When he’s singing, S.O.S.

If you prefer your filmic escapes flooded with sunshine and happiness, Mamma Mia! froths over with both. This faithful big-screen adaptation of the stage musical—directed by the original Broadway show’s Phyllida Lloyd—is a suitable alternative for those who not only prefer their ABBA affordable but also accompanied by movie stars and on-location scenery instead of theater no-names and worn touring set pieces. Of course, you could also listen to a greatest-hits CD with nearly the same result.

Mamma Mia! is little more than a string of ABBA tunes with a story wedged in about a 20-year-old bride, Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), who’s about to be married at the Greek inn owned by her mother, Donna (Meryl Streep). Sophie doesn’t know who her dad is, but when she reads Donna’s journal and discovers that the former disco queen had three dalliances the year she was born, she invites all three men to the ceremony: Bill (Stellan Skarsgård), an adventurer; Harry (Colin Firth), a cautious accountant; and Sam (Pierce Brosnan), Donna’s true love who got away.

Also on the guest list are Donna’s former girl-group-mates, cougar poster-woman Tanya (Christine Baranski) and “lone wolf” Rosie (Julie Walters), as well as Sophie’s friends and an island’s worth of employees, the better to populate impromptu dance parties.

The gorgeous Greek scenery, with sun flooding even indoor shots and water too blue to wrap your mind around, is by far the best part of the film. Runners-up include Streep, who largely needed only to show up to nail her part as the flaky-but-loving bohemian mom but will also silence popcorn munchers with her improbably emotive, rafters-hitting version of “The Winner Takes It All,” and Seyfried, whose strong voice, wide-eyed prettiness, and sweet charm make her a presence as lovely as the location. Skarsgård is rather likable in this atypical role as well.

The movie goes downhill from there, particularly bottoming out whenever Brosnan tries to sing (it’s beyond awful) or the script goes sitcom (Walters’ Rosie is particularly grating as squat, nerdly comic relief). It’s likely, though, that Mamma Mia!’s intended audience will be too buoyed by its relentless feel-goodness to notice such quibbles, while, to musical- and ABBA-haters, the film will act like garlic to vampires no matter how numerous its pluses.

“And when she was bad, she was…”: Asia.

A 19th-century bodice-ripper starring Asia Argento as a lady of a certain reputation sounds destined for a two-word summary: pretty trash. And for the most part, that’s all The Last Mistress is—but damned if it doesn’t suck you in like a late-night rerun of Rock of Love.

Catherine Breillat, a French director with a history of exploring sexuality and gender politics in films such as Fat Girl and Romance, plays with the idea of destructive but irresistible love in her adaptation of Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly’s novel. Argento is Vellini, the titular half of the story’s liaison dangereuse who’s grown used to the 10-year open relationship she’s had with Ryno de Marigny (Fu’ad Aït Aattou), a penniless “unbridled libertine” with pillowy Abercrombie & Fitch looks. But Ryno has decided to trade in his whore for a proper madonna and tells Vellini that he’ll no longer be visiting after he marries Hermangarde (Roxane Mesquida), high-society granddaughter of the Marquise de Flers (Claude Sarraute).

None of it is terribly interesting at first; the marriage is gossiped about by irritating old clucks the Comtesse d’Artelles (Yolande Moreau) and the Vicomte de Prony (Michael Lonsdale), the latter having enjoyed an occasional dalliance with Vellini. And Argento’s casting as an edgy slut—she kisses a girl! she licks blood off her lover’s chest!—seems like just another tired opportunity for her to stretch her body instead of whatever acting chops she may indeed possess.

When the Marquise de Flers hears exactly how long Ryno’s affair has been going on and demands that he tell her all the sordid details of their history, however, it’s a move that saves the film: Ryno’s abrupt attraction to the woman he first deemed an “ugly mutt” may be eye-rolling—he loves how she hates him—but soon their relationship is portrayed as a genuine, complicated love story, with Argento even coming across as sympathetically vulnerable in a scene or two.

