Thursday, May 24, 2012

Caesar Must Die


The transitions between the play dialogue and the actual dialogue in this intriguing reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar were almost seamless. Caesar Must Die is set in an Italian prison where inmates comprise the cast of the play. The inmates become absorbed in their roles and the line between what is reality and what is theater is progressively blurred. One character comments, and I found myself nodding in agreement with him, “And to think I found this so boring in school.” I am sure that this movie will grace high school English classrooms everywhere upon its DVD release.

Cast & Credits:
Cosimo Rega
Salvatore Striano
Giovanni Arcuri
Antonio Frasca
Juan Dario Bonetti

Kaos Cinematografica and Stemal Entertainment present a film directed by Paolo Taviani and Vittorio Taviani, and written by William Shakespeare. Italian. 2012. Running time: 76 minutes. No MPAA rating.

Alfie, The Little Werewolf


A feel-good Dutch family comedy, Alfie the Little Werewolf was the first foreign movie I saw in Cannes. The movie poster was what initially drew me to Alfie. It shows Alfie in mid-transformation perched on a tree limb with a full moon behind him. The title character, portrayed by Ole Kroes, strongly resembles the American child actor Jonathan Lipnicki (Stuart Little). For me, the resemblance resurrected fond memories of The Little Vampire, one of my favorite movies as a kid.
Alfie, the Little Werewolf tells the story of Alfie, an adopted boy who discovers that he is destined to become a werewolf every full moon after he turns seven. Alfie is one of the smaller, quieter kids in school, and predictably is harassed by a bully named Nico. Alfie has an adorable little-kid crush on Noura, a girl in his homeroom class who won’t even give him the time of day. On the night of the first full moon after his seventh birthday, Alfie transforms into a werewolf and roams the town. He encounters a mysterious stranger in the park who gives him advice and then recedes back into the shadows. This stranger is, of course, important later on. When Alfie returns to his bedroom, his older brother Timmie discovers him still in werewolf form and takes the news that his brother is part monster very well. He agrees to help Alfie keep it a secret from their parents. The rest of the movie is Alfie’s adventures as his life as a werewolf continues to impact his life as a normal human boy. 
Since I had already seen a movie with a relatively similar storyline to Alfie, I was probably a bit more prepared for some of the weirder scenes than the average person. For example, one scene shows werewolf Alfie invading the chicken coop of his next-door neighbor Mrs. Klijtjes, and it’s implied, with an artful smattering of blood on his lip and some feathers, that he ate a chicken. Gross. Alfie’s dad (Remko Vrijdag) provided some excellent comic relief with character quirks that were usually very funny, although a few were too over the top. For example, one joke that was more cringe-worthy than funny was a scene in which he’s trying to fix the kitchen sink while wearing a women’s floral bathing suit.
I loved the music, arranged by Patrick Lemmons, which sounded like spooky, Halloween-esque folk music. I don’t often notice the sound track of movies, but this one was pleasantly unique. The movie’s coloring was very vivid, with an emphasis on deep, saturated colors. It definitely made me want to move to the Netherlands if I could experience scenery like the kids rollerbladed through on their way to school every day. The costuming of the characters was appropriately artsy and meshed well with the quirky subject matter of the movie. Alfie always wore some combination of red and blue, which I think was intentional, but ends up being more interesting trivia about the movie than serving any purpose. One misstep in the special effects of the film was doing zoomed out shots of werewolf Alfie. The CGI is really terrible and looks like something out of the SIMS. Also, whoever designed the werewolf costume for Alfie must’ve been watching a lot of Star Wars because he looks like a baby albino Chewbacca.
Alfie the Little Werewolf definitely has an agenda and a message to convey. In one scene, Alfie complains to Timmie, who is a whole lot nicer to his younger sibling than I ever was to mine, “I just want to be ordinary!” Timmie tells him, “No one is ordinary. Ordinary is boring!” When Alfie finally works up the courage to talk to Noura, he tells her, “I’m just a bit different,” and her response is “That’s what I like about you.” The idea that “normal is boring” or some variation of that phrase is repeated several times throughout the movie. However, unless you’re keeping a tally or something, it doesn’t detract from the plot. In addition, Alfie is aimed at a younger audience, so the repetition is necessary. I really enjoyed this movie, and although some of the characters were clichéd, I thought it was a refreshing break from a lot of American kid’s cinema that’s rife with either thinly veiled adult jokes or stupid bathroom humor.

