Movie/TV Reviews

Halloween

Susan Granger’s review of “Halloween” (Dimension Films)

Ron Zombie’s “re-imagining” of John Carpenter’s “Halloween” (1978) has made a killing at the box-office so it’s impossible to ignore.
The story delves deeper into what turned young Michael Myers into a psychopathic killer. And – guess what? – it’s his dysfunctional family.
There’s his stripper mother (Sheri Moon Zombie), abusive stepfather (William Forsythe), trampy older sister (Hanna Hall) and baby sister – most of whom 10 year-old Michael (Daeg Faerch) dispatches in a variety of nasty ways, sparing only mom and the baby. Michael is sent to a maximum-security sanitarium under the watchful eye of Dr. Sam Loomis, a child psychologist (Matthew McDowell). But rehabilitation doesn’t happen; Michael won’t talk and has a mask fetish, creating Leatherface out of papier-mache. So it’s no surprise that, 16 years later, when he’s being moved to another facility on Halloween, now grown-up Michael (former pro wrestler Tyler Mane) escapes, leaving hacked-up corpses in his wake.
Back in Haddonfield, he discovers that baby sis, Laurie (Scout Taylor-Compton, ineptly replacing Jamie Lee Curtis), has been adopted, so he goes on another killing spree, eliminating her best friends – both boys and girls – much to consternation of the sheriff (Brad Dourif) and Dr. Loomis. This mayhem is accentuated by Tyler Bates’ generically creepy score. Curiously, there’s no visual allusion to the Halloween celebration – no carved pumpkins, no trick ‘n’ treaters.
It’s said rock star-turned-filmmaker Rob Zombie (“House of 1000 Corpses,” “The Devil’s Rejects”) spent only about $15 million, but Bob Weinstein, co-founder of the Weinstein Co., doubts that there will be another sequel: “I never say never, never.but it would have to be something very different.” On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Halloween” slashes its way to a violent 3, making mincemeat of far better films at the multiplex.

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Across the Universe

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Across the Universe” (Sony Pictures Entertainment)

Innovative theatrical director Julie Taymor (“The Lion King”) turns more than 30 Beatles songs into a lavishly phantasmagorical audio/visual experience.
It begins on a Liverpool beach, where a young man, Jude (Jim Sturgess) sits on the sand singing, “Is there anybody going to listen to my story – all about the girl who came to stay? She’s the kind of girl you want so much it makes you sorry; still you don’t regret a single day.”
The girl is Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), just one of the invented characters, along with her older brother, Max (Joe Anderson), who gets drafted. Somehow they’re sharing a bohemian pad in Greenwich Village – with rockers JoJo (Martin Luther McCoy) and Joplinesque Sadie (Dana Fuchs) and a lesbian cheerleader from Ohio, Prudence (T.V. Carpio), who croons “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” against a football ballet.
Back in 1998, the Bee Gees “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” tried – and failed – to re-create the ’60s and Beatlemania, so credit 54 year-old Julie Taymor (“Frida,” “Titus”) for courage, collaborating with composer/arranger Elliot Goldenthal, choreographer Daniel Ezralow, along with screenwriters Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais.
“Let It Be” transforms into a gospel hymn set in the Detroit riots, while “Strawberry Fields Forever” is Vietnam-themed. There’s Bono as a Beatnik poet musing “I Am the Walrus” and Salma Hayek as five sexy, sinister nurses who administer morphine to Max in a VA hospital to the strains of “Happiness is a Warm Gun”, plus cameos by Joe Cocker and Eddie Izzard. Not surprisingly, the stylized cinematography ranges from realistic to surreal. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Across the Universe” is a unique, if incoherent 7, a fantastic, counterculture voyage to nowhere. All you need is love, man.

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The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” (Warner Bros.)

