutinous habits could mean all human life is doomed in the next century, unless people make some small, manageable personal sacrifices; oh crap…), Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soapbox (documentary about the story behind the liquid soap with all of the utterly bananas and borderline creepy sayings on the bottle), Red Cliff and Red Cliff 2 (how did Videoport get a hold of two precious copies of legendary action director John Woo’s [The Killer, Hard Boiled] massive, epic historical drama? You don’t know…you don’t wanna know…), IP Man (Donnie Yen and Simon Yam star in this martial arts biopic about the first teacher of Wing Chun [and Bruce Lee's teacher]), Shinjuku Incident (the new Jackie Chan movie! A violent tale of illegal Chinese immigrants, the Yakuza, and, one presumes, a lot of kicking).

BUY THINGS!

All right, we’ve held off until November, but it’s time to kick the holiday shopping frenzy into overdrive for the year. Here, then are the iron-clad reasons why you should shop at Videoport this year, instead of throwing your money to some giant, local-economy crippling, employee-exploiting, crappy customer service-having corporate behemoth:

1. You get something for yourself for buying something for someone else: for every movie you buy from Videoport, you get a free rental on your Videoport account! So, buy one movie for a loved one and you get one free rental for yourself. Buy two, get two. You get the idea…

1a. Of course, Videoport, in addition to all of the movies for sale right here in the store, can order any movie, boxed set, or TV show currently in print. It’ll take about a week.

2. Videoport has gift certificates: yup, for the big movie renter on your list, give the gift of rentals! And, make sure to tell the lucky stiff that Videoport gift certificate rentals are good with Videoport’s daily specials! That means, essentially, that you’re giving twice as many movie rentals as it seems! You’re twice as good a friend/lover/obligated co-worker! (Our ‘three rentals for ten bucks’ gift certificate makes a perfect Secret Santa gift that says “I had to get you something”!

Check out the VideoReport (and more) online!

You can read back issues of the VideoReport, leave comments, read the weekly new release review column by Videoport Jones and Justin Ellis (of the Portland Press Herald), and pretty much any weird movie article, link, or list we can come up with in our spare time. Just type in www.videoportjones.wordpress.com to your computer-type device and join in the fun.

Park for free at Videoport!

1. Parking meters are silly and inactive after 6pm Monday-Saturday and all day on Sunday.

2. The parking lot behind the building is open for free one hour parking after 5pm Monday-Friday and all day on weekends.

3. Videoport takes part in the Park & Shop program (because we’re so super), which means you can just pull in to any downtown parking garage (including the courthouse garage, about a minute away) and we’ll get you a free hour of parking. Again, you’re welcome…

Videoport on ‘Willard Beach’!

Yup, Videoport is the seeting for this episode of the popular, and hilarious, new web series ‘Willard Beach’!

 

Check it out here!

Justin Ellis of the Press Herald and I on the Week’s New Releases (10.27.09)

Maybe we should just call this the Autumn of Disillusionment. First it’s our favorite actors, now it’s one of our favorite directors. If that weren’t enough we’re beginning the slide into mediocrity that is holiday movie season. What are Videoport Jones and I to do? Our jobs of course. Which is to say, make fun of the new DVD releases.* (*Which I should note was regrettably missed last week when I was out. “Transformers – Revenge of the Fallen,” consider yourself lucky.)

Whatever Works

Videoport Jones: “I’d like to preface this review by announcing that I am not enjoying this. ‘Annie Hall.’ ‘Love & Death.’ ‘Manhattan.’ ‘Take the Money and Run.’ ‘Hannah and Her Sisters.’ ‘Sleeper.’ ‘Broadway Danny Rose.’ ‘Bullets Over Broadway.’ ‘Even Everyone Says I Love You.’ These are great movies, personal favorites, and the foundation for the rapidly-eroding bulwark of good will I’ve erected around Woody Allen against the increasingly-incontrovertible waves of criticism that have greeted virtually every movie he’s made for, oh, twenty years or so. I was momentarily roused from my slough of despondent fallen hero worship when I heard that ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ comedy god Larry David was cast as the latest Woody simulacrum in this one (he seems a better fit than Kenneth Branagh, Will Ferrell, or, gods help us, Jason Biggs). But, having now seen it, well, that’s over. David’s a funny guy, and his signature brand of misanthropic grumpiness seems, on paper, a good fit for Allen’s late-career grouchy comic pessimism, but, and here’s where I’m not having any fun – Woody Allen has absolutely lost it. He has lost it on several levels. To wit: 1. He has no idea how people talk anymore. People don’t talk like this, and Woody thinks that they do. It’s a stilted, uptown mirror to Kevin Smith’s overwritten dialogue and, like Smith’s, it only works when it’s, well, funny. This is just hollow. 2. He is out of ideas and he is repeating himself in almost every way. David plays an aging, sarcastic guy who thinks that life is pointless, that people are stupid and cruel, and that death is coming for him any second now, and who meets up with a young, beautiful, not particularly bright girl (played, with chattering charmlessness here, by Evan Rachel Wood) who, although uncouth, is refreshingly innocent, guileless, and improbably into older curmudgeons. Sound familiar? Couple that with some fetishistic New York snobbery, and a gaggle of overqualified actors joining the ‘I got to play an underwritten supporting role in a Woody Allen movie’ club, and, well, you’ve got this unfunny, derivative, tired, and altogether depressing film. The word ‘tarnish’ keeps coming to mind.”

Justin: “Here we go once again, another installment of “What Happened to You” theater. I think I’m maybe a little more forgiving of Woody than you, in that I think some of the more recent movies, like ‘Celebrity’ and ‘Small Time Crooks’ had enjoyable moments and showed glimpses of Woody transitioning into a filmmaker who lives in a weird sort of an amplified world of New York or L.A. I’d be more forgiving of him if it felt like these comedies were supposed to live on in a hyper-reality making fun of our own. I say this, because one of my favorite Woody Allen movies is a strange one: ‘What’s Up Tiger Lily,’ which is strange, surreal and funny. ANYWAY, all of this is to say he’s just off on an island now, and he’s probably too far gone to come back. The grumpy, frumpy-yet-charming older man character has been run into the ground Woody, we know this because you created the standard. Maybe it’s time to put down the camera and try producing? But since we know that’s not going to happen, perhaps we can ship him off to an island with other actors and directors who have outlived their creativity. It’s be like the island of misfit toys, but George Lucas would be there, and Eddie Murphy…”

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

VPJ: “Wait – ‘Dawn of the Dinosaurs’? But this is the third movie about an approaching, well ice age, and that’s when the dinosaurs died out in favor of our wisecrackin’, celebrity-voiced mammal ancestors…shouldn’t this be called ‘Dusk of the Dinosaurs’? Anyone? Well, this second sequel in the middling animated series, nonsensical title and all, is here, with Denis Leary, John Leguizamo, Ray Romano, and others getting paid. I have literally nothing more to add, except to say that Pixar’s ‘Up’ comes out on November 10th.”

JE: “Oh Jonesy, ye of little faith. Leave your anthropology book at home and turn off your brain for this family-friend laff riot! In this installment our heroes stumble upon a hidden world where the dinosaurs, still exist! Sorry…I don’t know what overcame me there. I feel ill. I’m not gonna pretend to know about the ‘Ice Age’ franchise, because I look at it and it makes me think of ‘The Land Before Time’ franchise, which, then just makes me angry. They are – with the exception of a few mammals and dinos – the same. Only ‘Land’ came first. I suppose I could say what I always do at times like this, that we’re just not the target demo here, but that feels hollow. Let’s wrap this up with the usual disclaimer: If you’ve got kids and are looking for something to entertain them and want to grab a 90 minute nap or watch a ball game on a separate TV, then this is your bet. If you’re one of those parents who wants to, you know, actually spend time with their kids watching movies, then, not so much.”

Nothing Like the Holidays

VPJ: “Well, the first shot in the yearly Christmas movie wars has been fired across our bow. Every year, the same deal: grab a bunch of suspiciously-dissimilar-looking celebrities to play a mildly dysfunctional family, give everyone a little backstory/conflict that can be wrapped up with a new boyfriend/girlfriend or a few hugs, throw in a wacky uncle and, jingle bells! You’ve got yourself an easily-digestible, completely forgettable would-be holiday favorite. (Am I being too harsh? Go ahead and tell me one memorable detail from ‘The Family Stone,’ ‘Surviving Christmas,’ ‘Four Christmases,’ ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas,’ ‘Christmas with the Kranks,’ ‘Deck the Halls,’ or ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night.’ I can wait…) This one at least can boast some ethnic flavor, with reliable Latino actors like John Leguizamo, Elizabeth Pena, Freddy Rodriguez, and the ever-welcome Luis Guzman (and, for some reason, Debra Messing) doing time in the tinsel. It may be ordinary, predictable, and bland, but…well…yeah…”

JE: “I think the bad Christmas movie is the worst racket of all, worse than Halloween scare flicks or anything that is marketed with the phrase ‘This Valentine’s Day…’ I may be repeating myself when I say this, but, do studios make this junk because they think people expect it? I get the idea since the holidays are a time when people need a break from family events, shopping or other madness, but do we really need stuff like this? It seems like every December I’ll try to go to the movies and it’s a choice between bad holiday comedies, Oscar contenders looking for an early lead and the occasional sneaky good drama or sci-fi flick. Maybe we should blame Chevy Chase and ‘Christmas Vacation,’ or ‘A Christmas Story’ for becoming templates. We get it, families can be crazy and holidays can make for stressful and hilarious results, but if you’re going through all that in real life, would you want to go see that in a movie, and a bad one at that? John Leguizamo’s got a badgering, obnoxious brother, so do I, Hahahahaha! Luis Guzman drinks to cope with the embarrassments of family, so do I! Hahahahahaha. Come on now Hollywood.”

Il Divo

VPJ: “Giulio Andreotti has been elected Prime Minister of Italy seven times since 1946. He’s been named ’senator for life,’ and is still active politically today at age 90. He’s also been accused of having ties to the Mafia, the Freemasons (and the P2/Vatican Bank scandal), and the kidnapping and murder of political rival (and former Italian Prime Minister) Aldo Moro. Sounds like an ideal figure for a biopic, doesn’t he? Well, some intrepid Italian filmmakers have made one about the still-living Adreotti, and, since they haven’t been murdered (yet), maybe that means the old man’s power is finally fading. ‘Il Divo’ is a fascinating, if confusing (if you’re not well versed in 20th century Italian history), and often funny look at a political monster (his nicknames include “the Sphinx,” “the Hunchback,” “the Black Pope,” and, of course, “Beelzebub”) who, while always at the center of the most outrageous scandal, controversy, and conspiracy theory, has never been pinned down.”

JE: “To think we get worried about governors who disappear to South America with mistresses and vice presidents who accidentally shoot friends. You’ve got to admit they do some things better in Italy, this time making Democracy menacing and sexy all at the same time. The reason people like Andreotti make compelling characters in film is probably the same as what gets them in power, charisma and cunning. History’s littered with guys like that, a little too connected to shady events, yet so coated in Teflon they’ve skated past all problems. As you point out the fact that the filmmakers are still alive is either a testament to Andreotti’s waining power or his sense of humor. While not a documentary, ‘Il Divo’ provides a glimpse into what it’s like to be infamous. Even if you don’t know about Italian history just sit back and enjoy the story.”

Orphan

VPJ: “A nice, wealthy couple decide to adopt a lonely, orphaned girl from a disadvantaged country. Feel good story of the year? Not hardly, when the girl has creepy doll eyes, a vaguely Middle European accent and dresses like a temperance crusader. Yup, it’s time for middle class white America to be afraid of foreigners and poor people again according to this crappy, manipulative ‘evil child’ thriller. Starring the very talented Peter Sarsgaard (‘The Center of the World,’ ‘Shattered Glass,’ ‘The Dying Gaul’) who deserves much, much better, and Vera Farmiga (‘The Departed’) who’s just about where she should be.”

JE: “I’ve never understood the appeal of the ‘creepy kid’ genre and I hope I’m not alone. I mean as a culture we’re supposed to like kids, right? Like them enough to have them and ensure the continuation of the species. Is that it? Directors/screenwriters think they’re being clever by messing with people’s perceptions of children as wholesome and innocent? Doesn’t matter if it’s ‘The Omen,’ ‘Problem Child,’ or this, that’s messed up man. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that’s wrong, and it’s even worse if it’s executed poorly and cheaply, as is done here. Don’t power-lock the doors of the Ford Childmover just yet parents, just skip this flick. And remember, adoption, still okay 9 out of 10 times. Unless your child is the chosen one.”

Battlestar Galactica – The Plan

VPJ: “‘Battlestar Galactica’ is back! And people are…kind of happy, and pretty confused! This tag end to the acclaimed sci fi series revival takes us back to the beginning of the show and reveals the whole, you know, “kill all the humans” plot from the Cylon perspective. I haven’t really gotten into BSG in a big way yet; it seems fine, but I still have childhood cheese burns from the daffy original, and from what I gather from the Galacticans at Videoport, there’s a certain secondhand feel to this movie (I understand that some of your favorite characters don’t appear). So…could nerd riots be far off?”

JE: “RIOT! FRAKKIN’ RIOT! OK, we all know I’m a big nerd for Battlestar. I may or may not have non-costume BSG related clothing in my wardrobe (WHAT? A guy can’t have a T-Shirt? is that a crime?). So I’ll take anything they feed me when it comes to this story since they’ve earned my fanaticism through compelling stories, great characters and a mind-melting plot. That said, I’m not sure how I feel about this one. I remember sitting down to watch the finale of the show, only to see commercials for this and instantly think ‘oh no.’ Once a story’s done you have to worry about any additions. While the potential is there to make the whole thing better, it feels like the potential is double to make the whole enterprise worse. But I’m a big sucker, so I will most likely buy this, chew it over and wait to watch the spin-off series ‘Caprica.’ Yes that’s right folks, the lesson as always is I am indeed a sucker.”