Cast & Credits
Maas Bronkhuyzen
Kim Van Kooten
Trudy Labij
Ole Kroes
Remko Vrijdag

Bos Bros Film & TV Productions and uFilm presents the movie directed by Joram Lursen and written by Tamara Bos. Based on the book written by Paul van Loon. Dutch. 2011. Running time: 95 minutes. No MPAA rating.

Sunday, May 20, 2012

Red Lights *NECESSARY SPOILER: Character death


By now I should know that it is best to avoid going into a movie with expectations. It prevents you from truly enjoying a decent movie if your expectations are unattainable. Red Lights was recommended to me a few days ago as a great thriller, so going into the theater I was excited to see something either high octane and fast-paced or slow and smoldering like most movies in its genre. Red Lights is neither, and for the first half of the movie, I was largely disappointed.
In Red Lights, Dr. Margaret Matheson (Sigourney Weaver) is a woman who has dedicated her life to weeding out con artists who are posing as healing psychics. Margaret is a skeptic and teaches a university level class on how to identify fraudulent psychics. Her partner and teaching assistant Dr. Tom Buckley (Cillian Murphy) is an acclaimed physicist. It’s established that Tom is a brilliant young scientist, so both the audience and Margaret question why he’s with her chasing after fake paranormals. Tom skirts the topic gracefully but firmly whenever asked, though his reasons are eventually revealed.
Sally (Elizabeth Olson), a pretty girl who asks the right controversial questions in class, piques Tom’s interest, and they, as movie clichés go, end up sleeping together. She is never fleshed out into a complete character, and the same 2-dimensional fate is accorded to another questioning student Ben (Craig Roberts). Margaret and Tom solve a series of paranormal cases in the beginning of the movie, and the audience is educated on how psychics fake it to make it, which is, admittedly, pretty cool. This part of the movie I guess was designed to establish emotional ties between the characters and the audience, but after forty-five minutes of “character development,” I was ready for something to actually happen.
It seemed like my wish would be granted when Robert De Niro’s shady character Simon Silver was finally introduced. Silver was a famous magician 30 years ago who suddenly retired after a skeptical reporter had a heart attack at his show. There was some initial suspicion surrounding the circumstances of the death, but Silver’s name was cleared. All of this sounded highly intriguing to me, and I was ready for Silver to start blowing things up with his mind or something, but alas, still more character development.
After Margaret is talked into a corner on national television when Silver's assistant asks her about her personal beliefs, Tom is full of righteous indignation that someone would dare to bully his mentor and is raring to go after Silver. Although Margaret warns Tom that Silver took a painful mental and emotional stab at her years ago for researching him, Tom still goes to Silver’s opening show. As soon as he flips the switch on a device that would pick up any radio waves feeding damning information to an earplug on stage, the entire booth he's in explodes. Tom escapes with just a few scratches, but he is now set in his conviction that Silver is a fraud and rigged the booth to prevent investigation.
After the show, Tom finds Margaret comatose on the office floor, and she dies in the hospital as a result of a long-term cardiovascular problem. In a particularly poignant scene that showcased Cillian Murphy’s acting chops, another professor delivers the news of Margaret’s death. I felt the raw pain of Tom’s loss as I watched his composure implode on screen. Although Tom’s devotion to Margaret was true, I kept wondering the whole time what he saw in her. Dr. Margaret was supposed to be emotionally stilted, but Sigourney Weaver’s interpretation of the character had no depth. Weaver had two types of line delivery: either seemingly read off of a teleprompter, or an unsolicited recitation of some boring textbook she’d memorized.
Thankfully, when the film’s focus shifted to Tom following Margaret’s death, the movie vastly improved. After Tom’s break down, strange things start happening around him. Birds fly into windows next to him, he gets phone calls where no one is on the other line, electronics periodically surge and he has terrifying nightmares. The pacing between each incident is perfect, and the tension continues to build as the audience tries to figure out what’s going on. Cillian Murphy does an incredible job of portraying a man’s slow descent into a manic state of paranoia. His sharp cheekbones and under eye circles give him an almost skeletal appearance at times, and director Rodrigo Cortés exploits these facial features with strategically placed lighting as Tom toes the edge of a psychotic break.
Dr. Shackleton (Toby Jones), a colleague of Margaret's, gets permission to host a series of tests to finally prove once and for all if Silver is a fraud. Tom intimidates the doctor into letting him sit in on the process, feeding his growing obsession with Silver. The tests seem to prove beyond a doubt that Silver is the real deal. Tom refuses to believe the results and sets Ben to the task of reviewing all the footage one last time before publishing. Tom leaves Ben at the office and heads to Silver’s show. All of the unexplained paranormal activity builds up to this final confrontation, and believe me, it is well worth the wait. I left the theater satisfied, even with the bland first hour of meandering. For the most part, it was a good film, but recasting Dr. Margaret could have made it an even better one.

