Movie Review: Diggers
Diggers (2007)–*** I watched Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown, a film about a corporate failure who discovers himself in the wake of his father’s death, the same day I watched Diggers, a film about a New York clam digger in the 1970s who discovers himself in the wake of his father’s death. Given the epic failure of Elizabethtown, there’s little praise in saying that Diggers is a better film. With Crowe’s history, however, it is a compliment, a big one in fact, to say that Diggers achieves the humor and honesty the Crowe film should have achieved. Even more substantial, Diggers nearly does it with every one of the film’s characters. Paul Rudd stars as the film’s main character Hunt, an unmotivated, thirty-something clam digger. Instead of joining his father for the usual morning dig, Hunt sleeps in. He does finally...
Read MoreQuickie: Shortbus
Shortbus (2006)–**** The lives of a various New Yorkers converge on an underground sex club called Shortbus. John Cameron Mitchell’s sophomore feature is a fitting follow-up to Hedwig and the Angry Inch. With the same irreverent sense of humor and slightly more complex narrative, Mitchell achieves emotional honesty so effortlessly it’s impossible not to love each of the flawed, beautiful characters. Mitchell’s concern for those characters and his lack of pretension even allows him to pull off graphic sex scenes without loosing the audience’s focus. Starring a cast of unknowns , who bare body and soul for this outstanding ensemble...
Read MoreMovie Review: Grindhouse
Grindhouse (2007)–** “Is the movie that I am watching as interesting as a documentary of the same actors having lunch together?” That’s how Gene Siskel described his gauge for critiquing films. When it comes to something like Grindhouse, where the actors aren’t much more than Hitchcockian prop pieces and five separate directors take on some part of the film, there’s another question we should ask: Was this film made to be shown outside of any of the directors’ living rooms? The answer is a no, but only because the idea of Grindhouse, two trashy features separated by faux trailers for trashy features, probably sounded better when Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino discussed the idea it over a few pitchers. By actually putting what had to be a drunken idea to lens, they create exactly they intended create: a bad...
Read MoreReview: ALPHA DOG
Alpha Dog–*1/2 Alpha Dog may be Nick Cassavetes worst film, but not because it isn’t a cinematic topic. Quite the opposite is true. The story of the 20-year-old California drug dealer Jesse James Hollywood had movie written all over it. His name is Hollywood, after all. Instead of letting that story be the guide, Cassavetes tries to get more creative than his limited talent can handle and cracks the solid foundation that was already laid. Jesse James Hollywood is renamed Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsh) in Cassavetes’ retelling. When Truelove and his associate Jake Mazursky (Ben Foster) get into a fight over a debt, a war begins. Truelove gets Mazursky fired from his telemarketing job. Mazursky trashes Truelove’s house. When Truelove can’t find Mazursky, he and his crew stage an impromptu kidnapping of Mazursky’s half-brother Nick (Anton Yelchin). The kidnapping seemed...
Read MoreMovie Review: CHILDREN OF MEN
Children of Men (2006)–**** It’s a beautifully sobering experience to watch Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men. Rarely does a film so daring and visionary hit the silver screen with the heartbreaking ferocity of Cuarón’s envisioned future. Beyond the technology, it’s hard to tell that Children of Men does in fact take place in the future. The world in 2027 has spiraled downward so fast that the gloomy, surreal reality is hard to accept. Major cities have turned into slums, war zones or craters. In Great Britain, the government has closed its borders and instituted a no tolerance policy toward illegals seeking refuge from a world gone to hell. What’s worse it an 18-year-long infertility epidemic has hit all humans, meaning that London is just trying to sustain itself until extinction. That’s were Theo (Clive Owen) comes in. A former activist whose idealism...
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Quickie: PERFUME (2006)
Perfume (2006)–***1/2 Quickie Review A young man born with a super-sensitive olfactory sense seeks to preserve forever the scents he cherishes. His obsession leads down a very dark path. This cinematic work of art had its work cut out for it. Though almost exclusively obsessed with its own visual treatment of the sense of smell (and rightly so), the film’s conventional storytelling is maintained to its benefit. Tom Tykwer’s stunning cinematic achievement is only undercut by an odd bit of anglocentric casting. Given the film’s final masterful scene, it hardly matters. Starring Ben Whishaw, Dustin Hoffman and Alan...
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