Parting Shots:

- Is it time to drop Woody Allen off on the Island of Misfit Toys?
- What’s your recipe for a GOOD holiday flick?
- Seriously, who likes creepy kid thriller movies?

VideoReport #219

Volume CCXIX- Werewolf Bar Mitzvah, Spooky Scary…

For the Week of 10/27/09

Videoport wishes you a spooky, scary, and renty Halloween. Oh, by the way, LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU! Bwaa ha haaaa…gotcha!

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Ed the Renter kicks off this Halloweenie edition of the VideoReport with some obscure, quick-hitter horror movie suggestions (you can find them all in the Horror section. Duh):

Phantasm- Absolutely the best “who the ef knows what is happening” horror movie ever. Gets points in my book for the great cheesy scene where the heroes are attacked by a giant bug.

Pin- Very creepy. Good movie no one has ever sen.

Pumpkinhead- Come on, this is the perfect Halloween movie. Lance Henriksen rules!!

Rojo Sangre- The great Paul Naschy gets a tour de force in this one. Best opening line ever!

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests Arsenic and Old Lace (in Mystery/Thriller, but it’s a Classic, so you can rent it for free on Tuesday!). Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant), confirmed bachelor and outspoken author of anti-marriage books and essays, has succumbed to the charms of the girl next door (Priscilla Lane) and gotten himself hitched — on Halloween, no less! Now he just has to share the happy news with the dotty old aunts and uncle who raised him, and then he and the blushing bride can take off for their honeymoon. But you’ve seen enough screwball comedies to know: it’s never that simple. Mortimer’s departure is delayed, and his marital bliss postponed, when he learns that his sweet little aunts (Josephine Hull and Jean Adair) have been poisoning their unfortunate gentleman lodgers in a campaign to end the suffering of lonely old bachelors. Things go from bad to worse when more of Mortimer’s long-lost family shows up; meanwhile, his unwitting bride anxiously awaits him. It’s old-fashioned screwballery brought to you by Frank Capra, who puts some slapstick-y fillips on the original stage play. Cary Grant takes advantage of the hilarity, discarding his usual urbane gloss in favor of over-the-top takes and unabashed mugging; Hull and Adair balance this beautifully, radiating a calm and contented benevolence over the whole macabre mess. It’s a romp of dark comedy and goofy suspense.

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests that you check out these cool scary flicks in the Foreign Language section if you’re feeling adventurous (and if the Horror section has been decimated by the less adventurous) this Halloween season.  Anatomy (gory thriller starring Run Lola Run’s Franka Potente as a spunky med student uncovering bloody secrets in her medical school), The Orphanage (genuinely terrifying and moving Spanish haunted house thriller), The Devil’s Backbone (another gem of atmospheric horror from Spain), Pulse, Shutter, Ringu, Ringu 2, One Missed Call, Evil Dead Trap, Dark Water, The Grudge (all really scary Japanese films, most of which were apallingly remade into American crapfests), They Came Back (moody French film about loved ones coming back from the dead…different), Nosferatu (Werner Herzog’s remake of the silent German vampire classic), Tesis (really intense thriller about a grad student who uncovers some really unpleasant things while investigating the urban legend of snuff films), Cronos (weird vampire flick from Guillermo Del Toro, director of Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone), Vampyr (Carl Dreyer’s 1932 adaptation of the classic vampire novel by Sheridan le Fanu)…branch out horror fans- the rest of the world’s a very scary place.

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests Donnie Darko. It’s October, 1988, and Donnie Darko is counting down the days until Halloween. Why? The movie unravels that mystery, sort of, but the journey to that half-answer is tortuous, intriguing, and disturbing on several levels. Despite writer-director Richard Kelly’s intent, for many viewers, the story ends up as a meta-mystery: is Donnie receiving supernatural messages about a doomsday event, or is he slipping dangerously out of touch with reality? Is this a film about extra-natural events, about a young man’s existential crisis, or about a descent into madness? Either way, the film is tragic, complexly compassionate, and sweetly elegiac, with a sorrowful empathy not only for Donnie’s plight, but also for supporting characters which a lesser film would treat as two-dimensional villains or clueless chumps. Jake Gyllenhall, starring as Donnie, is an inspired piece of casting. He’s completely believable as a clever but troubled teenager. Gyllenhaal’s Donnie is vaguely threatening, a complicated mess of confusion and yearning, hulking around in a man-sized body. He manages to meld seemingly opposing characteristics in every moment of film. He’s gloomy and dark, but with bright bursts of cheer and charm breaking across his face like sun breaking through stormclouds, and even displays moments of delightful childlike innocence. This is Kelly’s first film, and its scope and scale are almost impossibly ambitious; without Gyllenhaal’s talent and ability to underplay, you could cut that “almost” and leave it at “impossible.” (Though both DVD versions are fine, I prefer the original theatrical release; the director’s cut is 20 minutes longer, with a more cluttered narrative and less Echo and The Bunnymen.)

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” teaches us about hope and about humility. Every year, Linus waits for the Great Pumpkin, and every year, Linus is disappointed. Yet he persists: he tries to sustain the wavering hope that this year something transcendent will visit him, will validate his years of sacrifice and trust. “Each year, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch that he thinks is the most sincere. He’s gotta pick this one. He’s got to. I don’t see how a pumpkin patch can be more sincere than this one. You can look around and there’s not a sign of hypocrisy. Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see.” He’s the Fox Mulder of the Peanuts gang: he wants to believe. I love you, Linus, even though you’re the sad puppet of a fundamentalist gourd-based religious faction.

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, April suggests Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (in Horror). Bette Davis got the Oscar nomination for her role of Baby Jane in this awesome creepfest but it’s Joan Crawford who really makes the movie great. Yeah, yeah, Davis is all crazy psycho dressed like a creepy doll but I just keep thinking how terrifying it is to be the wheelchair-bound sane sister. If you’re looking for a great movie to watch on Halloween that isn’t all gore and guts and actually has real thrills in it, you can’t go wrong with Baby Jane.

>>>For Sunday, Elsa S. Customer suggests Ginger Snaps (in Horror). Breaking away from the stultifying mass of formulaic teenage-horror films, Ginger Snaps is a darkly subversive werewolf movie with a vicious sense of humor and an unapologetic frankness about youthful hungers. It tells the story of the Fitzgerald sisters (Emily Perkins and Katherine Isabelle), two disaffected teenagers who radiate stagey, shallow morbidity. Even their longstanding death pact bores them silly. Their mother (played with pitch-perfect determined cheer by Mimi Rogers) watches them with hysterically-repressed anxiety, hoping that her daughters will grow up into perfectly normal darlings. Spoiler alert: they won’t. The film cleverly uses lycanthropy as a complex metaphor for the many transformations that come with puberty — not only the bodily metamorphosis, the shapeshifting and hairiness and bleeding, but also the unrelenting insistence of the body’s appetites. Perkins and Isabelle handle their roles with the aplomb of accomplished actors; they manage to earn our empathy without betraying the deeply bitter and unpleasant characters of Brigitte and Ginger Fitzgerald, who (with the ardor of bored teenagers everywhere) would rather die than be average.

New Releases this week at Videoport: Battlestar Galactica: The Plan (Galactica junkies rejoice! Thought the series has ended, and thus your lives have no meaning, this posthumous BG movie promises to sate your cravings, at least for a little while…), Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (part three of the animated film series with the prehistoric animals with the celebrity voices and all; it’ll hold us until Up comes out on Novemebr 10th!), Orphan (Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga learn the lesson that adopting needy children from other countries leads to horror and death. Has anyone told Brangelina? Sarsgaard’s a good actor, at least), Whatever Works (‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’’s Larry David is the latest talented actor to be swallowed up as Woody Allen’s comic mouthpiece in the Woodman’s most recent, largely-forgettable exercise in creative petering-out), Nothing Like the Holidays (yup, it’s time for the year’s crop of Christmas movies to begin; this one’s can boast a wealth of Latino Hollywood talent, with John Leguizamo, Elizabeth Pena, Freddy Rodriguez, and the ever-welcome Luiz Guzman, oh, and Debra Messing, for some reason), ‘Life After People’- season 1 (the History Channel speculates on what the world is gonna be like after all of us pesky humans disappear with the help of experts, spooky narration, and lots of CGI buildings going SMASH!; seriously, this sort of thing is like crack to me), Into Temptation (Jeremy Sisto and Kristin Chenoweth star as, respectively, a priest and a prostitute in this dark drama; also starring ‘The Office’’s Kevin [Brian Baumgartner], which is irrelevant, but I like Kevin), Il Divo (brilliant, darkly-comic biopic about Giulio Andreotti, the longtime Italian politician whose reputed connections to the Mafia, the Freemasons, and a whole lot o’ murders [including, possibly, that of his political rival, Prime Minister Aldo Moro] haven’t prevented him from being named ‘Senator for life’), Stan Helsing (get it? Yeah, it’s another labored, unfunny movie spoof from some of the people responsible for the Scary Movie franchise), Afterwards (direct-to-DVD thriller about a lawyer who meets a spooky guy who claims he can predict when someone is about to die; the only reason you should conceivably care- said spooky guy is played by a slumming John Malkovich).

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: Tinkerbell and the Lost Treasure (yay! Disney continues to plunder its own animation legacy with another direct-to-DVD sequel! Our standards are getting lower as we speak!), Z (Costa-Gavras’ superlative political thriller about right-wing Greek fascists trying to overthrow the country’s democratically-elected government [like they do], gets the deluxe, Criterion treatment), Death in the Garden (from legendary surrealist director Luis Bunuel comes this belated DVD release of his 1956 tale of a diverse group of people forced to flee into a South American rainforest due to a local revolution), Perestroika (an acclaimed astrophysicist returns to his native Russia after decades in exile, only to find the new, post-Communist Moscow as confusing as ever; cult movie fans- this was directed by the guy who made Liquid Sky!), ‘Trial and Retribution’- season 3 (more of the British crime series currently setting rental records in Videoport’s Mystery/Thriller section), You Weren’t There: A History of Chicago Punk 1977-1984 (documentary includes great footage of seminal Windy City punk bands like Effigies, Naked Raygun, Strike Under, Articles of Faith and others), I Can See You (just in time for Halloween, this surreal, low budget horror film follows some yuppies in the woods, with things going about as wrong as they possibly can…), Lioness (documentary about a group of American female soldiers who, in the [current] Iraq war, became the first group of female soldiers to fight in direct ground combat), Tucker’s Crossing and The Bigfoot Diaries (two low budget horror films from New Hampshire director Jamie Sharps whose very nice ladyfriend brought them to us for you all to rent), Roxy Music: More Than This (the Brian/Bryans [Eno and Ferry]’s legendary band gets their own retrospective documentary), I Am Because We Are (this documentary, about the wrenching fate of the million plus orphans in Malawi dealing with AIDS, and, well, being orphans was written by Madona, of all people, and features Desmond Tutu and others; thus ensuring that the names ‘Madonna’ and Desmond Tutu’ would be forever linked in the most unlikely pairing of all time), Summer Storm (from 40s-50s master of melodrama, director Douglas Sirk [All That Heaven Allows, Written on the Wind] comes this typically-lush adaptation of a Chekhov play), Refresh, Neverland, Everyday is Saturday, and Wild Stallions (four new sports documentaries about people who strap wood to their feet and hurt themselves), Marigold (middling American actress Ali Larter plays a middling American actress who gets stranded in India and gets involved in a lavish Bollywood movie), ‘The Guardian’- season 1 (before people liked Simon Baker in ‘The Mentalist’, they were sort of indifferent to him in this series about a shamed lawyer forced to be nice).

Dennis presents one sentence reviews of the only movies that ever actually scared me: (SPOILERS, baby):

The Blair Witch Project: He’s in the corner! He’s in the corner!

Angel Heart: That little bastard at the end gives me the heebie jeebies just thinking about him to this day.

Jacob’s Ladder: Stupid ending aside, this is as close to one of my nightmares as I ever hope to see on a DVD.

Halloween: The first, the original, still the best…the most masterful use of foreground/background in film history, and that sparse piano theme is not what you want to hear if you’re home alone.

Jaws: Can anyone ever be at peace in the ocean anymore?

Candyman: Something about the combination of icy camerawork, Phillip Glass’ moody score, Tony Todd’s imposing, soulful presence, and climbing in that hole in the wall with the Candyman’s face painted on it!!!

Session 9: Just plain well-crafted spook stuff with a great setting.

The Last Broadcast: Pre Blair Witch-style low budget flim about the Jersey Devil has some good, scary ideas…and a really stupid ending.

The Baby’s Room: Part of the Spanish ‘Six Films to Die For’ series, this one’s just plain creepy.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: That boat ride sequence is perhaps the most intense thing I’ve seen in my life; they show this to kids?

Carrie: Two words: Shock. Ending.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978): Best last scene of a horror movie ever caps off a great ratcheting up of the tension throughout.

Don’t Look Now: Two films in a row featuring Donald Sutherland and a serious W.T.F!!!!! ending.

Onibaba: Utterly creepy throughout, culminating in some all-time freaky imagery.

The Vanishing: The Dutch original’s ending- wheeeeaaaaughhhhh.

Signs: So sue me- before it gets lame, there are some serious scares (The newsreader saying, “The following footage may disturb you”…yup, it did.)

The Mothman Prophecies: Not a good movie, but the whole “Chap.Stik” thing is undeniably creepy.

Alien: Duh.

Aliens: The whole motion detector scene.

Eraserhead: The world has ceased to make sense, and I can’t wake up.

The Exorcist: Tubular Bells still does it for me.

Check us out online at www.videoportjones.wordpress.com!

I run down the week’s new releases (Justin’s on hiatus) for 10/20/09

Justin’s indisposed this week, on top secret Portland Press Herald business. He’ll be back next week to give me some sorely-needed backup. Oh, and if you’re looking for Justin and my column in the PPH’s GO section this week (or any week hereafter apparently), you can go on ahead and stop now. Oh, well, back to the internet ghetto…

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: “Some thoughts which occurred whilst watching Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen:

1. I actually watched Transformers 2. I believe I should be afforded some credit and/or sympathy for this.

2. Why did they make that one weedy little robot, the one with the spray tan and the pubescent facial hair? Oh, wait, that’s Shaia LaBeouf. Apologies.

