Movie Reviews of New Releases and Classic Films by Brian Welk
If Charlie Chaplin was not the stuntman, exhibitionist Buster Keaton was or the hard working everyman Harold Lloyd was, he surely made us cry the most.
“The Kid,” by far his most famous feature film firmly rooted in the silent era, is a lovely mix of sympathetic pathos and devilish slapstick.
Yet for as much as Chaplin made us feel, he was the kind of director and performer that could get a laugh from the idea of throwing a baby into a sewer. Continue reading “The Kid (1921)”
“Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” is a silly, wooden horror story with a dumb family and plot at its center.
The characters of “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” are always unwisely poking their heads and appendages into dark spaces they shouldn’t be. It’s one of the few ways the film’s monsters, bite-size monkeys crossed with the Tooth Fairy (I kid you not), can wreak havoc on this bland, underdeveloped family dumb enough to live in a haunted house.
Seriously, which is more cliche? An oblivious, idiot father (Guy Pearce) who ignores his daughter Sally’s (Bailee Madison) pleas for help from the creatures that go bump in the night or the wise, old groundskeeper who’s always on hand to warn that the basement isn’t safe for children? Continue reading “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark”
If “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” can make over a billion dollars worldwide, does anyone even care anymore?
The truth is, yes, some do.
This summer, a small group of American moviegoers spoke with their wallets and demanded something more from our Hollywood studio system.
These people made a stand for quality in their films, and behind the haze of more sequels, remakes and reboots than any year in history (we’ll have 27 by year’s end), we’ve found a glimmer of hope in our studio system.
Hollywood knows it’s limping. Their answer to get people to see movies on the big screen has been 3-D, and 40 films have been released in this medium in 2011 alone. But the technology has yet to prove itself in any film this side of “Avatar,” a large number of the movies in 3-D were shoddily converted from 2-D in post production, and no one looks forward to paying an extra three dollars at the box office.
But when “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” makes only 37 percent of its $239 million gross from 3-D sales, Hollywood takes that as a sign; We won’t put up with three dimensions if the junk they’re delivering is no better than it is in two. Continue reading “Making a small stand for quality”
“Cyrus” is what is known as a “mumblecore” film, which is a new revolution of indie filmmaking. The genre is known for its real characters and even more “real,” if mundane, plots. Its lo-fi style makes its characters and their common problems highly relatable, but not all mumblecore films can avoid feeling contrived.
I identify most closely with John (John C. Reiley), a lonely and divorced 40-something who abruptly discovers his ex wife (Catherine Keener) is getting remarried. The two remain congenial, and she invites John to a house party where he can meet a girl and drown his sorrows.
John’s monologue spoken to a disengaged girl at the party, delivered so affectingly and with frailty by Reilly, is very close to what I feel at times, and what I imagine most average people go through. He says he’s in a tailspin, that he’s depressed and lonely, but he knows himself to be a fun person with so much to give if he only finds the right person.
This man is not starting at rock bottom. How many people really do? We go through lonely, turbulent times, but many of us can still persevere and continue living. This is a common and true emotion rarely seen in mainstream Hollywood. Continue reading “Cyrus”
“The Help” isn’t really a drama about racism but about snobby, white Southern socialites.
What’s the real evil in civil rights era Jackson, Mississippi? Is it racism or controlling, white female socialites? “The Help” thinks it’s the former but the film is simply an entertaining movie about the latter.
It tells of how the budding young journalist Skeeter (Emma Stone) returns from college to find she is more enlightened and intelligent than her prejudiced housewife friends and that the black maid that helped raise her as a child is gone from their home. She’s embarrassed by a rule that would force black servants to use a separate bathroom outside the house and decides to write a book from the perspective of the help.
Skeeter’s two most animated subjects are the life of the film. Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minnie (Octavia Spencer) are fun, sassy, strong and complex individuals with a lot of stories about one of their employers, Hilly Holbrook. Bryce Dallas Howard plays Hilly with spunk and whiplash tartness, but her character is a one-dimensional, bitchy control freak who determines who’s in and who’s out in her middle class WASP social circle of women. Continue reading “The Help”
Let’s call a spade a spade and acknowledge that for how much I’ve said these Old Hollywood movies from the late ’30s and ’40s up through the ’50s comprise just about the best time period for movies, there are quite a few that have aged terribly.
“National Velvet” is a fine example of a super corny, campy, hokey, dopey, feel good, family movie that would make a number of modern audiences wretch. Yet it’s survived based on its pedigree. Mickey Rooney was an insurmountably huge movie star when this movie came out in 1944, and at the age of 12, it was just about the first big role for the recently late Elizabeth Taylor, whose own movie stardom needs no further editorializing. It even has a small part for Angela Lansbury, who was nominated for an Oscar for a different film and lost to one of her “National Velvet” costars for Best Supporting Actress.
