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Body of Evidence
Haiku Review: "Madonna gonna sex you daid", Mantegna said. Dafoe so hornay.— June 5, 2009 9:18 p.m.
Departures
This is more about the living who deal with abandonment than a meditation on death. Very well paced, with a mix of humor, loss and excellent performances all around. The director's experience in pinku eiga provides a fresh honesty in dealing with subjects and a profession that are still socially uncomfortable for many. Tampopo fans may be inadvertently amused by the sight of Yamazaki gazing thoughtfully upon the departed, as the same reverence seems reserved for ramen.— June 5, 2009 9:17 p.m.
Onward and Backward
It's getting tiresome how everything these guys write quickly turns into another installment of Daddy Issue Theatre, (Fringe, Alias, Lost). But as a franchise entry, this is nonetheless refreshingly non-canonical. The humor gets a little broad even for Trek at times, with some medical wackiness, a Krofftesque sidekick for Scotty, and a pipe sequence that looks like something from the Brothers Mario. Many of the brewery-shot scenes look similarly non-spectacular, and Bana's villain is unfortunately indistinguishable from his predecessors. But given where the franchise has gone before, this one treads the line well.— May 15, 2009 11:55 p.m.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Slapdash CGI abounds in this lame effort at political allegory, with Huge portraying the titular hero as a PTSD-plagued veteran. He's up against his My Lai lovin' brother and head nemesis William Stryker. Stryker is played by Danny Huston as a full-on Bush caricature, one who is harboring detainees in a secret prison disguised as a nuclear power plant. In one scene, he even explains his policy of waging pre-emptive war against the domestic insurgents to prevent a future, large-scale conflict. There is a New Orleans sequence that features a set so badly over-dressed as to be unintentionally hilarious. But although most of the film sounds blatant enough to be hysterically bad, it is not.— May 15, 2009 11:52 p.m.
None
Uses layering and forced perspective to provide an immersive 3-D experience and draw you into the narrative rather than the "comin' at ya'" type that so often uses the technology to point outwards at the audience for novelty effect. This is a remarkable movie, and should be seen in a 3-D theatrical setting. Selick, (Not Tim Burton, folks - Selick also directed Nightmare Before Christmas) shows the influence of having storyboarded Walter Murch's Return to Oz by even further enhancing the Grimm elements of Neal Gaiman's story. But rather than moralizing to children for the purposes of inducing a fear-based obedience, this movie thematically attempts to express the importance of questioning the motives of benevolent authority, appreciating the boundaries of friends & family and the rewards of self-confidence. The voice acting is terrific. Keith David, McShane and French & Saunders expectedly so, but Fanning, Hatcher and Hodgman are also refreshingly great and inhabit their characters to such an extent that one is not distracted by their vocal familiarity. Keith David doesn't actually start speaking until about halfway in, but what a role. This differs from the book in many ways, but I read it too long ago to make a detailed comparison. Suffice to say, it is thematically consistent and is unlike so many adaptations, childrens films and 3-D movies in that it does not disappoint or condescend.— March 16, 2009 7:26 a.m.
Wanted
An ecstatic fantasy for sadomasochistic Objectivists. The best thing about it is Freeman getting back to villainy, although nowhere close to his performance in Street Smart. Bekmambetov likes large vehicle collisions. No longer content to simply have them flip and sail across buildings, he has them colliding across and through one another. By logical extension, his next film should feature midgets on mini-bikes dueling across the collapsing interior of a zeppelin. Don't tell Uwe Boll.— March 12, 2009 8:48 p.m.
Sukiyaki Western Django
Miike plays it like a contemporary international co-production b/w Corbucci and Gosha, pre-dubbed for your viewing pleasure. Rather than method, it emphasizes strong character types - like a bunraku or kabuki drama of the aftermath of the Genpei Wars. Momoi Kaori rocks the s***, abolishing all memory of that Geisha Memoirs crap. A screwball QT cameo kicks it off, with him emulating two distinct styles of dubbing and shrieking the refrain from Il Buono, Il Brutto, e Il Cattivo before CGI sukiyaki flies at the screen with the film's title branded onto a block of tofu. Watch for a brief but key cameo from the "Mercedes Zaro" cross out of the original Django. Uncompromisingly great.— November 26, 2008 6:33 p.m.