3. Well, at least they got the other robot right; pretty, lifelike, and it moves and talks almost like a real human. Oh wait, that’s Megan Fox. Apologies. (A sidebar: in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, Ms. Fox played a vapid, waxily-pretty starlet whom the other characters actively posit may be secretly mentally-challenged. Watching her in this movie, I found myself wondering that the actual Ms. Fox may be mentally-challenged. She’s worse at pointing and yelling in front of a green screen than the kids in The Goonies).

4. Oh Rainn Wilson, I just feel bad for you, dude. This is not a wise step in your attempt to prove yourself a viable movie actor.

5. While I resisted the urge to do so (mostly), I think you can lay on the fast forward button on your remote whenever there are just humans on the screen. Not that the twenty or so scenes where LaBeouf and Fox decide whether to break up aren’t riveting. Seriously, someone out there should do an all “robot smash” edit online.

6. The film seems to have appropriated George Lucas’ sense of humor, right down to thinking that a minstrel-show, comic relief Jar Jar Binks-esque transformer is a must.

7. The “robot smash” portions of the film are as exciting as watching your roommate play “MechWarrior” on his PS2. (Studios: you can put that quote on the DVD box for free if you like).

8. When a film begins with the credit, “in association with HASBRO”, you know it’s gonna be quality.

9. Speaking of #8, could this be the best film ever made from a line of toys? (Again, feel free to use that quote to promote the film…) I can think of Bratz, the My Little Pony movie, and maybe the Care Bears film. Definitely it’s in the top two anyway.

10. Further delving into #8, which genre is the most hellish on us viewers: the ‘based on video game movie’ (Street Fighter, Doom, Super Mario Brothers, Mortal Kombat, etc), the ‘based on a board game’ movie (Clue, The Mutant Chronicles, the upcoming Candyland film [god, I wish I were joking], etc), the ‘based on a Disney theme park ride’ movie (Tower of Terror, The Haunted Mansion, and don’t get me started in the interminable Pirates of the Caribbean franchise), the ‘based on a TV series movie (a list too depressing to go into here), or this, the ‘based on a toy line’ movie? Man, I sort of liked Clue, so it can’t be that category, but…

11. Does no one know the difference between a fun, exciting brainless action blockbuster and a lame, limply-directed commercial product anymore?

12. If I were getting paid, I’d be demanding hazard pay right now. As it is, I’m going to pour myself a beer and watch some Kurosawa before I’m too stupid to finish this article…”

Blood: The Last Vampire: “This live-action remake of an anime flick about a sweet-looking teenaged girl who’s actually a centuries-old half vampire vampire killer has so much unconvincing, sword-spilled gore, they should’ve called it “CGI Blood : The Last Vampire.” HAHAHAA, get it! Anybody? Well, that’s about all I’ve got for this one, a barely-released, entirely blah would-be action movie. It’s got a pretty Asian girl (in the requisite fetishistic schoolgirl uniform), not a name actor in sight, and performances worthy of the average video game cut scene. Oh, and lots and lots of that really unconvincing computer blood . Check out the original anime; it’s actually not bad.”

Cheri: “Michelle Pfeiffer reteams with her erstwhile Dangerous Liasons director Stephen Frears for another saucy period piece. This one, while perhaps fifty percent less saucy than its predecessor, is still most worthwhile, with the enduringly-lovely Ms. Pfeiffer portraying an aging courtesan in an adaptation of Colette’s typically-subtly and melancholy novel. Let’s talk about Michelle Pfeiffer for a moment, shall we. Pegged early on as just another (achingly beautiful) face, she revealed herself a capable actress, able to infuse her (inevitably) gorgeous characters with a surprising soulfulness in films like The Fabulous Baker Boys, Married to the Mob, The Age of Innocence, and my guilty pleasure Tequila Sunrise. Then after wedding the once-ubiquitous TV creator David E. Kelley, she toned down her career for a while. It’s nice to have her back, and here, playing a woman, long invested in performance, who faces the inevitable loss of her feminine charms, and therefore power, she brings an added dimension to the film. And Frears is one of the under-the-radar directors that people don’t realize is responsible for some of their favorite films (I heartily recommend The Hit, My Beautiful Laundrette, Prick Up Your Ears, The Grifters, High Fidelity, Dirty Pretty Things, and The Queen). Worth a rental, especially on date night.”

Wrong Turn 3: Left for : “In lieu of beating the crap out of this direct-to-DVD, star-less second sequel to a horror movie that wasn’t any good to begin with, here’s a list of some recent releases from the last month that I really liked: Away We Go, Drag Me to Hell, Infestation, Anvil!: The Story of Anvil, Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation, The friend Experience, Observe and Report, and O’Horten. See- just because the studios toss us a lackluster new release week doesn’t mean there’s not a wide, varied backlog of stuff on the Videoport shelves to hold you over ’til next time. Oh, by the way, Wrong Turn 3 sucks.”

Saturday Night Live: The Best of Amy Poehler: “I love SNL, for all it’s undeniable ups and downs, but I always felt that she was a little above the show. A founding member of the brilliant improv and sketch troupe the Upright Citizens Brigade, and star of the on-its-way-to-the-top sitcom ‘Parks and Recreation’, the pixieish, crazy-eyed Poehler is like a tiny, fearless comic force of nature. As for her best of- it’s funny, of course, because she’s in it, but you should really see her in her element with the UCB. Check out her stellar, bananas work in the first two seasons of their Comedy Central sketch show and, especially, their stage show ASSSSCAT, where her particular brand of lunatic genius really shines. And she’s also my girlfriend.”

VideoReport #218

Volume CCXVIII- Godzilla vs. Balki

For the Week of 10/20/09

Videoport will give you a free movie every single day…and there’s nothin’ you can do about it!

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests The Limey (in Mystery/Thriller). A most unusual thriller, Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey turns the classic revenge narrative on its side, holds it up, and lets us see the light shine through. It’s an odd piece, and an affecting one. Despite an excellent supporting cast, including marvelous performances from Luis Guzman and Lesley Anne Warren, Terence Stamp carries the film on his slim shoulders; he plays Wilson, an aging British thief. During one of his many sojourns in jail, his daughter Jenny grew up and moved to California, where she cavorted with a much older (and much richer) music producer, Valentine (played with old-school SoCal ease and skeeze by Peter Fonda). Now she’s dead. When he’s released, Wilson heads straight to L.A. to get the real story. He’s rough and gruff, full of colorful Cockney slang, and all alone in an absurdly foreign culture. He’s also dangerously smart — about people and about criminal enterprises. The discontinuity of the editing and sound give the whole story a dreamy, dazed feeling, letting us experience Wilson’s own sense of disorientation — in L.A., in the free world outside of prison, and in a world that was home to the daughter he loved but never really had time to know. The film loops between states: it’s static and pensive and dreamily unwinding into emptiness, and suddenly it’s whip-fast and viciously sharp… and back again. Suitably enough for a film about aging 1960s icons, the narrative in The Limey plays like a warped old LP, spinning around on its axis and warbling its wavering song into the air.

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> April suggests a James Whale marathon! (In Classics). Who’s James Whale you ask? Why, only the director of such films as: Frankenstein (1931), the classic tale of horror starring Boris Karloff as the monster and Colin Clive as the doctor who says, “Now I know what it feels like to be God!” The Old Dark House (1932)- a creepy mansion is inhabited by the Femm family, who might be the first “crazy-family-that-terrorizes-wayward travelers”.  Starring Karloff as the butler, Charles Laughton, and Gloria Stuart (the elderly Rose in Titanic). The Invisible Man (1933). Claude Rains is the mad scientist who finds a way to become invisible only to be driven mad in the process. Also with the lovely Gloria Stuart. “The whole world’s my hiding place.” The Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Karloff returns as the monster, Clive returns as the doctor, and Elsa Lanchester joins the fun as the Bride. Fun fact: the tagline, “The monster demands a mate is the name of one of my bands! (myspace.com/themonsterdemandsamate). If you like these, you might want to check out Gods and Monsters with Ian McKellen as James Whale during his final days.

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests immersing yourself in the utterly insane world of Beat Takeshi/Takeshi Kitano. Born Takeshi Kitano (he uses the stage name Beat Takeshi when he acts), this diminutive, stone-faced Japanese actor/director started out, rather improbably, as a very popular TV comedian (you can see him

Comedy god.

in dubbed reruns as the host of that insane Japanese game show where smiling contestants dressed in fat suits get thrown around inside giant pinball machines and the like), before stepping up to star in and direct some of the most enigmatic, violent, deadpan comic, and mysteriously affecting gangster movies ever made. His signature character is a menacingly silent, impeccably dressed, loner who undertakes some vague Yakuza task with an odd combination of playful humor and hairtrigger, shocking violence, all performed with a nearly unmoving, craggy-skinned, beady-eyed mask of a face. His task completed, more often than you’d think he might commit suicide. I highly recommend checking out his bafflingly-resonant work in Violent Cop, Boiling Point (which is utterly out of its mind), Sonatine (my favorite), Getting Any? (a comedy?!), Fireworks, Kikujiro (where he plays essentially his same gangster character, but in a sort-of-heartwarming buddy movie with a cute little kid), and Brother (his one, mostly successful, foray into America). For a change of pace, you can also check out his turn as the legendary blind swordsman in his remake of the Zatoichi series. And don’t miss him acting all evil and stuff in the mind-blowingly shocking cult classic Battle Royale. A complete original.

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests Out of Sight (in Feature Drama). Steven Soderbergh seems almost like two separate entities: the highbrow arty type specializing in pensive, static, experimental genre-breakers (Solaris, The Limey, Bubble), and the Hollywood player who cranks out commercial but strikingly well-executed crowdpleasers (Erin Brockovich, the Ocean’s franchise). Out of Sight, starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez in a story adapted from an Elmore Leonard novel, falls into the second category. It’s a sharp heist story with a little flash and plenty of backbone: it even nabbed two Oscar nominations, for Best Adapted Screenplay and Editing. When you see the movie, you’ll see how very well-deserved those were, and how both the writing and the editing contribute to the movie’s offbeat pace. It should be a bog-standard crime thriller, but it ain’t. Soderbergh invests it with interest and playfulness without ever being precious or pretentious. I won’t tell you much about the story, except that it’s tight and well-crafted, as Leonard’s stories are. Clooney plays Jack Foley, a career criminal with (of course) a waggish twinkle; Lopez is the no-nonsense U.S. Marshall with whom he collides. The two of them are electric on-screen, whether they are zinging dialogue back and forth like tennis stars or filling the silence with energy. To have two magnetic stars with great chemistry is a gift, but a whole cast of magnetic characters is near-miraculous. Listen to this: Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, Dennis Farina, Albert Brooks, Catherine Keener, Luis Guzman, Michael Keaton. It’s a rare Hollywood heist movie that gives you this much to enjoy.

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>> Andy suggests ‘Star Trek: The Animated Series”. It’s never too early (or too late, for that matter) to geek your kids up. Start by introducing them to this delightful antique cartoon, featuring the real, action-packed voices of William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, George Takei, James Doohan, and Nichelle Nichols. It’s just like the original, live-action Star Trek, but with crappier special effects and lots of talking cats. Seriously, like real aliens would so closely resemble Earth cats. It’s fun!

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, Dennis suggests you fill up this space, not with, well, this filler, but with a movie or TV review of your own. That’s right, gang, the VideoReport is the place for everyone in the Videoport community to share their love (or hate) of their favorite (or least-) films or shows with the rest of us. Yup, we give you the freedom to ram your opinions down our throats on a weekly basis! Just bring your reviews into the store, or send them to us at denmn@hotmail.com or our Myspace page www.myspace.com/videoportjones and, unless it’s just a string of ill-spelled profanities and personal attacks against us, we’ll run it!

>>>For Sunday, Elsa S. Customer suggests Don’t Look Now (in Mystery/Thriller). Even if you haven’t seen it, you’ve heard about it: Don’t Look Now is one of the great 1970s not-horror movies. Nicholas Roeg’s meditative masterpiece of suspense follows Laura and John Baxter (Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland) on a working trip to Venice; John has taken on a restoration project there, hoping that the distraction of travel will help them over the worst of their grief from their young daughter’s recent death. I describe it as a a “not-horror” film because the subject is not fear, but dread — the creeping, bottomless dismay of grief, of loss, of the unrelenting reality of mortality. Despite their emotional friction and John’s haunting premonitions, the Baxters sporadically try to inject humor, beauty, and passion into their days, but keep drawing back again into anxiety and grief… with good reason, as it turns out.

New Releases this week at Videoport: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (GIANT ROBOTS GO SMASH! SMASHHHHHH!!!!!), Blood: The Last Vampire (live action version of the horror/action anime features vampires, lots of CGI blood, and an ass-kicking, sweet-faced Asian girl in a schoolgirl uniform with huge ninja swords; something for every fetish!), Cheri (Michelle Pfeiffer reteams with her Dangerous Liasons director Stephen Frears for another saucy period piece), ‘The L Word: The Final Season’ (that’s season six, in case you were wondering, of this sapphic soap; someone please give Pam Grier a sexy new role immediately!), ‘Saturday Night Live: The Best of Amy Poehler’ (unremitting wackiness from the crazy-eyed comedy pixie goddess [and my girlfriend] Amy Poehler), Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead (yay! Another direct-to-DVD horror sequel! Remember: rural people are cannibals!), National Lampoon: Endless Bummer (get it? It’s a play on words! Clever! There was once a magazine that employed the likes of Michael O’Donoghue, Doug Kenney, Anne Beatts, and was responsible for movies like Animal House; let’s remember those times…).