When a film’s running time is 2 hours and 40 minutes, it’s often because the writer is also directing – so there’s no one to tell him to cut out 40 minutes, or else!
Back in the 1870s, Jesse James (Brad Pitt) was the country’s most notorious outlaw. Celebrated in dime novels, his exploits were legendary. As years pass, most of the original gang members die and Jesse’s brother (Sam Shepard) retires. Hanging on the coattails of his older brother Charley (Sam Rockwell) and longing for acceptance is fawning, hero-worshipping 19 year-old Robert Ford (slyly played by Casey Affleck, Ben’s real-life younger brother). History records Ford as “the coward” who shot 34 year-old Jesse in the back, but the plot delves into the psyches of both gunslingers and what may – or may not – have precipitated that infamous murder.
Jesse James is said to have been charismatic and complex, but you’d never know it from Brad Pitt’s stolid, stoic performance, most remarkable for its pensive stillness – a trait which served Gary Cooper well in many Westerns.
Based on Ron Hansen’s novel, it’s self-indulgently adapted and languidly, pretentiously directed by Andrew Dominik, whose previous experience includes TV commercials, music videos and “Chopper” about the notorious Australian criminal Chopper Read. Perhaps it’s also not the best judgment to have the star (Brad Pitt) also serve as producer.
Since it’s so tedious to watch, the cameo by Washington pundit James Carville as the Governor of Missouri is a welcome diversion. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” is a turgid 4, making one wonder why it takes such a long, long time to kill Jesse James.

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Eastern Promises

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Eastern Promises” (Focus Features)

The naked bathhouse fight is perhaps the most eagerly anticipated scene in director David Cronenberg’s latest thriller – but there’s more to it than that.
Once a prisoner in Siberia, stoic, stone-faced and ruthlessly ambitious Nikoli Luzhin (Viggo Mortensen) works as a driver for twinkly-eyed, mild-mannered Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), the proprietor of an elegant Russian restaurant in London. But behind the scenes – and the perpetually bubbling borscht – Semyon is the shrewd Godfather of the expatriate mob. Known as Vory v Zakone, its members, like Japanese yakuza, have distinguishing tattoos.
When hospital midwife Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts) retrieves a diary, written in Cyrillic, off a teenage girl from the Ukraine who dies giving birth to a baby girl, she naively asks Semyon to translate it – after her Russian-born uncle (Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski) refuses. The diary details how the girl has been exploited as a sex slave, serving the kingpin and his minions, including his nasty, psychopathic son, Kirill (French actor Vincent Cassel), who obviously feels homosexual urges toward hard-bodied Nikoli.
Mortensen’s highly publicized naked scene takes place in a Turkish steam bath where he’s attacked by two black leather-clad, knife-wielding Chechen thugs. Gratuitous and exploitive, his full-frontal exposure makes him particularly vulnerable during the brutal, four-minute encounter, which is perhaps the longest male nude scene ever in a Hollywood mainstream movie.
Working from Steve Knight’s (“Dirty Pretty Things”) maudlin script, Cronenberg (“A History of Violence”) and cinematographer Peter Suschitzky ratchet the tension by adding shadowy, sinister undertones, amplified by Howard Shore’s melodramatic score. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Eastern Promises” is a grimly gory, ultimately surprising 7. And it certainly makes you stop thinking about Viggo Mortensen as “Lord of the Rings'” King Aragorn of Middle Earth.

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In the Valley of Elah

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “In the Valley of Elah” (Warner Independent)

Academy Award season is officially underway with the release of this hard-hitting drama by Paul Haggis (“Crash”), exploring the emotional wreckage of the current war.
Soon after a young soldier, Mike Deerfield (Jonathan Tucker), returns to Fort Rudd from active duty in Iraq, he’s reported AWOL. When his commanding officer phones his parents (Tommy Lee Jones, Susan Sarandon) in Tennessee, they’re mystified. Hank’s a stoic Vietnam vet but they’ve already lost the eldest son in a helicopter crash. So he drives to the New Mexico base to investigate, dutifully stopping en route to correct a Guatemalan immigrant who is flying the American flag upside down by mistake.
Meanwhile, there’s a jurisdictional skirmish between military police and local detectives over the incinerated remnants of a dismembered body found scattered in a field near the base. Forensic evidence indicates it’s Mike – but recently promoted Det. Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron), a single mother, is baffled by the crime scene, which the Army brass (Jason Patric, James Franco) dismiss as a drug deal-gone-bad. Utilizing his experience as an Army MP, Hank suspiciously interrogates Mike’s clean-cut comrades and hires a techie (Rick Gonzalez) to hack into Mike’s cellphone and retrieve scrambled video footage he took in Iraq, which, eventually, sheds light on what occurred.
Adapted from a Playboy magazine article, “Death and Dishonor” by Mark Boal and elegantly photographed by Roger Deakins, it features one of Tommy Lee Jones’ finest performances as an agonized father questioning long-held beliefs. Charlize Theron, Frances Fisher and Susan Sarandon are convincing, but Sarandon is woefully underutilized. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “In the Valley of Elah” is a profoundly powerful and disturbing 9, taking its title from the Biblical valley where David fought Goliath.