But the film could not be more cut and dry. A girl with dreams and ambitions to own a horse that she loves and cares for deeply ends up winning the horse of her dreams in a raffle, discovers the horse’s potential to race and jump and enters it to race in the Grand National race in 1920s England. She goes as far as racing the horse herself and winning, despite being disqualified for being an underage girl. Continue reading “Rapid Response: National Velvet”
Of course I could’ve written a full Classics piece on “The Godfather.” I could write a book on “The Godfather.”
Except I can’t write a book on “The Godfather.” There’s too much I simply do not know, too many people who have seen the film more than I have and will serve as a better expert on one of the greatest films ever made. There are non-film critics who are more familiar with “The Godfather” than I am.
And yet it is impossible not to be familiar with Francis Ford Coppola’s film. No film this critically acclaimed (it sits at #2 on the AFI Top 100 and #4 on the Sight and Sound poll) is also this widely popular and beloved (it also sits at #2 on the IMDB Top 250). I had watched the film mere months ago, and there was not a moment of the sprawling three hour epic, not even just the iconic deaths and dramatic scenes that have been copied to death, that I could not visualize. Continue reading “Rapid Response: The Godfather”
“Captain America: The First Avenger” is campy fun with some neat ’40s nostalgia but gets bogged down by service to the franchise.
Don’t be mislead that “Captain America: The First Avenger” is a period piece war movie. It’s got a sepia tone and World War II era costumes, but the film is done up with as much CGI flair as any other superhero blockbuster. That said, this campy, Americana kicker that’s more sci-fi than old Hollywood is still a good time at the movies.
It goes to show that even if your character is just as goofy as a Norse God and if your film has nearly as many blatant product placement moments for yet another franchise a year in the future, a movie can still have quality if it feels like more than an advertisement.
Let’s leave all the Avengers mumbo jumbo aside. The real movie starts not with a crashed and frozen spaceship in modern day but with the vicious Nazi Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving) stealing an ancient artifact that will do more for the war than the Ark of the Covenant did. Mutated with powers that make him believe he’s above God, he wants to separate from the Fuehrer and take over the world himself. The only person to stop him is a scrawny kid from Brooklyn, Steve Rogers (Chris Evans). No enlisting center will accept him given his size and medical problems, but he’s granted a special opportunity by a German scientist, Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci). Erskine will transform Steve into a hulking super soldier with the hope that he’ll maintain a good and strong heart. And thus Captain America is born. Continue reading “Captain America: The First Avenger”
Pixar’s “Up” is yet another masterpiece from the animation studio.
In 1937, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” proved that animation is an art form that can transcend film. In 1995, Pixar and “Toy Story” spawned the new era of animated filmmaking, showing human depth and emotion beyond any that had been seen in a children’s movie. Ten films later, Pixar is still here, and it’s a sad thing that adults still need reminding that even a kid’s movie can be breathtaking.
So here it goes: “Up” is yet another of Pixar’s masterpieces. It is not my favorite film of theirs, but asking me to choose between them is like asking which is my all time favorite breath of air; each one is as good and as essential as the last.
Like the many other Pixar achievements, “Up’s” accomplishment is being original, colorful, charming, intelligent, humorous, simplistic and profound. But this movie doesn’t have the natural charm we see when looking into WALL-E’s droopy binocular eyes. “Up’s” hero is the bitter old man, Carl Fredricksen (Ed Asner), who after the death of his wife has refused to leave his dream home that’s about to be torn down, and instead glowers at the construction workers with a cold, firm stare behind his thick glasses he’s worn since being a child.
Ever since his childhood, he’s admired the work of explorer Charles Muntz, and he and his soon to be wife Ellie had always dreamed of one day following in Muntz’s footsteps to visit Paradise Falls in South America. After her death, he harnesses thousands of balloons to his roof to float his house away, but not without one young stowaway. After takeoff, the 8-year-old Russell and Carl both start a journey to fulfill Ellie’s lifelong dream.
The beauty of “Up” is its exploratory, simplistic concept. It’s one we still find reason to care about, but it grants us time to appreciate the vast landscapes and the glorious colors that serve to tell the story better than anything else. Director Pete Doctor knows that a million blue balloons is not nearly as effective as the same number glistening in all different shades. Continue reading “Up”
The Secret of Kells is a beautifully animated gem that swept up a surprise Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature.
A Best Animated Feature category at the Oscars may have hurt the Best Picture chances of certain cartoons in the past, but the beauty of such a category is that it and the Animated Short category that has existed forever allows for honoring the craft of the most artistic sort of animation. “The Secret of Kells” is the most recent beneficiary.
This Irish indie received a surprise Oscar nod in early 2009 to the universal scratching of heads from American journalists and critics nationwide. I recall viewing the IMDB page for the film the day of the nomination to see it had a 500% increase in popularity over the last few articles. Articles entitled, “What the hell is ‘The Secret of Kells’” sprang up over night. And it didn’t even get a proper American release until two days prior to the Oscar ceremony.
But what had flown under the radar for so long was a wondrous miracle of 2-D drawings and classical imagery that had undergone production over five years in three countries for about $8 million. The completed film is remarkable, a lovingly sketched film from start to finish. Continue reading “The Secret of Kells”