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: Fados (another dazzling, dance-centric film from director Carlos Saura, this completes his musical trilogy [after Flamenco and Tango, both available in Videoport's Foreign Language section, of course] with its depiction of the titular Portuguese dance), The Elephant King (Ellen Burstyn sends her momma’s boy son over to Thailand to retrieve his wilder sibling, confident that he will not be seduced by the exotic Thai lifestyle and/or a gorgeous native bartender lady; wait, he was? Crap!), Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story (fact-based miniseries about the social titular social reformer, a man often referred to as ‘the greatest Canadian of all time’; me, I’d say Rick Moranis, but…), Her Name is Sabine (from the Film Movement series comes this documentary by actress Sandrine Bonnaire about her autistic sister), Short Films by Mira Nair (like the title says, it’s a collection of short films by the director of Salaam Bombay, Monsoon Wedding, and The Namesake), ‘Loveless’ (new Japanese animated series hits the Videoport anime section, this time it’s about a boy living in a land where people have animal ears and tails, which they only lose when they have sex; I love Japan!).

Check out our movie blog at www.videoportjones.wordpress.com!

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Want some free movies at Videoport? Here are about a million ways…

1. Rent a bunch of movies. Every time you hit your next hundred rentals, we give you two free ones.

2. Rent a movie any day of the week. If you check page one of this here newsletter here, you’ll see that there’s a different special every day of the week where you get a free movie. You literally cannot come into Videoport without getting a free rental. Yeah…

3. Buy a movie. For every single movie you buy at Videoport, we give you a free rental. Now if that’s not the perfect cue to start whipping readers into a holiday buying frenzy, then I don’t know what is: this holiday season, when you’re spending all your hard-earned cash on a gang of glutinous, insatiable greed monsters (I mean your loved ones, of course), why not get a little something for yourself out of the deal? Videoport has a great selection of new and previously-viewed DVDs for sale right in the store and we can also order literally anything that’s currently in print. And, for every movie you buy from us, we give you, yourself (not them) a free rental that you can use any time.

4. Trade in your old DVDs. Got some movies or TV series that you don’t want cluttering up your shelves anymore? Bring them in to Videoport and we’ll turn them into free rentals on your Videoport account. It’s that simple!

5. Spend some money. Videoport has two different savings plans which, essentially, give you free money just for renting with us. Seriously. Put $20 onto your Videoport account and we’ll turn that twenty into $25 worth of rental credit. Pay $30 and we’ll give you $40 worth of rental credit. That’s five or ten free bucks worth of renting cash, if my math is right.

Park for free at Videoport!

Here’s how: 1. Parking meters are turned off after 6pm, Monday-Saturday and all day on Sunday. 2. The parking lot behind the building is open for free one hour parking after 5pm on weekdays and all day on the weekends. 3. Videoport participates in the Park & Shop program, which means we can get you a free hour of parking at any downtown Portland parking garage (including the courthouse garage which is, literally, a two minute walk away). Just bring us your parking stub, and we’ll give you one of our magic stickers!

Justin Ellis (of the Portland Press Herald) and I run down the week’s new stuff (10/13/09)

You know it’s an off week for new releases when Will Ferrell is in the dog house, and yet, here we are. The legendary ‘SNL-er’ is in very real danger of slipping into Mike Meyers comedy limbo. Fortunately Videoport Jones and I can take solace in a few solid horror flicks, one from Sam Raimi and another from local boy Kyle Rankin.

Land of the Lost

"Wait, there's no script? No, none at all?"

Videoport Jones: “Hey Justin, remember last week when we were talking about a former ‘SNL’ superstar who seems to have lost his way? Well, while Will Ferrell is nowhere close to the edge of the Eddie Murphy ‘I just feel sorry for him’ phase of his career, it’s films like this, a completely-unnecessary movie version of the truly awful 70‘s kids show, which are going to wear out his cinematic welcome if he’s not more cautious. Now, while it’s not an immutable law of the universe that a movie remake of a television show is going to be a sad, soul-sucking experience for all involved, well, I’m trying to think of an example where it wasn’t. Umm…nope. It is an immutable law of the universe; perhaps only the abyss of horror that is ‘movies based on video games’ has a worse track record. Anyway, ‘Land of the Lost’ is about as weak as you might expect – terrible script (‘How many bodily fluids can we douse Will Ferrell in?’ Quite a few as it turns out.), jokes that don’t pay off and adequate but uninspired cartoony special effects. It’s exactly the sort of half-baked premise and execution that serves Will Ferrell the worst. I love Ferrell; his unique brand of humor, equal parts satirical macho posturing, vacant-eyed panic, with just a smidge of pathos, all enlivened by an improvisational gonzo vibe, can be absolutely a force of nature (as in ‘Talladega Nights,’ ‘Old School,’ and, of course, ‘Anchorman’). However, that same comic force can turn, when left to carry an underwritten, slackly-directed project like, say, ‘Blades of Glory,’ ‘Semi Pro,’ or, well, this movie, into an unseemly spectacle of shrill mugging that is pretty off-putting. In this movie, the strategy seems to have been, ‘Will will save us,’ and, while he certainly gives it his all, this is the sort of career choice that’s edging him closer to Murphytown. Ferrell, teamed up here with a similarly-wasted Danny McBride (another funny guy left to flounder around) and a love interest who brings absolutely nothing to the table, tries hard to keep this one afloat, but he’s chosen a very leaky ship.”

Justin: “Let’s call it the law of diminishing Ferrells. I’m a very, very big Ferrell fan and ‘Anchorman’ is in my top 10, possibly top 5 movies of all time. No debate. Having said that, I still think his schtick can be very one-note at times. It’s the man-child thing over and over, from Ron Burgundy to Ricky Bobby to Jackie Moon to Brennan Huff and now Dr. Rich Marshall, adventurer. We get it, he’s a grown man who sometimes doesn’t act that way. What makes that schtick work is a good script, a good premise/setting and great surrounding players. You give him all of that and just let the improv fly. ‘Land of the Lost’ is just a big question mark when you consider those factors. I like McBride and Anna Friel (still crushing on her a little from ‘Pushing Daisies’), but it seems like they’re not stranded in this place out of space and time, but in a bad movie. Bad effort, bad concept (the TV remake/update), and it’s a recipe for bad outcomes. I think there may come a day when a TV update or remake can win (come ON ‘Mama’s Family!’), but the track record is pretty bad here. I think Will needs to be put on notice and fast cause he is sliding into a bad place. Maybe another John C. Reilly team-up or ensemble role is in order. While Will Ferrell will never slide into oblivion, he could wind up in that weird comedy limbo where Mike Meyers now lives.”

Drag Me to Hell

Well, it HAS been a while since I messed some stuff up...

VPJ: “Director Sam Raimi is one of those guys, like Peter Jackson, who film geeks like me can claim as one of our own. See, we nerds worshiped Raimi way back when, when we saw his first film ‘The Evil Dead’ and proclaimed him our geek god. Made for a pittance against long odds, ‘The Evil Dead’ revealed Raimi to be a born filmmaker – energetic, original, and ghoulishly-inventive. And so, when Raimi was finally given the keys to a mega-budgeted tentpole franchise like the Spider-man series, we were vindicated; our scruffy little genre film hero was being recognized by the masses, and Sam, true to his gifts and our hopes, turned in two and a half (the third movie got away from him) fun, profitable, and exhilarating superhero movies that we could all be proud of. Still, those of us who were there at the start, who talked the man up at patience-trying, date-torpedoing, length to whomever we could corner, longed for Raimi to get back to his roots, to get down and dirty again in the horror flick trenches. And now our wishes have come true:

Now, this is what I would do to Bruce Campbell...

‘Drag Me to Hell’ is everything we could’ve hoped for (unless he had brought Bruce Campbell back in the lead). Hilariously over-the-top, wittily manipulative, soaked in gooey gore (don’t let the PG-13 rating worry you) and running at full speed from start to finish, this movie is obviously the work of a guy out to have fun again, and to make his audience squirm, shriek, laugh, and repeat. Have I forgotten to mention what the film’s about? Doesn’t matter – if you can’t appreciate this one, you have no business calling yourself a horror fan.”

JE: “Testify brother Jones, testify! Yes, before he was the man that brought Spidey to the world, Sam Raimi was a guy who made twisted, weird (and at times gory) stuff that had an odd humor to it. He was the guy who introduced us to Bruce ‘The Chin’ Campbell. Watching ‘The Evil Dead’ is like having your eyes open (pried open by demons maybe) to a whole new world. It’s like watching baseball being played for the first time (maybe baseball played with chainsaws). How someone can make a movie that is ridiculously over-the-top yet still frightening and suspenseful is beyond me. And you know I am not the world’s biggest horror fan, but I love me some Evil Dead franchise. To this day one of the best experiences of my life was seeing Bruce Campbell talk after a screening of the movie during college. Epic. So now Sam’s back to what he does best, telling simple tales of things gone horribly, gorily, hilariously wrong. In the case of ‘Drag Me to Hell,’ it revolves around messing with gypsies. And as a buddy who saw this movie said to me, it reinforces one of life’s simple rules: ‘Don’t mess with gypsies.’”

Infestation

VPJ: “Speaking of fun, throwback horror, this new film from Portland native (and former Project

Local boy makes good (movie).

Greenlight victim, I mean winner) Kyle Rankin (longtime partner Efram Potelle is still on board, but as special effects supervisor this time), made me think of cheesy 80s monster semi-classics like ‘Tremors’ or ‘Arachnophobia.’ And that’s a good thing. Chris Marquette (‘Fanboys’) brings his Paul Rudd/John Cusack-lite comic timing to the lead character, a slacker-y loser who finds himself inexplicably fighting for the future of the human race when yucky alien bug-things start spinning cocoons and mutating the hell out of everybody. It’s pretty fun, with the ever-welcome Kyle and Efram pal Ray Wise doing his ever-welcome comic turn as the kid’s gung-ho dad, and nicely-gooey gross-out effects, along with some decent performances. Obviously shot on a budget, ‘Infestation’ is nonetheless a welcome addition to the cheesy monster comedy genre.”

JE: “I’m sensing a theme here. No, not horror flicks or Jonesy’s love of gore (I know, I know, we’ve talked about it), but horror films that don’t take themselves too seriously. We touched on it before with ‘Trick ‘r Treat,’ the tongue-in-cheek revival of the horror anthology that was decidedly not heavy-handed. With so many horror movies going after a hard ‘R’ rating and playing a weird arms-race for violent or disturbing plots (that don’t always make sense or for good storytelling), it’s nice to see some people step back. Big

And Ray Wise...just because.

scary bugs? OK. Done. You know what you’re getting there. Also, I’ve said it many times, but you have to credit people (be it in TV or movies) who know exactly what they do, what they’re capable of and do just that. If you’re doing a budget horror film and you’ve got a suspenseful but slightly goofy premise, then run with it. Why would you take yourself seriously. Give some credit to the local-boy done good for the effort and for scoring Ray Wise. That’s a win in my book.”

Adoration

VPJ: “Another icy, thought-provoking drama from Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan, this one about a high school student who, as a writing exercise, reveals that his father was a suicide bomber. Or was he? I ain’t tellin’, because, as with much of Egoyan’s films, much of the pleasure comes from the slow reveal, and what the reveal, well, reveals about the connections among the characters. Egoyan’s a tough case for me, one of those obviously-talented directors whose ambition I admire, but whose films leave me cold. Apart from the wrenching ‘The Sweet Hereafter’ (which is the one Egoyan film most people might know), his movies seem to come from, and remain in, a singularly personal space from which he doesn’t seem interested if they ever escape. I can respect that sort of artistic integrity, but it doesn’t necessarily make for great viewing. Another lonely, cold puzzle for the adventurous.”

JE: “So cold, detached dramas are not good enough for you Jonesy? I thought I knew you man. But when you do step back and look at Egoyan’s films you do see something of a pattern of misdirection, ambiguity, secrets and, well, pain. That was certainly the case with ‘The Sweet Hereafter,’ as well as ‘Ararat,’ and ‘Where the Truth Lies,’ where you as the viewer are not sure what’s going on, but you’re not entirely sure the characters are either. I happen to like mysteries, particularly those that unfold with some time trickery by the filmmaker. Egoyan’s films may be a bit dense at times, but typically worth watching if you want a puzzle that ultimately may not come together for you as a viewer. This is not an altogether bad thing, they’re just not exactly dissatisfying, but not necessarily gratifying. Really have to watch to make up your mind.”

The Proposal

VPJ: “Looking back, I recognize that I often give the fans of the high-concept romantic comedy short shrift; I crack a few jokes at the expense of your Matthew McConaugheys, your Jennifer Anistons, or whichever of the blonde Jessica’s is making goo-goo eyes at each other that week, make a dismissive remark that no boy should be expected to watch this, and move on. I apologize, but, really, what is there to say at this point about this sort of movie? The set up: Sandra Bullock is a high-powered executive who’s all mean and stuff to her underling, especially hunky, younger assistant Ryan Reynolds. Unfortunately for her, she’s also Canadian (not that it’s unfortunate to be Canadian, but you’ll see), and she’s going to get deported unless she takes an American husband! If only she had a pretty underling just rattling around who she could make a marriage of convenience to! I mean, it’s not just me, right? I have nothing against a high concept movie, nor anything against the romantic comedy per se; I just expect a little extra effort for my trouble, and ‘The Proposal’ is content to simply serve up a lukewarm slice of premise pie. I sort of like Reynolds; his deceptively-bland good looks hide a nice, mildly-edgy comic persona (he was pretty good in ‘Adventureland’), and Bullock is as spunky and cute as ever (although her playing ‘hard-nosed’ is about as convincing as a puppy with a spiked collar), but there is absolutely no romantic chemistry between them, and the movie tries to distract us from that disastrous fact with shrill, silly busyness. ‘The Proposal’ is serviceable, if your standards are that low, I guess. Sorry to be dismissive, but movies like this make themselves so easy to dismiss.”

