Friday, April 30, 2010

The Square

The Square - Dir. Nash Edgerton (2008)


Everytime I think of Australia, I think of that episode of The Simpsons. However, the Aussies have more to offer the world than bootings, Crocodile Dundee, and Yahoo Serious. They’ve given us film noir down under-style with The Square. Directed by actor/stuntman Nash Edgerton, the screenplay was co-written by brother Joel and Matthew Dabner. The Edgerton’s work has already drawn comparisons to the Coen Brothers and their debut film, Blood Simple.

The Square follows the classic noir formula of films like The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity. The formula centers on a man who thinks with his dick instead of his head, commiting an ever escalating series of crimes all for the love of a woman. In this case, The Square follows Raymond Yale (David Roberts), a construction foreman who is engaged in an affair with his neighbor, Carla Smith (Claire van der Boom), who is married to a low-rent, white trash crook named Smithy (Anthony Hayes). How white trash is he? He has a mullet.

Raymond takes kickbacks on the job in order to save enough money for the two to run away together. Carla grows impatient by the day. The answer to her prayers comes one fateful day when she spies Smithy stashing away a duffel bag full of cash. Carla convinces Raymond to steal the money. The originally reluctant Raymond hires an arsonist (Joel Edgerton) to burn the house down to cover up the theft. A serious of unfortunate events leads to the arsonist burning the house down with Smithy’s mother asleep inside. The web of deceit is pulled in tighter when Ray begins receiving blackmail letters. Suspicion grows on all sides building and building to a tragic conclusion.

The Edgertons offer nothing new to the genre. The characters are one-dimensional and unsympathetic and the story familiar. What the Edgertons have done well is create the mood. The dark happenings of the plot are set against the backdrop of a seemingly sleepy suburban neighborhood built along the banks of a river that’s possibly shark infested. The tension mounts with the passing of every scene keeping the characters and the audience on their toes.

Rating: ***

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Whip It

Whip It - Dir. Drew Barrymore (2009)


After growing up in front of the camera, Drew Barrymore makes her debut behind it with Whip It. Barrymore’s first directorial effort is equal parts glib indie hipster comedy and equal parts misfit sports movie. Think Juno meets Bad News Bears and Slap Shot.

In fact, Juno starlet Ellen Page is cast as the lead, one Bliss Cavendar whose Eggo is a little less preggo here. Bliss is a high school senior in the one horse town of Bodeen which is smack dab in the middle of nowhere, Texas. She works part-time as a waitress at the local diner with her best friend Pash (Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat). Both are forced to serve their classmates who are mainly dumb jocks and stuck-up cheerleaders. Bliss’s mother Brooke (Marcia Gay Harden) is a postal worker who forces her daughter to compete in local teen beauty pageants. Bliss’s father Earl (Daniel Stern) is passive to the bone doing anything he can to avoid conflict.

Bliss is the proverbial square peg in a round hole until she discovers direction in her directionless life. She finds roller derby. She sneaks off to Austin, lies about her age, and successfully tries out for the league, despite the fact that her only pair of skates has Barbie on them. Bliss becomes a member of the Hurl Scouts, the league’s worst team and damn proud of it. Her teammates are a collection of colorfully named cuties like Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wiig), Bloody Holly (Zoe Bell), Smashley Simpson (Barrymore), and Rosa Sparks (Eve). Bliss is transformed into Babe Ruthless and becomes the league’s poster girl drawing the ire of rival derby girl Iron Maven (Juliette Lewis). The Scouts even have their own versions of the Hanson Brothers in the form of the Manson Sisters, a pair of deaf & mute enforcers played by real-life derby girls Kristen “Krissy Krash” Adolfi and Rachel “Iron Maiven” Piplica.

The two best performances in the film belong to Kristen Wiig and Andrew Wilson as Hurl Scouts coach Razor. Wiig has stolen many scenes in miniscule bit roles before, Knocked Up and Ghost Town, for example. Here, Wiig is given a more substantial part and a chance to stretch her acting muscles as the team’s resident den mother. Andre Wilson is the elder, lesser known brother of Luke and Owen. Yes, he’s the Zeppo of the Wilson Clan, but I doubt either of his bros could have played the role any better.

The script by Shauna Cross (the real-life Maggie Mayhem) is predictable and uses just about every cliché known in the playbooks of inspirational sports movies and coming-of-age tales. What makes the film work is its overwhelming sense of joy. Whip It is just too much fun not to enjoy.

Rating: ** ½

Saturday, April 3, 2010

The Bounty Hunter

The Bounty Hunter - Dir. Andy Tennant (2010)


If there was ever a genre that needed serious reinvention, it is the modern romantic comedy. Aside from (500) Days of Summer, the rom-com has been a squalid and stagnant cesspool not unlike the putrid sump in Kurosawa’s Drunken Angel (pardon the film geek reference). While I’m all for change, I don’t think the sudden emergence of the rom-com/action movie hybrid is the way to go. This summer we’ll see Knight and Day (with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz) and Killers (with Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl), both of which feature a ‘girl meets boy, boy turns out to be highly trained assassin’ plots. April sees the release of Date Night this complete failure of a film, The Bounty Hunter.

Jennifer Aniston is Nicole Hurley, a newspaper reporter, and Gerard Butler is Milo Boyd, a former cop turned bounty hunter following their messy divorce. They hate each other so much that it takes them about an hour and a half to realize how much they really love each other. Sorry, did I forget to mention spoiler alert?

Anyways, Nicole is working on a riveting story about parking tickets. Through a series of contrived events this leads her onto the trail of dirty cops and stolen evidence. She winds up skipping a court date for a traffic violation. Milo gleefully accepts the job and their romance is rekindled while the bad guys shoot at them. The paper thin story is filled out by a few subplots involving Jason Sudeikis as an overly amorous co-worker of Nicole’s, Milo’s gambling addiction, and the loan sharks he owes.

The Bounty Hunter is basically a poor man’s version of Midnight Run, except Butler is no Robert DeNiro and Jennifer Aniston is way hotter than Charles Grodin. But, that’s not nearly enough to elevate the film above it formulaic rom-com trappings. The action isn’t good enough to keep things interesting for the guys dragged to the theaters by their dates. Director Andy Tennant (Hitch) just doesn’t have a handle on how to shoot action sequences in a competent manner. The dialogue is purely functional meant to do nothing more than advance the plot and explain everything in great detail, as if the Byzantine screenplay by Sarah Thorp was too much for anyone of below average intelligence to grasp. The comedy consists mainly of Gerard Butler being tasered and punched in the balls.

There are absolutely no redeeming qualities about The Bounty Hunter.

Rating: DUD