Ryno’s confession also includes lots of explicit sex, which not only doesn’t hurt the film’s watchability but also makes the Marquise look like the coolest grandma alive. “Go on,” she tells Ryno in the film’s funniest scene, drinking port and practically falling off the chair in which she’s comfortably slumped. “I’m enthralled!” You will be, too.

Jungle fever

Tropic Thunder may have first appeared on your radar last August, when Owen Wilson dropped out of filming after his suicide attempt. Or maybe you heard about it earlier this year, when word got out that Robert Downey Jr., in the film’s movie-within-a-movie, would be playing a black character.

But the premise for this Hollywood-skewering war spoof has reportedly been roller-derbying around writer-director Ben Stiller’s brain since 1987. That’s 21 years spent marinating in the comedian’s twisted psyche, eventually co-molded by scripters Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen and, certainly, further shaped by an A-list cast that includes Jack Black, Nick Nolte, Steve Coogan, and Danny McBride.

The result? A comedy beast that’s nearly impossible to dissect. At least not without giving up the goods, anyway. Whereas the details about Downey’s racial transformation, for example – his character, Kirk Lazarus, is actually an Australian actor so celebrated and Method he’s hired to portray an African-American soldier in a Vietnam flick – might have comprised 75 percent of the gag in lesser hands, here the concept is a mere launching point for a performance so brilliant, it’s fair to regard Lazaurs as August’s Joker. Another not-so-secret cameo may help rinse the ick off a superstar’s recently tarred reputation. (Though, in my opinion, not quite.)

There are fake trailers, surprise violence, layers upon layers of film-industry mockery, and rampant offensiveness that’s attracted cries for boycotts from more than one activist group. You can hear Stiller’s diligence to his vision in the dialogue: “More stupid!” demands a villain who takes the director’s character, Tugg Speedman, hostage and orders him to re-create one of his broad critical flops. He complies, delivering this nugget as a mentally challenged man talking about bad dreams: “This head movie makes mah eyes rain!” Earlier, Lazarus discusses craft with Speedman, declaring that his commitment to the aforementioned part must have left him feeling “moronical.”

The thing about moronicality is that it takes loads of intelligence to get it right, and in this regard Tropic Thunder can sidle up to classics from Some Like It Hot to The Jerk. For all its comedic density, the plot is simple: A memoir by Four Leaf Tayback (Nolte), Vietnam’s Pvt. Ryan, is being adapted to the big screen by clueless British director Damien Cockburn (Coogan). He can’t control his cast, which besides Lazarus and action-hero Speedman includes rapper-turned-actor Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), drug-addled star of Eddie Murphy-esque franchise The Fatties, Jeff Portnoy (Black), and still-level-headed newcomer, Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel).

Tayback suggests that Cockburn “take them off the grid” to scare the artistes out of his actors and elicit more believable performances. But Cockburn’s orchestrated dumping of his cast into the jungle for a guerrilla shoot goes immediately wrong, and soon well-armored poppy farmers assume the actors are DEA agents. The thespians’ survival skills kick in – eventually – as they try to fight their way back to the world of gift bags and Booty Sweat (Chino’s energy drink).

Unlike last week’s Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder’s blood-and-guts angle is introduced early and graphically, so its combination of action and yucks never feels disingenuous. All of the big players have ace moments – even Matthew McConaughey,who took over Wilson’s part as Speedman’s agent – but Stiller and Downey steal it: Stiller’s Speedman is a superior Derek Zoolander, hilarious whether he’s wriggling his body while dramatically taking bullets or quietly going nuts in captivity.

And it’s all of 30 seconds before Downey kills, in this case in his character’s trailer, without even uttering a word: Dressed as a monk – and still white – his expression during the preview’s narration is a dead-on imitation of every pretentious performance ever captured onscreen. As far as his guttural delivery and mannerisms when “black,” it’s too thorough, ridiculous, and well-plotted to be offensive (and Chino calls Lazarus on it repeatedly for good measure).