JE: “Didn’t Renee  Zellweger just do a movie like this? Or Reese Witherspoon? Or any number of Hollywood’s off-the-shelf romantic comedy pixies? What the heck has the world come to my man? We’re running out of words to describe these efforts or how they make us feel. It feels exhausting just to berate it at this point. But I’m glad you enumerate the reasons why these type of flicks don’t move the meter for us. We’re not just in this to bash chick flicks, it’s not that we’re out of the target demo, it’s not that we’re movie snobs (Have I mentioned how much I like ‘Smokey and the Bandit?). No. It’s just bad movie making. If we’re calling Will Ferrell in ‘Land of the Lost’ bad, then we’ve got no choice but to call this one out too. The worst part is that I really dig Ryan Reynolds, he’s on the verge of entering my man-crush club house. A funny guy who is at ease in any kind of comedy, lightens up any scene he’s in, and, for the ladies, not too bad to look at. But he’s gotta lose points for this. And Bullock? It’s time for her to rejuvenate the career with some TV work and leave the silver screen behind. As for the romantic comedy dilemma, I think we need to convene a podcast where we break down chick flicks in a style that is equal parts John Madden and Tom Servo. America demands no less.”

VideoReport #217

Volume CCXVII- Employ All Monsters!

For the Week of 10/13/09

Videoport gives you a free movie every, single, everlovin’ day of the week. And, since we get in about thirty new movies per week, you’ll never run out of things to watch. (I mean, you could watch thirty movies a week, I suppose. In fact, we challenge you to watch thirty movies a week.)

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>>April suggests Sleepaway Camp (in Horror). Halloween is just a few weeks away! Time to watch some bad 80s slasher flicks! Let’s start with Sleepaway Camp. Someone’s killing the campers in this predictable yet fun low budget film set in…wait for it…a summer camp! Could it be Angela, the non-verbal survivor of a boating accident? Or is it her cousin? The answer is fairly obvious, but wait! There’s a twist ending! Did you see that one coming?! I kinda did. Enjoy!

>>>Dennis suggests Quarantine (in Horror). A disclaimer: if you’re one of those people who whine about “that Blair Witch style movie”, then you can skip this one. Go on back to your nice, clean, soulless horror films where you can really see the torture porn all close up like. Anyway, Quarantine (a remake of a Spanish horror flick called REC, which I plan to check out soon), is, yes, a “Blair Witch style horror movie”, in that the action is seen, and only seen through the lens of someone holding a video camera (in this case a TV news team). So, yeah, that means things are sometimes unclear, that sometimes, things are happening right outside of the camera’s (and your) field of vision, until it’s RIGHT UP IN YOUR FACE! The tale of a ditsy female TV reporter and her sturdy cameraman who, while doing a fluff piece on LA firemen, ride along on a call to a downtown apartment building where, well, they’re not sure. It seems like an old woman is ill, and maybe someone’s been attacked, and…well, then things happen. I suppose I should be more circumspect, but, well, the title of the movie is Quarantine after all, so I guess I’m free to spill the fact that there’s some sort of virus turning the residents of the building into frothing, vicious killers. And it’s contagious. Yikes. Soon, our media darlings, and the motley crew trapped with them, are dodging the infected, trying to figure out what’s going on (and why the building has been hermetically sealed by the authorities with them inside), and attempting to not get eaten. It’s all nicely tense, and the viewfinder-only gimmick is great at building dread and excitement; like most good horror movies, Quarantine gets great mileage out of suggestion, out of the things that aren’t seen in glorious, bland, gut-chomping Hostel-vision, but are glimpsed in the shadows. Sure, it requires a little more work from you as a viewer, but, well, it’s not like the movie’s asking you to mine coal or anything. (And as to the ever-present question in such movies, “Why do they keep filming everything when they’re fighting for their lives?”, well, I have two answers: one- shut up. If they didn’t their wouldn’t be a movie, so just get over it and enjoy. Two (and here Quarantine provides a sensible answer), the reporters, once they realize that the government is prepared to sacrifice them all in order to contain the nastiness, is mightily pissed off, and therefore motivated to get the story out). A nice, effective horror surprise, with some great shocks, nobody doing anything annoyingly stupid, and even some decent performances (reporter-lady actually gets better as things get nastier, there’s some nice, economical character work from Greg Germann, Columbus Short, Jay Hernandez, Rade Serbedzija, and, adding formidable presence to a role as thankless as Willian Alland’s largely-unseen reporter in Citizen Kane, ‘The Practice’’s Steve James as our eye behind the camera (we get a peek at his face once or twice when things get reaaly bad).

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests Beat The Devil (in Classics). John Huston’s oft-critiqued noir comedy centers around a mismatched group of thieves and cheats relaxing in a small Italian port town and spinning their crooked plans to lay claim to a fortune in uranium. The script (by Truman Capote and John Huston) was re-written on the fly, Huston adding changes day by day and distributing them to the cast — and what a cast! Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Gina Lollabrigida, Jennifer Jones, Robert Morley wisecrack their way through this winking genre-jumper with no real coherence but with charming ease and wit. The movie is often described as a mess, but that’s half the point: in stark contrast to the heavily plotted noirs of the previous decade, Beat the Devil is a meandering, unfocussed scramble of dreams and schemes. In this way, the plotlessness makes a clever comment on the film’s narrative. These would-be thieves never seem to do much, despite their ambitions and their bursts of hectic activity. They’re just killing time, and killing it as extravagantly as circumstances allow, in a pleasant-enough oceanside town, waiting for something to happen.

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests Insomnia (in Foreign Language). It’s hardly surprising that police detective Jonas Engstöm suffers from insomnia. He’s a seedy cop with a sordid past, and he’s unable to sleep thanks to the constant daylight north of the Arctic Circle, where he’s been dispatched to solve a prominent and puzzling murder case. Puzzling? The murder, intent on leaving no trace of his identity, even washes his victim’s hair. Shudder! Despite this lurid touch, the film maintains a measured distance and balance, never tipping over into thriller-movie clichés. Insomnia is a police procedural turned inside out. Though we get the details of the investigation, the essence of the film is its cool, tense repression. It’s quite literally hazy, foggy, atmospheric: the landscape is shrouded with fog, suffused with unending sunlight that, paradoxically, obscures our vision.

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests filling this space with a movie or TV review of your own! The VideoReport is Videoport’s weekly journal of movie reviews, information about Videoport’s daily deals and new releases/new arrivals, and basically anything we think is remotely movie-related and/or funny. We welcome such things from Videoport’s staff, customers, passers-by, well-wishers, and kooks off the street who want to tell the world why Ernest Borgnine is the sexiest thing in pants, so if you fit into any of those categories, why not send us your submissions at denmn@hotmail.com, our Myspace page www.myspace.com/videoportjones, of just drop them off at the store. (We’re also on Facebook, under ‘Videoport Jones’). The VideoReport- where Portland’s elite meet to flap their gums about movies!

>>>Elsa S. Customer suggests Heaven Can Wait (in Feature Drama). L.A. Rams back-up quarterback Joe Pendleton (Warren Beatty) has a couple of problems: he hasn’t had a chance to start a game, and — oh, yeah — he’s dead. Except he’s not dead, or he shouldn’t be; the agents of the afterlife have made a mistake. “Anybody can make a mistake,” Joe says, reasonably enough. “Just put me back and we’ll forget the whole thing.” But it’s not that simple, and Joe is meanwhile stashed in the recently deceased body of corporate magnate Leo Farnsworth. It sounds silly, and it is, which helps make this a heartwarming and fundamentally optimistic story. Heaven Can Wait is a light comedy elevated by the efforts and talent of everyone involved. Because directors Beatty and Buck Henry rely very little on spectral special effects, Heaven Can Wait has dated better than many ’70s fantasy films, giving it a whiff of the great screwball comedies of the ’40s. That’s a legacy it deserves: it’s a remake of 1943’s Here Comes Mr. Jordan. Warren Beatty is at his best: easy-going, maybe even a little simple-minded, but with a wide-eyed earnest quality that explains why Beatty was such a favorite of the Hollywood laaaaaadies for all those years. As the heavenly overseer Mr, Jordan, James Mason is perfect: elegant, restrained, but with great warmth and an avuncular twinkle. Dyan Cannon plays Farnsworth’s silly, vicious dipsomaniac wife, who’s conniving and canoodling with her husband’s live-in toady (Charles Grodin in a filmstealing performance).

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>> Dennis suggests reminding kids (and the less-then-conscientious) about DVD handling protocol. 1. Never touch the shiny side of a disc. 2. Never leave a DVD out of its protective case when it’s not actually being played; this leads to shiny-side disc touching. 3. See rules 1 and 2 as much as necessary. DVDs are delicate, but, with proper handling, they will last forever. Why am I putting this tutorial in the space usually reserved for childrens movies; oh, no reason…

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, Videoport’s Regan’s Got Something to Say…  When I went to see Adventureland (now in Videoport’s Comedy section) in the theater, I hear to my right, “Was Michael Cera not available?”, and then again, during Zombieland…”Brum-yum-do-da. Michael Cera superior- jam-crunk.” HEY!! They are both fine young men with talents all their own! AND!…Jesse Eisenberg was on the scene before Michel Cera! He was an awkward teen in Roger Dodger (2002, in Videoport’s Feature Drama section)! So suck it haters!

>>>For Sunday, Elsa S. Customer suggests Oldboy (in Assorted Asian Exploitation). The beginning swoops in on us out of nowhere: when me meet Oh Dea-su (Min-sik Choi), he seems a sillyminded salaryman, a drunkard and a fool, an irresponsible father and an indifferent husband, but he is no worse than many silly, sad people. In the film’s opening, Dae-su is inexplicably abducted by an unknown person, and held in captivity… for fifteen years. When he’s finally released, the almost magically transformed Dae-su is intent upon revenge. Director Chan-wook Park brings us a tale that echoes the long tradition of vengeance tragedies, bringing that dramatic form forcefully into a modern setting. Buried in its dizzyingly grand fight sequences is a mediation on the compulsion to seek vengeance, and on the utter futility of it. At first glance, Oldboy seems to exult in glamorizing violence, and it is at times excruciating to watch. The film seethes with stylized violence that is horrifically potent, but also weirdly beautiful. One fight scene in particular is as stunningly graceful as any ballet, and as guttingly sorrowful as any diva singing her dying aria. It’s a tragedy, it’s a delicate dance of violence and harrowing grief, it’s filled with pain and tenderness and confusion and pure human heartbreak of the most naked kind. It’s beautiful.

New Releases this week at Videoport: Land of the Lost (Will Ferrell is still funny. This movie, a remake of the ultra-cheesy 70s kids’ show- not so much…), Drag Me to Hell (legendary geek horror god Sam Raimi goes back to his grimy horror flick roots with this completely fun tale of a young woman who crosses the wrong old, scary gypsy woman), The Proposal (Sandra Bullock is a Canadian meanie who bullies her prettyboy assistant, Ryan Reynolds, into marrying her so she can stay and be mean in the good ol’ USA in this, dare I say it, formulaic romantic comedy), Adoration (from Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan comes another of his patented icy, sad, dramas, this one about a teenager who makes up a story about his father being a suicide bomber. Or dies he?), Infestation (from Portland’s heroes, Kyle Rankin and Efram Potelle comes this icky-fun monster comedy about some creepy bug-things trying to take over the world, costarring the always-delicious Ray Wise!; Videoport loves Kyle and Efram!), ‘Legend of the Seeker’- season 1 (Aussie sword-and-sorcery series comes to Videoport’s Fantasy/Sci Fi section; costarring the guy who played the gyro pilot in The Road Warrior!), Every Little Step (documentary about struggling dancers hoping to make the cast of a revival of A Chorus Line on Broadway, which is about a group of struggling dancers hoping to make the cast of a musical called A Chorus Line…or did I just blow your mind!!!), Katt Williams: Pimpadelic (the popular standup comic brings his inimitable brand of pimp-based hilarity to you in this new DVD), American Violet (furiously fact-based film about an innocent Black mom who gets caught up in a police drug sweep, loses her kids, and decides to get very litigious about the whole thing; good cast includes Alfre Woodard, Will Patton, Michael O’Keefe, and Tim Blake Nelson), Adoration (Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan [The Sweet Hereafter] brings you another of his icy, challenging dramas with this story of a teenager who makes up a story of his father being a suicide bomber for French class- or does he?), ‘The National Parks’ (America’s favorite documentarian Ken Burns [of 'Baseball', 'The Civil War', and 'Jazz' fame] is back with this massive series about, well, our national parks, I suppose), Patton Oswalt: My Weakness Is Strong (hilarious new standup from the pudgy hipster comedy darlin’).

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: Warren Miller’s Children of Winter (ski porn from the master of same), Love of Siam (Thai drama about two young boys whose friendship is shaken by a fmaily tragedy), Emmanuel’s Gift (Oprah herself narrates this inspirational documentary about a young man from Ghana, born disabled, who seeks to overturn his country’s ignorance about the disabled; many, many of you have requested we get this one over the years), ‘Flashpoint’- season 1 (action series about those wacky guys on your local SWAT team), Madonna: Celebration (the complete music video collection from music’s biggest exhibitionist), Throg (low-budget sword and sorcery comedy is currently riding a rating of 1.7 out of 10 on IMDb.com; you’ll find it in the Incredibly Strange section), Brittown (documentary about a motorcycle fanatic, for all you motorcycle fanatics out there; oh, and as a favor, could you motorcycle fanatics out there try and keep the noise down?), and Videoport brings you three, count ‘em three typically wacko satirical early films from Yugoslavian wildman Dusan Makevejev (Sweet Movie, WR: Mysteries of the Organism, The Coca Cola Kid): look in Videoport’s Criterion section for his Man Is Not a Bird, Love Affair: or The Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator, and Innocence Unprotected.

Get Some Free Money at Videoport!

Videoport’s got two ways for you to turn your rental dollar into, well, a bigger rental dollar. Here’s the scoop: we’ll give you five free dollars worth of rental credit on your Videoport account when you pay twenty bucks. And, we’ll give you forty dollars worth of rental credit for your thirty dollar investment. So, depending on how you look at it, that’s either a 20% or 25% discount on Videoport’s already lowest-anywhere rental rates, of five or ten free bucks. Yup, we’re pretty great…

Park for Free at Videoport!

