Movie Reviews of New Releases and Classic Films by Brian Welk
Samurai don’t wear a robe or carry a sword anymore, but they still exist. They wear driving gloves and carry a hammer to nail a bullet into a thug’s forehead.
“Drive”’s nameless anti-hero possesses the same focus, patience and loyalty of his feudal Japanese ancestors, and Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn shares the same pacing and cinematic flourish as his Asian, French and Italian counterparts. Continue reading “Drive”
Modern artist Vik Muniz describes art as a thing of transformation, the ability to take something ugly or plain and mold it into something beautiful or socially poignant.
In its humble beginnings just profiling Muniz, the documentary “Waste Land” goes through such a transformation when it travels to Rio de Janiero and finds a thriving, happy and environmentally crucial community of garbage pickers in the world’s largest landfill.
Following the norm of many of the best documentaries ever made, “Waste Land” completely changes focuses mid-filming when Muniz sets out to make a difference at Jardim Gramacho, the largest landfill on the planet, and does not discover a city of drug addict, wastoid scavengers but a group of intellectuals who have established a comfortable living for themselves. Continue reading “Waste Land”
Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion” is a precise, engaging and squeamish thriller about living in the modern age.
In a modern age of Twitter, text messaging and round the clock news, information can spread like wildfire. In the epidemic thriller “Contagion,” it merely takes one blog post to incite riots and one text to put a life in danger. And you wonder why these things are called “viral.”
Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion” is a precise thriller that charts the rapid spread of a highly contagious and lethal virus, one that jumps from Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) as she returns from Hong Kong to quickly spreading across the globe.
It’s an engaging and squeamish thriller that makes you anxious to touch your face or move your foot on the sticky movie theater floor. And it’s because this is the sort of mass panic that would happen today. Continue reading “Review: Contagion”
There’s a sense that with the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001 it would be of very bad taste to say anything even remotely negative or critical. There’s also the sense that such a national tragedy could not possibly be emotionally manipulative, and yet I wonder if “9/11” crosses the line ever so slightly.
Let me preface this review by saying that “9/11,” a documentary shot the day of the attacks in New York, has its impressive moments and a worthy place in history. What’s more, this film sets out to commemorate the efforts of the firefighters who lost their lives that day trying to save others and honors them in spades.
Two amateur French filmmakers, Jules and Gedeon Naudet, direct the documentary, and they were lucky enough, or unlucky enough more accurately, to be in New York on 9/11 as they were filming another documentary about a young probationary firefighter. Their story changed dramatically in the course of filming, as is typical of many great documentaries.
And their made for TV documentary includes the only known footage of a plane hitting the first tower, and further the only known footage from inside the tower as it was burning, under attack and collapsing.
This is remarkable yes, and many news outlets used this exact footage when compiling their coverage of the terrorist attacks.
The difference I’d like to point out is that much of the footage is remarkable merely because it exists. Errol Morris was not the documentarian trapped amidst all the rubble and chaos, and it shows. The footage, about all of it captured on low quality handheld cams, is about as great as an amateur filmmaker could hope for. Continue reading “9/11 (Documentary)”
“Attack the Block” is a clever parable about the English class system. It also happens to be a badass alien invasion comedy.
“Attack the Block” is a clever parable about the English class system. It also happens to be a badass alien invasion comedy.
A movie like this gives you the sense that most people in horror movies simply aren’t having enough fun. The teenage kids that run the show in “Attack the Block” chase down these “wolf gorilla motherf***ers” not with fear but with enthusiasm and casual pleasures, and it’s a thrill to be a part of.
The punk heroes of “Attack the Block” are egotistical, territorial little buggers from a project in East London. A gang of five kids led by Moses (John Boyega) mug a young nurse (Jodie Whitaker) and are then interrupted by the crash landing arrival of what looks like an alien creature. They brutally kill it because they can and hoist it around as a trophy. Continue reading “Attack the Block”
“The Debt” and its characters are torn between the values of romance and honesty. The story behind the former is a surprisingly convincing love triangle, and the details behind the latter are a generic, if not silly, conspiracy thriller.