Speedman’s “Simple Jim” character – with buck teeth and a peroxide Prince Valiant cut — isn’t as excusable. But the script’s ingenious argument of the drawbacks of an actor “going full retard” — as well as the movie overall – will make your eyes rain.

New content on this new site to come shortly. Right now I’m working on smoothing out all the weirdness from transferring two blogs’ worth of content — including Movie Babe, which will be down soon — and deciding on a design that doesn’t look like a 10-year-old’s in charge.

In the meantime, you can find my reviews at Washington City Paper.

Weekend of July 20, 2008

Box Office

1	new	Dark Knight	1	$155.3M	$155.3M	$35.6k	4366	94%
2	new	Mamma Mia!	1	$27.6M	$27.6M	$9.3k	2976	54%
3	2	Hancock	3	$14M	$191.5M	$3.7k	3776	38%
4	3	Journey to the Center of the Earth	2	$11.9M	$43.1M	$4.2k	2830	60%
5	1	Hellboy II: The Golden Army	2	$10M	$56.4M	$3.2k	3125	88%
6	4	WALL-E	4	$9.8M	$182.5M	$3k	3310	96%
7	new	Space Chimps	1	$7.4M	$7.4M	$2.9k	2511	39%
8	5	Wanted	4	$5.1M	$123.3M	$2.1k	2433	73%
9	6	Get Smart	5	$4.1M	$119.6M	$1.9k	2135	53%
10	8	Kung Fu Panda	7	$1.8M	$206.5M	$1.2k	1505	88%
11	7	Meet Dave	2	$1.6M	$9.4M	$0.5k	3011	20%
12	11	Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull	9	$1M	$312.6M	$1.3k	757	76%

Weekend of July 13, 2008

Box Office

1	new	Hellboy II: The Golden Army	1	$35.9M	$35.9M	$11.2k	3204	88%
2	1	Hancock	2	$33M	$165M	$8.3k	3965	37%
3	new	Journey to the Center of the Earth	1	$20.6M	$20.6M	$7.3k	2811	61%
4	2	WALL-E	3	$18.5M	$162.8M	$4.8k	3849	97%
5	3	Wanted	3	$11.6M	$112M	$3.7k	3157	72%
6	4	Get Smart	4	$7.1M	$111.5M	$2.3k	3086	52%
7	new	Meet Dave	1	$5.3M	$5.3M	$1.8k	3011	22%
8	5	Kung Fu Panda	6	$4.3M	$202M	$1.6k	2704	88%
9	8	Kit Kittredge: An American Girl	4	$2.4M	$11M	$1.3k	1849	81%
10	7	Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull	8	$2.3M	$310.5M	$1.4k	1664	76%
11	6	Incredible Hulk	5	$2.2M	$129.8M	$1.1k	1951	68%
12	9	Sex and the City: The Movie	7	$1.7M	$148.2M	$1.7k	1025	51%

Source: Rotten Tomatoes

Video fantasies — the first symptom of reefer madness

The doctor-patient relationship in The Wackness seems typical at first. It’s 1994 in New York, and a high school senior is enduring another fruitless session with his psychiatrist. The doctor says that he sees “no joy” when he looks at Luke. Luke detects misery wafting from Dr. Squires, too, which only validates the teen’s suspicion that the path to adulthood does not lead to happiness. “Tomorrow, I graduate,” Luke muses in a voice-over. “And then I go to my safety school. And then I get older. And then I die.” To both of them, there is no grass-is-always-greener scenario.

Unless that grass is packed in a bong. When Squires (Ben Kingsley) presses Luke (Josh Peck) to open up, and the kid finally blurts, “Dr. Squires, how much do you need?” he’s not talking about feelings. He’s talking about weed. Whether their sessions were cooked up to disguise Luke’s visits or the drugs serve as payment for sought-out therapy isn’t clear, but the arrangement blossoms into an odd friendship between two lonely dudes.