Here’s how: 1. Parking meters are turned off after 6pm, Monday-Saturday and all day on Sunday. 2. The parking lot behind the building is open for free one hour parking after 5pm on weekdays and all day on the weekends. 3. Videoport participates in the Park & Shop program, which means we can get you a free hour of parking at any downtown Portland parking garage (including the courthouse garage which is, literally, a two minute walk away). Just bring us your parking stub, and we’ll give you one of our magic stickers! 4. Walk, skateboard, ride your bike: it’ll save a tree, or three gallons of water, or…well, I’m not sure how that works, really…

Check out our movie blog at www.videoportjones.wordpress.com!

Justin Ellis of the Press Herald and I run down the week’s new releases (10/6/09)

What do you do when your heroes start to lose their luster? In this week’s rundown of new DVD releases Videoport Jones and I have to come to grips with our own expectations of former comedy icons Harold Ramis and Eddie Murphy. We also deal with Nia Vardalos and whether she is a scourge to film-watching men everywhere.

Year One

Oh, crap! Critics!

Videoport Jones: “I had high hopes for this one, and why wouldn’t I? I think both Jack Black and Michael Cera are funny guys. The script was co-written by a couple of writers from ‘The Office.’ It’s got supporting parts from surefire funny folks like David Cross, Oliver Platt, Paul Rudd, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Hank Azaria, and Bill Hader. And it was also co-written, and directed by, Harold Ramis, who, in addition to being a really charming and funny guy, has, if you check out his resume, had a hand in some of my all-time personal comedy favorites. ‘Caddyshack?’ ‘Meatballs?’ ‘Ghostbusters?’ ‘Stripes?’ ‘Animal House?’ ‘Back to School?’ ‘Groundhog Day?’ I cannot overstate how important this guy has been to the development of my own sense of humor. (‘Gee, thanks,’ I can hear some of you say). Well, I gotta say this knockabout comedy, about a hapless pair of bumbling cavemen who stumble into some of the Bible’s most popular set pieces, is a big letdown. And I am bummed out. Shooting for a ‘Life of Brian’ level hilarity, ‘Year One’ ends up delivering ‘Wholly Moses-level laughs’ (look that one up on IMDB.com – yeah, ouch). Actually, I compared it to Mel Brook’s ‘History of the World – Part 1′ as I was watching it; lazy script going for easy laughs redeemed, when it is, by some inspired,

My ideal uncle.

loony performance bits from funny actors, but ultimately a flabby disappointment. In the movie’s defense, and to make myself feel better, I will say that Black and Cera make a funny team, with Jables’ trademark comic bluster blending nicely with Cera’s trademark time-released underplaying, and Cross is especially funny as a predictably-untrustworthy Cain. (Those who babble on about ‘being tired of Jack Black and Michael Cera’s schticks’ are just white noise to me; the guys are funny and good at what they do. So sue them.) Still and all, a mildly-disappointing timewaster. The commentary with the two stars and the ever-affable and warm Ramis is more enjoyable.”

Justin: “Way to bring us all down to earth compadre. Do you feel a little personally wounded by a Ramis misfire? Do you need some time to compose yourself? Should I come over with a six-pack of PBR and some Oreos? I’ll do it buddy. It’s not easy seeing your heroes take a bit of a tumble, and that’s the case here. You joke that Ramis played a part in developing your humor, but I would lay good odds that he’s had a role in EVERYONE around our generation’s sense of humor. I defy you to not name at least ONE Ramis flick you like America. Do it. As for ‘Year One,’ this is shades of what we talked about last week: the parts not adding up to the whole. I absolutely LOVE Cera and Black, but for me, this has a knock-it-out-of-the-park comedy support staff. Rudd, Cross, Azaria AND Hader? Gold. While I see your comparison to ‘History of The World Part 1,’ I think Brooks almost always plays for the hard schtick over a solid script, so maybe not the best comparison. (Also, I love ‘History of the World’ more than anything. The FIRST Brooks movie I saw as a kid. Changed me. I could sing you ‘The Inquisition’ right now.) Maybe Ramis is getting a little long in the tooth, maybe the historic comedy is a tough sell, or maybe this one is just a miss. We’ll put it near the back of a long list of hits from the man that gave us ‘Caddyshack.’”

Anvil!: The Story of Anvil

VPJ: “Anvil is (are?) a Canadian heavy metal band, hailed by some as the ‘demi-gods of Canadian metal,’ which is perhaps the most unintentionally-poignant phrase I’ve ever heard. Fronted by two guys in their fifties who’ve been together and rocking the Provinces since they were 14, Anvil have never hit the big time, and this documentary follows the lifelong pals as they regroup after a calamitous European tour, begin their 13th album, and ponder the uncertain future in store for their lifelong dream of rock superstardom. If it sounds like ‘This Is Spinal Tap’, well then you’ve heard every other reviewer in the world say, ‘they’re like a real-life Spinal Tap!’ Sorry, but the comparison is pretty hard to shake; the two leaders of Anvil (named Steve ‘Lips’ Kudlow and, weirdly enough, Robb Reiner), have a distinctly Nigel Tufnel/David St. Hubbins chemistry, combining the aging has-been/never-was self-importance with a genuine, comically-touching love for what they do, and for each other. Anvil may not be a great band (in fact, after seeing the film, I’m fairly certain they are not), but you’ve got to admire Lips and Robb as they work menial jobs, take care of their families, cope with one career disappointment after another (the gig at the Transylvanian metal festival is particularly painful), and yet keep plugging away, living their adolescent dream even in the face of, well, overwhelming reality.”

JE: “Great, great movie to watch, even if you’re not a big metal fan, or for that matter, Canadian Metal fan. (Who is really?) You’re right that the Spinal Tap comparisons are unavoidable (thought I’d throw in lazy for some reviewers. Present company excluded, of course.) What sets Anvil apart is that the reality of it makes it more compelling and somehow funnier. You know Spinal Tap is playing for laughs, but Anvil isn’t. ‘Sex Farm Woman’ is good writing while ‘Metal on Metal’ is sublime. As bad as you may feel about laughing about someone’s misfortune or lot in life, it doesn’t matter. Funny is funny. The bizarre, thrown-together European tour, the creation of a new album, the rejection of that album, the inevitable fights between Lips and Robb, it all makes for an impossible and funny trip. You root for them even though you know the prospects are never good and the door to success closed a long time ago. If I was a hack I might say something like ‘a triumph of the human spirit,’ but in some ways it is. Despite all their problems and times they’ve been punched in the face, they endure because they really, really love metal music, and yes, each other. In some ways the movie makes you grateful for the marginal victories after seeing these guys excitement over just being asked to play the same songs they’ve been playing for 30 years. You’ll like this one.”

Trick ‘r Treat

VPJ: “It’s October – the time of year when the leaves turn, the wind blows, and the studios cram a year’s worth of horror releases into the weeks before Halloween, hoping that the spooky holiday vibe (and perhaps its attendant sugar rush) will make us all a little more receptive to their mediocre scare flicks. ‘Trick ‘r Treat’ gets points, however, for not taking itself terribly seriously, for having a few actual actors in the cast (Dylan Baker, Anna Paquin, and the ever-crotchety Brian Cox), and for reviving the ol’ horror anthology genre with its ‘Creepshow’-esque EC Comics style. There’s some black comedy, some imaginative twists, some witty gore, and a ghoulish little bagheaded dude who’s a nice, little piece of monster design sure to give you the heebie-jeebs and make you chuckle at the same time. An entertaining little Halloween doodle.”

JE: “Horror that doesn’t take itself too seriously? Hmmm, interesting. Not so interesting, this movie was supposed to come out several years ago but was pushed back and now got shot straight to the DVD aisle. So use that information as you would. But you are right about welcoming back the old horror anthology angle, which you would think is appealing to studios with less than stellar writing talent and audiences with less than 100 percent attention spans. But enough of my venting. I was never a horror fan, as we’ve talked about before, but I did enjoy ‘Tales from the Crypt’ and also liked the ‘Creepshow’ flicks, partially because they were sort of ‘pop horror,’ that was supposes to scare you as they wink at the camera. Sometimes stories work better if they let you in on the joke, and in the case of cheap scares like ‘Trick ‘r Treat,’ it can’t be a bad thing.”

Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation

VPJ: “My pick for the most purely entertaining release of the week – if your definition of ‘entertaining’ is ’sleazy, sexy, violent, and with an Australian accent.’ Which mine is. This documentary chronicling the rise of the Australian exploitation film industry is a hoot, with hard-to-believe clips from the saucy Aussie flicks of the 70s and 80s interspersed with interviews from celebrity fans of the genre (unsurprisingly, Quentin Tarantino loved ‘em), and the stars and creators themselves. You get the lowdown on flicks like ‘Mad Max,’ ‘Roadgames,’ ‘Barry McKenzie Holds His Own,’ ‘The Cars That Ate Paris,’ and about a hundred other, known only Down Under, exploitation masterpieces (‘The Naked Bunyip’ comes to mind), all served up with a cheeky sense of humor and all the explosions, fast cars, and Aussies without cossies you could ever want. Tons of fun.”

JE: “You just used the phrase ‘Aussies without cossies.’ I have no idea what that means, and I’m frightened. But I am NOT frightened by sex, violence and explosions. In fact, when they make the documentary on my life, make sure they use that title. And get Robert Evans to produce. ANYWAY, I was unaware that put together these movies constituted a genre of sorts, I always just figured the Aussies had their own weird sensibilities and neuroses that needed to be worked out on film. I don’t think I would be off base in saying that part of the reasons for the explosion of ‘Ozploitation’ is the same as blaxploitation or any underground genre that burns fast and bright: they did it because they could. It was because there was a feeling (and some looseness in restrictions and guidelines) that seemed to give people a green light to go crazy on screen. If you look at it from a documentary or anthropological standpoint it can be fascinating. Oh, I’m sorry, I got too REAL for a second there. ‘Splosions! ‘Sex! Uh…’Sviolence! There you go.”

Imagine That

VPJ: “I actually tried to watch this movie. I was trying to avoid the by now de rigeur and lazy Eddie Murphy bashing that passes for film criticism whenever Eddie’s name comes up, but, well, I didn’t get all that far into this one (where his daughter’s imaginary world is real, or some such). It wasn’t just that the movie was bad (what little I saw of it), it’s more that I find it genuinely painful to watch Eddie do this sort of thing. (I’d say ‘lower himself,’ but that term just doesn’t apply to the star of ‘Norbit’, et al anymore.) See, I grew up when Eddie Murphy first emerged as the funniest man on the planet; it was safe to say that, for a period in the 80s, Eddie Murphy was, deservedly, the biggest star in the world, and the funniest (some youthful homophobia aside), but now, like former co-funniest man in the world Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy is synonymous with ’shameless cash grab’ (although, when he feels like it, Martin will actually try once in a while). And we have, according to IMDb.com, these upcoming Murphy vehicles to look forward to: ‘The Incredible Shrinking Man,’ ‘Fantasy Island,’ ‘Untitled Bret Ratner Project’ (noooo!), and, of course, ‘Beverly Hills Cop 4.’ Sigh. Man, Eddie just makes me sad.”

JE: “Wow. You just brought the room down hard. Any time the phrase ‘Untitled Bret Ratner Project’ is used it’s cause for self-immolation. I feel like we could dedicate a whole blog or maybe a podcast dissecting Eddie Murphy’s movies and his career trajectory. In a way he’s kind of Tyson-esque in that he’s a shadow of his former self. Just like Tyson he was ferocious, talented and unlike anything seen before during the 80s. But now, what is he? He’s gone far beyond the natural reflex of making family movies that many celebrities have. We’ve discussed it many times, but it make sense actors would want to make movies their kids can watch. But Eddie has long since crossed the line. It’s like watching someone actively trying to burn their legacy to the ground. I mean, ‘Norbit,’ really? Really? Every time I watch ‘Coming to America,’ (hands down one of his best movies), I feel like I’m watching two different men. Is it possible Eddie Murphy died during the mid-90s and he’s been replaced by a less-talented but similar looking member of the Murphy family? Can we get Charlie Murphy to confirm this?”

My Life In Ruins

VPJ: “If there are two words more guaranteed to repel potential male movie viewers than ‘Nia Vardalos,’ then I don’t know them. ‘Traveling Pants,’ maybe. Anyway, the star of the equally never watched by a male human ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ dips back into the retsina bottle in this tale of a shrill, would-be adorable single gal looking for love in the Greek Isles. (SPOILER AHEAD! She finds it.) You are legally required to purchase this for your mom for Christmas.”

JE: “I’m sorry I just dozed off. What was that? ‘My Big Fat Life in Ruins,’ sounds like a…zzz. See, it happened again. You ever wonder if some movies are specifically made to be toxic to males of the species? I understand there are ‘chick flicks,’ and romantic comedies that may not appeal to a guy, but they don’t actively repel them like a magnet. If I had to I could sit down and watch ‘Sex in the City’ or something starring Amy Adams or Gabrielle Union looking for love. But this and its predecessor seem like studio-made kryptonite to guys. Keep it away or we’ll turn green and die. Also, while I’m fired up, she couldn’t even be bothered to stay off the Greek thing? Isn’t that just lazy? I mean I get it, you’re proud of your Greek heritage, but let up already! Great, now I’m shaking I’m so angry. Fire up one of those Ozploitation flicks stat Jonesy…”

PARTING SHOTS!

- Name a Harold Ramis movie that influenced your life or sense of humor.
- Seriously, do we need to devote a blog or podcast to breaking down what happened to Eddie Murphy?
- Guy kryptonite: what flicks are bound to turn you away fellas?

VideoReport #216

Volume CCXVI- Big Mothra’s House

For the Week of 10/6/09

Videoport gives you a free rental every day. Redbox machines are painted with dolphin blood. Your choice.