Cast & Credits:

Sigourney Weaver
Cillian Murphy
Elizabeth Olson
Toby Jones
Craig Roberts

Versus Entertainment presents a film written and directed by Rodrigo Cortés. Running time: 119 minutes. English. No MPAA rating.

Dead in France


Dead in France follows Charles to Cannes, where he attempts to retire from the hitman business for good. Unfortunately, some of his colleagues follow. Filming in black and white seemed like a random choice, and the self-professed black comedy was heavy on explicit violence and extremely light on successful jokes. One scene incorporated various creative uses of ballpoint pens, and elicited a pained “Mon Dieu” from the woman behind me. The hodge podge of characters didn’t work as a cohesive group, leaving those who stuck out the whole movie in a general state of confusion and disgust.

Cast & Credits: 

Kate Loustau
Darren Bransford
Celia Muir
Brian Levine
Lee Cheney 


Delacheroy Films and Inroad Pictures present a film directed by Kris McManus. Running time: 88 minutes. Black and white. No MPAA rating.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)


Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - a self-aware, clever play on the film noir genre - is aptly named, as five minutes after the opening credits, somebody has already been shot. The opening credits are reminiscent of Maurice Binder’s famous work for the James Bond franchise, with high contrast landscapes, stylized blood splatter name transitions, and silhouetted black figures, all set to a swanky, Harlem jazz track.

Robert Downey Jr plays the thief Harry Lockhart, and the first we see of him, he is pleasantly chatting to a “Chloe,” as he sifts through the racks of a closed toy store looking for her birthday present. After his partner accidently sets off the alarm, Harry manages to evade the police as well as the trigger-happy next-door neighbor that shoots his partner. After ducking into a nearby building, Harry finds himself in the audition room for a detective movie. He wings the audition and gives the performance of his life because he’s basically reading the transcript for what just happened to him 30 seconds ago. Harry is then flown out to LA where he meets Gay Perry, played by Val Kilmer, the real life detective who’s assigned to teach him the tricks of the trade.

In their first “training” session, Gay Perry brings Harry along on a job. They witness somebody dumping a body and are sucked into an elaborate murder mystery. Along the way, Harry is reunited with his High School dream girl Harmony Lane, played by Michelle Monaghan. Harmony isn’t your typical damsel in distress. In High School, everybody in Harry’s graduating class had taken a stroll down Harmony Lane, all excepting Harry’s best friend Chutney whom she’d promised, for his sake, not to sleep with. Monaghan holds her own against Downey and Kilmer with a unique interpretation of Harmony, who houses a dark family secret.

The constant banter between Monaghan, Kilmer, and Downey makes this movie worth watching. It’s the quirky indie version of Bad Boys. Kilmer and Downey is a partner match-up made in heaven – in typical Downey fashion, he rambles a sarcastic monologue-style joke until Kilmer shuts him down with a deadpanned, snarky one-liner. Kilmer’s Gay Perry informs a guy they’re holding at gunpoint, “This isn't ‘good cop, bad cop.’ This is fag and New Yorker. You're in a lot of trouble.” Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a successful and smart parody of the detective movie genre.

Cast & Credits:

Robert Downey Jr
Michelle Monaghan
Val Kilmer
Larry Miller
Corbin Bernsen

Warner Bros and Silver Pictures presents a film written and directed by Shane Black. Running time: 102 minutes. English. R.