Luke, floppy-banged and warm-eyed, deals dope in his Upper East Side neighborhood, drowns out his parents’ arguments with hip-hop, and interacts with other students only when they’re looking for the smokable kind of best bud. Squires, meanwhile, is a tastefully long-haired and goateed former hippie who doesn’t really see himself as a grown-up and is stunned to find himself in a cold marriage, numbing his melancholy with alcohol and the very prescriptions he refuses to give Luke, instead advising him to “embrace his pain.” Sex would help Luke, too, just as long as it’s not with Squires’ stepdaughter, Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby). “Getting laid is getting fixed, you know?” Squires advises. “Except for dogs.”

Writer-director Jonathan Levine’s film is a nostalgia piece about a recent but also rather different time, when old-schoolers like Luke refused to switch from cassettes to CDs and Giuliani was just beginning to clean up New York. (The former mayor is the movie’s main punching bag.) Grafittied placards mark the story’s progression throughout the summer, and hip-hop beats are constant, with artists such as the Notorious B.I.G., Nas, Raekwon, and A Tribe Called Quest filling the soundtrack. The tone is humid: It’s dark inside Squires’ wood-paneled office, but like most New Yorkers, Luke doesn’t spend a lot of time indoors. Instead, he’s sweatin’ his troubles outside, languidly pushing the Italian-ice cart that serves as his pot-delivery system through crowded streets and parks, his headphones providing the real chill.

Aside from the music and not-altogether-dated dialogue (“You’re mad outta my league,” Luke tells Stephanie), The Wackness is a classic story about first love and, more significantly, the struggles of the walking wounded who aren’t quite clinically depressed but can’t always get out of bed, either. Luke and Stephanie’s relationship is natural and engaging—Peck, from Nickelodeon’s Drake & Josh, and Thirlby, best known from Juno—are likably low-key and funny without seeming scripted. But the deeper and more interesting arc involves Squires. Kingsley, even with a dubious New York accent, makes Squires entertaining and tragic, out of touch with the demographic he believes he never left and the scene he imagines still exists.

In one of the film’s best scenes, he takes Luke to one of his old hangouts, which is now not quite so happening. “The city isn’t the same,” Squires laments. “The drugs, the girls, the music—the fucking muuuusic,” he says, drawing out the last word with closed eyes and a heavy heart, and you feel his yearning. He finds a temporary distraction when some of Luke’s acquaintances show up, including a hippie princess played by Mary-Kate Olsen, who proceeds to crawl onto his lap. When the group finally gets thrown out, Squires yells, “They’re all 18!” Luke enlightens him that the drinking age has been 21 “since forever.” “Fucking Giuliani,” the doctor responds.

As both of them try to figure out what’s missing in their lives, the film gets a bit sitcom-like, but there’s enough weight to make gimmicks such as Squires helping Luke sell his wares forgivable. It doesn’t matter if you were a teenager in 1994, a flower child in the ’60s, or even a stoner in the here and now: The Wackness may touch on a few specific themes, but ultimately it explores the more universal question of how to deal.

The Globe and Mail needs to run a correction

Life’s trials make for melodrama instead of melancholy in The Stone Angel, writer-director Kari Skogland’s adaptation of Margaret Laurence’s novel. It’s with a heavy hand that Skogland tells the already piled-on, time-jumping story of Hagar, a demented elderly woman who recalls her fiery younger days when her son threatens to put her in a home. Overacted, underwritten, and with flashback cues so lazy the characters may as well just say, “I remember when…,” the film feels like The Notebook II—which almost guarantees it will find an audience easily enraptured by weepies.