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>>Elsa S. Customer suggests Cube (in Horror). Oh, whatever, scoffers. Cube is a high-concept puzzle-piece with a pretty silly premise: a group of strangers awake inside a — duh duh DUH — cube, with no memory of how they got there and no idea how to escape. It turns out that the cube is a series of cells through which they can climb, but each cell holds clues to their possible escape, as well as a deadly secret… and the cube as a whole has a mighty big secret, too. After I saw the film, an acquaintance pointed out its obvious existentialist nuances, and I had a big “Well, duh!” moment; I was so busy feeling superior to the film that I completely failed to notice the deeper message of its story. Don’t be dumb like me.

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Andy suggests Spiderman 2 (in Action). It’s funny how movies age, don’t you think? Spiderman 2 came out in 2004, but the superhero genre has changed so much that, if it were released in theaters today, it might get laughed off the screen. Back in ‘04, I was convinced that it was the greatest superhero movie ever made. And maybe I was right. But, compared to the darker, heavier themes of 2008’s The Dark Knight and Iron Man, the Spiderman movies seem lightweight and cartoonish, like candy-colored coming-of-age teen flicks (the presence of Kirsten Dunst doesn’t help). Yes, the superhero/comic book movie has come a long way in a short time. But I still love Spiderman 2 for its own greatness. The action scenes are well-written and acted. Kirsten Dunst’s acting seems amateurish compared to the rest of the cast, but she doesn’t distract too much, and James Franco, Alfred Molina, Tobey Maguire, and Dylan Baker more than make up for her.

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>>Dennis suggests ‘The Office’- season 5 (in Comedy). Not that I need to convince anyone to watch this show, but I’d like to make my pitch for the new season anyway. In fact, I think this might be the best season yet. Yeah, I said it. I think what’s most impressive to me is the way the show has avoided the show-killer traps that its plot seems to dictate; Jim and Pam are happy, and it’s not a drag, the show’s humor hasn’t broadened into self-parody, and it hasn’t succumbed to guest star-itis (the one exception being the bizarrely-intrusive movie, a May-late, late December romance starring Jack Black and Cloris Leachman that Jim, Pam, and Andy watch in one episode). In fact, this season’s boldest, most fruitful stroke was in utilizing a surprising guest star to brilliant dramatic effect, with ‘The Wire’’s Idris Elba coming in as Michael’s new, no-nonsense boss. Elba is great, of course, and he changes the dynamic of the show in a really daring way; as Dwight says, with typically Shrutian sarcasm, “Oh no, the new boss doesn’t think Jim’s adorable!”. Elba’s slow burn staredown’s of the various shenanigans that pass for a normal work day at Dunder-Mifflin are equal parts hilarious and terrifying. Throw in that those usual shenanigans are as solid gold as ever, that Steve Carrel’s Michael Scott remains one of the most touchingly-ridiculous characters in TV history, and that each of the office’s supporting players continue to refine and reveal their characters in fine form and I cannot get enough of this show- it just keeps getting better.

>>>Elsa S. Customer suggests Gross Pointe Blank (in Comedy). Every time I see another stupid trailer for another stupid movie starring John Cusack, I heave a heavy sigh and plan to spend an evening watching one of the great films in his resume. Okay, so I don’t always follow through with these plans; with his recent output, I would spend every single night watching Say Anything, High Fidelity, and Gross Pointe Blank. (2012? Identity? Serendipity? America’s for-goodness-sake Sweethearts? Must Love Dogs? You know who loves dogs? Cusack’s agent, ‘cuz these movies are dogs, amirite? *tap tap tap* Is this thing on?) Uh. Aaaaaaanyway.  Despite Cusack’s often-questionable choices, I wholeheartedly endorse Gross Pointe Blank, the story of an affectless hitman at his 10-year reunion, a silly high-concept starting point that successfully mixes rom-com and action flick into one delicious parcel, with a hefty dose of musical cool to boot.

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests Blood Simple (in Mystery/Thriller). This 1985 directorial debut of Joel and Ethan Coen showcases their distinctive visual style, a style that was the focus of many reviewers. Indeed, the single biggest criticism of the film upon release was that it privileged style over substance, but those reviewers weren’t paying attention to the subtleties, the deep-down noiriness of the story. The scenario, without spoilers: a sleazy bar owner hires an even-sleazier PI to shadow his wife. Oh, and to murder her. When events get messy, as events will when you’re hiring cheap and unskilled murderers, two innocent people get pulled into the mess, and flounder around trying to flail their way out again. Except, well, these innocent people are guilty of plenty. That’s a crucial distinction; guilt draws them into the murderous muddle, and guilt motivates every choice they make as they struggle along the nightmarish course of their trap. This was an early taste of the Coens’ gift for narrative: from moment to moment, you can see how a more-or-less innocent person could make each horrible choice, but the individual choices and moments add up to a dreadful sum.

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>>Dennis suggests that it is neither cute, wise nor considerate to allow children (or the inconsiderate) to put our DVDs in the player. DVDs are delicate. Children, our future though they may be, are weird, uncoordinated, and lack respect for other peoples’ property. They also often have really sticky hands and are attracted to shiny things. Please handle the DVDs yourself. That is all.

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, Elsa S. Customer suggests The Remains of the Day (in Feature Drama). It seems like a simple story: Stevens (Anthony Hopkins), a very proper British butler, is taking a brief vacation and motoring across the countryside to visit Miss Kenton (Emma Thompson), formerly his colleague in service at the great house to which Stevens has devotes his life. But it takes some bravado to make a movie of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day; the novel relies upon the first-person account of Stevens, a very proper British butler, told with agonizing restraint and great narrative unreliability. Stevens simply does not see the things he does not wish to see. How to convey this willful obliviousness on film, where everything is slapped up on the screen for the audience to see firsthand? This richly textured Merchant-Ivory production manages to pull it off. The result is pensive, quietly sorrowful, and reticent, but silently eloquent as well. When so many movies trumpet their plots and their morals in deafening brays, it’s refreshing to see a film that keeps its secrets. The Remains of the Day trusts us to hear what isn’t said.

>>>For Sunday, April suggests Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (in Incredibly Strange). Because on the one hand, it’s Debbie (sorry, it’s Deborah now) Gibson and Lorenzo Lamas in a B-movie about a GIANT SHARK fighting a GIANT OCTOPUS! Who wouldn’t love that? On the other hand, it’s Debbie Gibson and Lorenzo Lamas in a B-movie. The acting is awful (except for Vic Chao, who’s acceptable) and NOT ENOUGH GIANT SHARK AND OCTOPUS! I mean, come on! If you’re gonna have CGI creatures attacking ships and planes, you might as well feature them heavily, which director Ace Hannah fails to do. Sorry Ace, your sci-fi mumbo jumbo dialogue just made me sleepy. So if you’re sucked in like I was by the cover, do yourself a favor- go right to the fights and skip the rest.

New Releases this week at Videoport: Year One (Jack Black and Michael Cera play two bumbling cave-dudes who stumble into the middle of pretty much every Biblical event in pre-history in this knockabout comedy from director Harold Ramis), Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation (utterly bonkers, completely entertaining documentary about the kooky, sleazy, nudie, action-y birth of the Australian exploitation film industry; you’ll come away with about a dozen titles you’ll want to badger Videoport’s owner Bill into getting- and we encourage that), My Life in Ruins (the star of My Big Fat Greek Wedding returns as yet another annoyingly-spunky single gal looking for love, this time, shockingly, in Greece), Imagine That (Eddie Murphy is back, doing the family-friendly thing for a wheelbarrow full of cash; I guess it’s wrong to judge him for this continued behavior, but he’s making me very sad), Anvil!: The Story of Anvil (much-anticipated documentary about the titular Canadian heavy metal band has been described by every movie reviewer ever as ‘a real-life Spinal Tap’, and by me as really, really good), Everlasting Moments (Scandinavian drama about a turn of the century young woman whose life changes when she wins a camera in a lottery), ‘Trial & Retribution’- seasons 1 and 2 (the first two seasons of this long-running British cop series joins the swelling ranks of BBC mystery shows in Videoport’s Mystery/Thriller section), Assassination of a High School President (nerdy high school reporter teams up with the hot girl of his dreams to determine who stole the SAT exams, and, presumably, kills that guy; Bruce Willis is in this one as well), Trick ‘r Treat (horror anthology owes a lot of its appeal to its Creepshow-esque vibe, and the rest to slumming real actors Anna Paquin, Dylan Baker, and the ever-irascible Brian Cox), ‘Nip/Tuck’- season 5, Part 2 (more of the bizarre antics of the sleaziest plastic surgeons in the world), ‘Bones’- season 4 (‘Angel’’s David Boreanaz and that cute lady are back doing CSI-type things to, well, bones, I guess).

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: Pollyana (Hayley Mills stars in this 1960 kids movie about the girl who is so damned chipper you want to smack her one), Coco Chanel (Shirley MacLaine stars as the legendary fashion designer looking back on her life and her pretty, pretty things), Where the Heart Is (Videoport brings you this 1990 Dabney Coleman comedy about a mean real estate developer trying to teach his spoiled kids a lesson; why did we do this? Well, we move in mysterious ways…), Marlene (1984 documentary by actor Maximilian Schell about the legendary star Marlene Dietrich is as fascinating for the facts of the actress’ life as it is for the reluctance she shows in revealing them), Munyurangabo (this moving Film Movement release, about an orphan of the Rwandan genocide on a quest for justice, is destined to be referred to in about twelve thousand incorrect, mangled ways by the customers and staff).

Stuff You Wanna Know About Videoport:

1. Videoport is awesome.

2. Videoport gives you a free rental every single day. Check out the front page of this here newsletter for the too-good-to-be-true details.

3. Videoport will get you free parking at any downtown parking garage. If you don’t wanna pay for a metered space, then just pull into a garage and bring us your parking stub; we’ll get you a free hour of parking. (And remember- parking meters are turned off after 6pm, Monday-Saturday and all day on Sunday, and the parking lot behind the building is open for free one hour parking after 5pm on weekdays and all day on the weekend.

4. See fact #1. Yeah. That’s right…

5. Videoport’s clerks/employees/drones/film geeks all, surprise!, love movies, and have, collectively, seen just about every movie ever made. Plus, they can, for the most part, talk about movies in complete sentences and everything. Even the foreign employee. So, if you’re stuck about what to rent, or want a carefully reasoned review of something you’re on the fence about, just ask us. We promise to respect your choice, not judge you, and then find you something waaay better.

5a. Since (as per fact #2) you get a free movie every day and (as per fact #5) we love to recommend movies, why not take a chance with your free rental? Say you come in on a Tuesday, which is ‘Tough and Triassic Tuesday’, meaning you get a free film from Videoport’s voluminous action or classics sections with a paid rental. Why not throw caution to the wind and ask your favorite (we know you have a favorite) Videoport drone to find you a free one? We’ve seen ‘em all, we like the right ones, and we’ll steer you in the right direction. Life’s short- take a chance, man…

6. Videoport will give you free money, see if we won’t. You can front-load your Videoport rental account with rental credit, and we give you more credit than you pay for (if not deserve). Put down $20 on your account, and we give you $25 worth of credit. Pay $30 on your account and we’ll give you a whopping $40 worth of rental credit. And credit’s good for both rentals and any pesky extra day fees- that’s either a 20 or 25% discount on our already ridiculously-low prices. Your welcome.

7. NEVER TOUCH THE SHINY SIDE OF A DVD OR LEAVE A DVD OUT OF ITS PROTECTIVE CASE WHEN NOT BEING PLAYED. Not really a Videoport fact, this needed to be said nonetheless.

8. Trade in your old DVDs for free rentals. If you’ve got a Videoport rental account and feel like unloading some of those DVDs you don’t watch anymore (Encino Man? What was I thinking?), Videoport’ll give you free rentals for ‘em.

9. Locally owned, independent, and kickin’ ass!

10. The best selection of movies anywhere, all right here in Portland, Maine, baby…

11. Videoport’s weekly newsletter, The VideoReport, (which you’re reading right now, duh) always accepts movie reviews and other movie-related submissions for publication from any customer, staff member, or idle passer-by of Videoport. Bring your submissions by the store, or, if you’re feeling all technological and stuff, send them to us at denmn@hotmail.com, our Myspace page www.myspace.com/videoportjones, or our Facebook page (just type in “Videoport Jones”).

12. Our weekly newsletter (The VideoReport, again, duh) is online as well at our movie blog. Look us up at www.videoportjones.wordpress.com for back issues, assorted movie reviews and articles and more!

13. Also, check out our reviews of the week’s new releases in the “GO” section of the Portland Press Herald, where our resident movie review smarty-pants Videoport Jones goes toe-to-toe with the Press Herald’s reviewer, reporter, and columnist extraordinaire Justin Ellis.

14. There is no fact #14.

15. There’s a drop box outside at the entrance to the parking lot (on the corner of Pearl and Newbury streets), for your movie returnamentary needs.

16. Videoport gives you a free movie rental for every single movie you purchase from us. We’ve got a lot of movies in stock, both new and previously-viewed, for sale, and we can special order anything that’s currently in print.

17. We’ve got the dirtiest movie in the world. You know the one…

18. All kids movies are just a dollar. Awww….

19. You can extend any rental, just by paying us slightly more money!

20. See fact #1. Yah, we thought so…

Justin Ellis of the Press Herald and I run down the week’s new releases (9/29/09)

Funny how each week’s new DVD releases take Videoport Jones and I to places we didn’t expect. This week it’s thoughts of relationships, love, con men, animated monsters and the disappearance of Kevin Spacey and Jennifer Aniston. Don’t worry, we’re just as surprised as you.