Three Israeli agents in 1965 are tasked with apprehending a formerly sadistic Nazi doctor, and in 1997, one agent’s suicide reveals the specifics of their successful mission are not what they seem.
We know this because in the future we are first introduced to Helen Mirren as Rachel Singer. Mirren has a wonderful way of revealing both apprehension and regality simultaneously. She and her ex-husband Stephan (Tom Wilkinson) share a few private words in between their daughter’s book tour documenting their heroic endeavors. It turns out that their fellow agent, David Peretz (Ciaran Hinds), has just committed suicide, and a now disabled Stephan requires Rachel to go back into the field one last time.
The plot demands the older versions of the characters maintain a troubling secret, but this truth is not all that life shattering. To me, it would seem as though the truth would merely be an embarrassment and a slight slap in justice’s face, but little else. Continue reading “The Debt”
“Tabloid” is a documentary about Joyce McKinney and The Manacled Mormon. You do not often hear stories about manacled Mormons. I can say with certainty I have never written the words “manacled Mormon” together. Errol Morris has made a film so absurd, so laughably unbelievable and so utterly mind-blowing it becomes better than most fiction. It’s a riot.
The thrill of “Tabloid” comes from being obsessed with its story and its characters. McKinney, a beauty queen from Wyoming in the ‘70s, became “obsessed” with Kirk Anderson. She says she fell in love and thought he was intensely attractive. Other people who knew him describe Anderson as a 6’4’’, 300 lb. missionary with a bad Mormon haircut.
From these “quaint” beginnings, we hear the story from McKinney and a handful of associates, friends and British tabloid editors who reported the Manacled Mormon story as it took place.
Let it be said that McKinney’s view doesn’t exactly match up with what everyone else is saying. Continue reading “Tabloid”
Anyone who thinks it’s too soon to discuss the events of 9/11 has not seen “United 93.” They will accuse it of exploiting the greatest tragedy in American history for the purposes of entertainment, but what they do not know is that this is a masterpiece of filmmaking and a bombshell of the true nature of humanity.
Paul Greengrass’s work on “United 93” pays an honorable tribute to the heroic people killed in the hijacked plane that did not reach its target by staying strictly truthful to the source material. What is seen is not dramatized or exaggerated. It is a reenactment of the day’s events, based on actual conversations from the plane and on the ground, all in real time. Watch it, and try not to be awestruck by the might of this film. To not be is to snub the valiant efforts of the people on board. Continue reading “United 93”
Spike Lee’s “25th Hour” is so closely tied to the immediate aftermath of New York after the 9/11 attacks, and it makes for one of the finest of the 2000s.
Spike Lee’s “25th Hour” tells the story of a man with one day of freedom before heading off to prison, and it strikes an emotional chord of the most complex nature, embodies the mood of New York City in the months after 9/11, paints a visually stunning narrative and reaches out to people of all sorts by examining their common regrets.
Edward Norton plays Monty Brogan in a spot-on performance. Monty is confident, but understated in his emotions, only occasionally going over the top when the film absolutely demands of it. In his dwindling freedom, he sees his achievements vanishing, he begins to question his friendships and he blames the world in the process. Lee stages an absolutely wrenching scene in which Monty stares into a bathroom mirror with a certain four letter word printed on it. His reflection yells back the most profane, insulting, hurtful comments about New York and everyone in it, and imagine the hit we take when he steps back and realizes that in this moment of passion, we are to blame for it all. Continue reading “25th Hour”
A leading man who would use the expression “geez louise” over the F-word is foreign to us in the movies. “Our Idiot Brother’s” Ned proves a character doesn’t have to be a silly man-child to be free of cynicism, snark, bitterness and charm.
Discovering Ned’s ability to survive in the real world (and similarly in the movies) of negativity and deceit is the appeal of this loving and warm indie comedy. That’s because “Our Idiot Brother” is not a film of Ned’s growth but of his sisters. Continue reading “Our Idiot Brother”