The elder Hagar is played by Ellen Burstyn, who can usually make any movie tolerable but is given little to work with here. Her character is, to be blunt, a jerk, her purported “strong will” communicated solely via constant antagonism and snotty remarks toward her son Marvin (Dylan Baker) and his wife, Doris (Sheila McCarthy). When they admit they can’t take care of her anymore, Hagar runs away to the long-abandoned farmhouse where she raised her family, at which point the film largely remains in the past.

Hagar Currie (played in her youth by Christine Horne, whose acting chops and remarkable resemblance to Burstyn make her the best part of the movie) was born the daughter of a wealthy and proud Scotsman and a mother who died giving birth to her younger brother. Dad all but ignored his son while doting on Hagar, insistent that she marry someone of her class. Instead, she chose Bram (Cole Hauser), a commoner who associated with “half-breeds,” which prompted her father to disown her and leave her none of his inheritance.

Hagar does her best to teach Bram and her two sons manners and look the other way regarding her husband’s drinking and the home they can’t afford to decorate. But she eventually realizes that passion can’t sustain a marriage and also takes after Dad in a more damaging manner, favoring younger son John (Noah Meade) over Marvin, whispering to John that he’s a “true Currie.”

Soon, Hagar’s life unravels spectacularly, and the setbacks and tragedies don’t stop until The Stone Angel’s very last frame. Death and disease chip away at both Hagar’s resolve and the audience’s patience, with the plot becoming more of a highlight reel of suffering instead of an interesting story of a deeply lived life. It’s not long before you become immune to it all, which erases any sympathy you might have started to feel for Burstyn’s Hagar the Horrible and makes the final, purple-choked chapters even more exasperating than those that came before.

Lovelier than that loathesome old sun.

In Encounters at the End of the World, Werner Herzog discovers in Antarctica that it’s rather likely human beings will soon go the way of the dinosaur.

What’s distressing is that the director doesn’t seem to mind.

Extinction, after all, would rid this overly technological, painfully nondeliberate world of “abominations” such as yoga classes and “fluffy penguin” movies—another of which Herzog assured his benefactors, the National Science Foundation, he would not be making.

Despite a couple of wisecracks at penguins’ expense, Herzog, who also narrates, sounds almost wistful at the beginning of his ghostly and gorgeous (if meandering) film, wondering what kind of people he’d meet at the world’s southernmost point: “What were their dreams?” he asks.

But Werner the Curious soon morphs into Werner the Crank, with impatient, sometimes laughably teen-goth narration that, depending on your mood, is either entertaining or insufferable. “I loathe the sun, both on my celluloid and my skin,” Herzog drones, pleased when the “postcard-pretty weather” during the region’s perpetual-daylight season turns foul. He’s eager to leave McMurdo Station, a research center with climate-controlled housing and a horrid exercise facility, as soon as he arrives, regarding it as an ugly, too-civilized Antarctica Lite.

Herzog does interview several residents there, though, identifying them with career hyphenations such as “Philosopher-Forklift Driver,” and seems nonjudgmental as he learns what led them to choose life on frozen tundra. Later, however, he’s not so nice, allowing a couple of eccentrics to blather for just a bit before interrupting with overdubs that essentially say, “To make a long, dull story short…”

Scientists, from seal studiers to subatomic-particle chasers to, yes, penguin experts, receive more deferential treatment, with Herzog not only inquiring about their projects but also lobbing hardballs about intelligence and creation.

The film is most absorbing, though, when Herzog stays out of the way: Aside from otherworldly, astonishing views of the continent both aboveground and deep beneath the ice, there’s the eerie audio of seal calls that sound, according to one researcher, “like Pink Floyd or something,” another scientist’s description of sea creatures that are more horrific than anything dreamed up in a sci-fi novel, and randomly caught, fraught footage of a penguin who keeps still as his peers go off to the left or the right, then resolutely toddles straight ahead on his own.

Herzog barely registers any emotion when he notes the little guy is headed for certain death, but the sadness and mystery of the image is unmistakable.