Away We Go

Videoport Jones: “This autobiographical film, from a script by married screenwriters (and indie hipster darlings) Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, had me worried going in. I really wanted to like it; I like Eggers’ writing and am rooting for costar John Krasinski to break out as a legitimate movie star (and not as just everybody’s favorite TV cool guy Jim Halpert), but, from the previews, I was concerned that it was going to be too indie-cute, while the fact that it was directed by the usually heavy-handed Sam Mendes (‘American Beauty,’ ‘Revolutionary Road’) seemed at odds with its seemingly-breezy aspirations. Well, judge a movie by its previews at your own peril- this is one of the most happy surprises of the year. As a pleasantly-aimless couple in their early thirties who discover that they’re preggers and go on a trip trying to decide where to relocate, Krasinski and former ‘SNL’ funny gal Maya Rudolph are the most touchingly-believable couple in a long while. Eggers and Vida created a couple without, some might say, any real problems (they have enough money, they have the freedom to move essentially anywhere they want, and family and friends who love them) and imbued their dilemma with a real sense of weight. They feel, and are, largely rootless, lacking the stable, mortgage-y lives of their parents and, happy enough, they nonetheless

Didn't think I could act, did you?

occasionally wonder, as Rudolph’s character does at one point, “Are we f***-ups?” (It’s a question, and a sentiment, I can relate to). And, as embodied by Krasinski and Rudolph (who’s a revelation here as the sturdy, sensible foil to Krasinski’s goofball), these two create a layered, believable, and utterly winning couple who convince us, and themselves, that they are worthy of our sympathy as they meet up with a colorful collection of friends and relatives who, in their own singular ways, provide different s of couple and parenthood for our protagonists to react to, often with Jim Halpert-esque pan disbelief. Like the similarly-structured ‘Flirting With Disaster,’ the couple’s picaresque journey allows for some ‘crazy’ encounters with some very talented guest stars, but ‘Away We Go’ edges its characters more towards the sadness underneath: Allison Janney and Jim Gaffigan as boorish borderline crazies, Jeff Daniels and Catherine O’Hara as Krasinski’s too-flighty parents, Carmen Ejogo as Rudolph’s luminously-sane sister, Paul Schneider as Krasinski’s sad brother with a family crisis, and Melanie Lynskey and Chris Messina, heartbreaking as a happy couple with a sad secret, and an hilarious turn by Maggie Gyllenhall and Josh Hamilton as the ultimate New Agers. Through it all, Rudolph and Krasinski are a wonder: touchingly-vulnerable, funny, and real. Which is how I’d describe the movie as well.”

Justin: “Never trust previews and reviews Jonesy. If you were to believe some of the reviews they’d have you think Krasinski and Rudolph were unlikable and the story unbelievable. This film is unlike anything I have seen in a very long time. Watching it felt like some wonderful mix of great cinematopgraphy, compelling characters and a unique plot. In other words, it was what a good movie should be. But more than that, it felt like you were watching two friends trying to make an honest life decision and what it all means. You touch on a good point with Rudoplh’s line about being ‘f***-ups.’ I think anyone in our generation can completely and totally relate to that feeling, as well as the listlessness that goes along with it. You DO reach a point where you look around and wonder what is going on in your life. ‘Away We Go’ could easily hit you over the head with themes on family, love and belonging (and I’m sure some say it does), but instead it just sweeps you up and takes you along for the ride (literally.) This movie was one of the few times in recent memory where I had NO idea where things were going with the story. And that made it so much more enjoyable. Krasinski and Rudoplh were amazing, with such great chemistry that their portrayal of the couple seemed effortless. But also, as you point out, this movie is filled-out with great performances from the ensemble, providing vignettes of various parts of family life that alternates between hilarious and heartbreaking, all the while feeling realistic. (And I am ALWAYS happy when Allison Janney and Jim Gaffigan get work. And they are hilarious here) Also as an Eggers fan (did I mention I got to INTERVIEW him once!), I was rooting for this film. Watching it I was surprised at how much it was like seeing an Eggers story come to life. See this movie.”

The Brothers Bloom

VPJ: “In his high school neo-noir ‘Brick,’ director Rian Johnson proved himself a prankish stylist, wedding the hard-boiled detective genre to a teenaged milieu to audaciously-fun effect. In his new film, ‘The Brothers Bloom,’ he’s playing film style mash-up again, this time tackling the venerable conman genre with a quirky, Wes Anderson-like comic detachment. Well, it’s hard to successfully copy the delicately-whimsical tragicomic style of Anderson’s best films like ‘Bottle Rocket,’ ‘Rushmore,’ and ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’ (even Anderson himself has failed at doing so twice in a row now), and ‘The Brothers Bloom,’ while not a failure by any means, never takes off. Like a balloon with too much to carry, it sort of bounces along, struggling to be delightful. Undeniably-talented actors Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo play the titular conmen, orphaned brothers who’ve made their way through the world for decades thanks to the irresistible lure of Ruffalo’s elaborate fictions, and aided by the alluring bait of Brody’s seductively-sensitive playacting. They’re fun to watch as they scoot around the world in pursuit of the next score, and things look promising when they set their sights on a zany, enthusiastic, klutzy heiress with more money than God (she keeps a stable of identical Ferrari’s in waiting) played by the lovely and spirited Rachel Weisz. The film also has a nice, deliberatley-ambiguous approach to time period in the decor and wardrobe. It’s just that, as the film goes along, the style starts to weigh the picture down in a way that it didn’t in ‘Brick.’ There’s a reason that ‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,’ ‘The Sting,’ and ‘The Lady Eve’ weren’t directed by Wes Anderson (or Rian Johnson, for that matter) – the con man flick and the quirky indie fairy tale don’t match up well. About half way through, ‘The Brothers Bloom’ goes kinda flat. Still and all, a pleasant enough chance to watch these three always-interesting actors do their stuff.”

JE: “But I have to wonder if the chance to watch three decent actors is enough incentive? Is it enough to give it a pass just because we like the pieces but are ambivalent about the whole? Especially when it comes to the delicate are of the Con movie? I love, and I mean REALLY love, a good con man or a heist flick (though Steven Soderbergh tried hard to torpedo the whole thing with ‘Oceans’ sequels.), and they have to juggle a lot of parts. The grifter(s) has to be charming, not annoying, the target has to be plausible, and the locales, settings and other trappings have to be fabulous beyond anyone’s imagination. And while ‘The Brothers Bloom’ may have those elements, it appears they weigh down the whole show. Which is sad, because Johnson is a smart, creative guy who clearly likes to take chances. I’d say this one gets a pass if you’re curious about Johnson as a director and where his career is going. Otherwise, if you’re in the mood for a con-man flick might I suggest ‘To Catch a Thief,’ ‘How to Steal a Million,’ or either versions of ‘The Thomas Crown Affair.’”

The Girlfriend Experience

VPJ: “There is no big-time Hollywood director who takes as many chances, to greater artistic reward, than Steven Soderbergh. From the ‘Oceans’ films to the no-budget experimentation of ‘Bubble,’ from the improv-heavy doodle that was ‘Full Frontal’ to the epic, five-hour ‘Che,’ the guy is gutsy, prolific, and has talent practically out of that big, big brain of his. So why not make a low-budget, shot-on-digital character study of a high class call starring a porn star in her non-porn acting debut? Why not indeed, my good man. Sasha Grey stars as the titular prostitute who offers the titular service (wherein she creates the fantasy for her customers that she is more than just a hired, well, hand), all the while trying to make a relationship work with her own boyfriend and she carries the picture with icy aplomb. Can she act? Umm, I genuinely don’t know; Soderbergh, capturing Grey’s character through a ‘The Limey’ – like use of adept flashbacks, flashforwards, and editing, employs his star with tightly-controlled economy. It’s a good strategy, which he employed to similar effect in ‘Bubble,’ to get the most out of a nonprofessional (or perhaps limited) actor (I maintain that Mickey Rourke was similarly-used in ‘The Wrestler’), and Grey is just fine in the central role, the astute casting of one kind of professional to play another granting the film another level of intrigue. We watch her go through her days, act her parts, and prepare for the next move; she’s a sleek, sexy shark who rarely reveals much, but remains a compelling cypher. Another in the fascinating film essays from the ever-ambitious Soderbergh.”

JE: “And here I am tossing around Soderbergh’s name in a bad way. You have to admit the latter ‘Oceans’ movies were not his finest, but on balance he’s one of the more interesting and gutsy filmmakers today. Not to mention versitile. I’m waiting for him to tackle a buddy cop flick, or even better, team up with Jason Stathem. Best of both words right there! As for ‘Girlfriend,’ one would hope this doesn’t go down as simply being ‘that Soderbergh movie with a star,’ because it could be much more. A meditation on longing, happiness, wealth and , perhaps? That’s not to say this bit of stunt casting is not intriguing in all sorts of meta ways. Also, it could make for awkward couples conversations as wives/girlfriends ask if their man is familiar with Grey’s, ahem, body of work. Sorry, could not resist the pun.”

Shrink

VPJ: “Remember when the world couldn’t get enough Kevin Spacey? Seriously, after ‘The Usual Suspects,’ ‘Seven,’ ‘American Beauty,’ etc, it seemed like ol’ Kev would be the biggest star in the word. Well, while he hasn’t gotten any less talented, the enthusiasm has petered out. On that subject, have you heard of this film? No? Well, it did go to the theaters, so we’re not in direct-to-DVD hell just yet, but this story, about a grieving shrink self-medicating with lots and lots of weed, didn’t do anything to take the Spacey train back on the road to the A-list. Did I see it you ask? Well, I was going to, but, you know…”

JE: “Let me help you out here. Three words: ‘Beyond The Sea.’ Did you see that movie? That was a freight train of indulgence as the Spaceman wrote, directed, acted and sang in the Bobby Darin bio-pic. It’s an alluring target, as a good bio-pic can be the stuff of legends. Instead it just landed with a loud, slightly croony thud. And when was the last time he was seen? ‘Recount?’ OK, fair enough. But that was an HBO movie, so again, not exactly breaking the box office. I’m a big fan of Spacey, not just because of the movies you mention, but one of his first performances I saw was Glengarry Glen Ross.’ Great performance and one of my all-time favorite movies. So he’ll be back some day and we’ll be waiting. Just don’t ask me if ‘Shrink is that return to form.”

Management

VPJ: “Jennifer Aniston, in her ongoing attempts to prove herself a viable movie star, has made some smart moves. She chose some interesting indie projects (‘Friends With Money,’ ‘The Good ‘) which brought her some critical cred, and, even in her more mainstream fare, she’s teamed up with some more interesting leading men than a less-adventurous mega TV star might (Paul Rudd in ‘The Object of My Affection,’ Jay Mohr in ‘Picture Perfect’), and now she’s doing the right thing again, co-starring with talented character actor goofball Steve Zahn. Unfortunately, as with Rudd and Mohr, the results aren’t everything you could hope for. Things start out okay, with her lonely art saleswoman being wooed/stalked by the oddball slacker caretaker of the motel she gets stuck at, but things get ironed out to a nice, bland smoothness before too long. Woody Harrelson shows up, trying to crazy things awake, but this one’s a pleasant rental for an unadventurous night, nothing more.

JE: “Wow. What can I really add to that. Pretty much spells it out. This feels like another case of ‘liking the individual parts.’ I dig Steve Zahn (a fellow Minnesotan who’s solid in everything) and I have no malice towards Aniston as an actress (though don’t get me started on her public dating woes. It bothers me.). A quick aside: why isn’t Zahn a bigger star? Is he a deliberate character guy, or does he not have the chops for a leading role? I think he does, but I’m biased. Since I feel more strongly about Zahn this could warrant a rental. As for Aniston’s attempts at leading lady-dom, she’s still got work to do. Sadly enough, I think she’d do better to build a resume of enemble or supporting roles, which frankly, I think she is better suited for. Maybe we can book Aniston on the same comeback express as Spacey.”

Monsters vs. Aliens

VPJ: “It ain’t Pixar, but this big budget animated comedy about the titular smackdown is diverting enough, employing as it does essentially every funny person in the world. Let’s see, you’ve got (deep breath) – Seth Rogen, Hugh Laurie, Will Arnett, Amy Poehler, Rainn Wilson, Stephen Colbert, Paul Rudd, Jeffrey Tambor, Ed Helms, John Krasinski…man, it’s like they cast the voices in this thing in a concerted effort to get me to watch it. It worked. And it was fine. When does ‘Up’ come out, though?”

JE: “True enough. I feel like the whole ‘celebrities in cartoons’ is a trend that has not reached its peak yet. When putting together an animated feature the voice talent is pretty crucial, so it’s no surprise that producers would go after name talent. On the other hand, when you stack the deck like this it feels like a blatant push to draw in a bigger crowd than you would normally attract. Say, parents, want a movie to take the kiddies to? Well how about this one? You like Seth Rogen, Dr. House and Dwight Schrute, right? GOLD! While I may normally ding you for your devotion to Pixar, in this situation I’ll refrain as I too am anxiously awaiting ‘Up.’”

How I Met Your Mother – Season 4

VPJ: “Now that everyone in the world loves Neil Patrick Harris (very funny hosting the Emmy’s, my man), they should all go back and check out this well-above-average sitcom where he plays TVs ultimate horndog wingman. His Barney is a , catchphrase-spouting cliche, and NPH makes you love every minute he’s on screen. Add in the invaluable assistance of cuddly-hilarious married sidekicks Allyson Hannigan and Jason Segal, and you’ve got yourself a genuinely-pleasing winner. Oh, and the two main characters are serviceable as well.”

JE: “I am all for continuing the era of the NPH Renaissance. I feel like in the hands of anyone else the character Barney would have an off-the-shelf, formulaic sitcom character feel to him. Instead he just pushes it over the top and sells it hard (WHAT-UP!). But seriously, if you’re feeling a sitcom-sized hole in your life and are in the market for a funny show staring pretty people, this is it. I could watch it for NPH and Segal alone (points to the producers for making his character from Minnesota AND including an episode this season about the Vikings.). In fairness the other two leads are funny and likable. Though it should be slightly worrying to the producers that the character the show is centered on (the guy looking for, you know, the ‘Mother.’), is not considered as entertaining as some of the other players.”

Parting Shots:

- Are the characters in “Away We Go” relatable? If not does that hurt the movie?
- Sasha Grey in “The friend Experience.” Stunt casting or ultimate realism?
- Casting call! What would you cast NPH in next?