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Lust, Caution

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Lust, Caution” (Focus Features)

Daring, innovative director Ang Lee follows his controversial “Brokeback Mountain” and breathtaking “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” with this erotic Chinese historical drama, rated NC-17 for “explicit sexuality.”
Based on an Eileen Chang short story set during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai during World War II, the plot involves a guileless young drama student (Tang Wei) who is recruited by idealistic Kuang Yu-Min (Wang Lee-Hom) to impersonate an aspiring socialite, Mrs. Mak, and join the mah-jongg game run by Mrs. Yee (Joan Chen) in order to seduce and entrap her husband, Mr. Yee (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai), a cruel collaborator who routinely turns in resistance members to the Japanese invaders. She’s constantly afraid that her real identity will be discovered and he’s paranoid about being duped. The furtive tension generated by their fear becomes mutual lust, punctuated by the staccato ‘clack, clack, clack’ of mah-jongg tiles.
In the espionage vein, it’s not unlike Dutch director Paul Verhoeven’s “Black Book” about a pretty Jewess who takes a Gestapo officer as her lover to aid the resistance.
As for the bold, often violent and abusive sex scenes, Leung and Wei maneuver naked through an unpredictable Kama Sutra of gratuitously graphic positions.
“Each time they have intercourse, it’s like a conversation,” explains Lee, “Sex is the ultimate body language. The contortion of their bodies visually represents what they inflict on each other.”
Lovely Beijing newcomer Tang Wei carries the film, ably supported by Hong Kong’s top actor Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, while Joan Chen is superb as the gossipy, materialistic matron. Rodrigo Prieto’s cinematography is exquisite, accompanied by Alexandre Desplat’s music. In Chinese with English subtitles, on the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Lust, Caution” is a suspenseful, sadomasochistic 7, running a painfully long 158 minutes.

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The Darjeeling Limited

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “The Darjeeling Limited” (Fox Searchlight)

The luggage! The luggage! It’s all about the baggage.
Wes Anderson (“Rushmore,” “Bottle Rocket,” “The Royal Tennenbaums”) once again delves into family dysfunction, as the three wealthy, but estranged, Whitman brothers – who haven’t seen each other in the year since their father’s funeral – journey through rural India by train with 11 – count ’em – stunning, custom-made, animal motif Louis Vuitton suitcases.
Except for a shared penchant for substance abuse, they couldn’t be more different. The eldest, Francis (Owen Wilson), his head in bandages as the result of a motorcycle accident, is the ‘organizer,’ distributing laminated cards delineating each day’s spiritual activities. “We’re here to find ourselves and bond with each other,” he decrees.
Middle sibling Peter (Adrien Brody) has a pregnant wife, while the youngest, Jack (Jason Schwartzman), is still so obsessed with his ‘ex’ that he eavesdrops on her answering machine. But that doesn’t stop him from having a liaison with their compliant compartment attendant (Amara Karan), infuriating the prim steward (Waris Ahluwalia).
When they finally track down their self-absorbed mother (Anjelica Huston) in an isolated Himalayan convent, she – gently but firmly – tells them to quit obsessing about the past. Forgiveness would mean traveling lighter, leaving a lot of emotional baggage behind.
Meticulously stylized and nimbly filmed on a retrofitted Indian train, it’s a spicy, lyrical cinematic feast, slyly written by Anderson, Schwartzman (Talia Shire’s son) and Roman Coppola (Francis’s son) – with a terrific score and cameos by Ifan Khan and Bill Murray.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Darjeeling Limited” is a poignant, peripatetic 8. Access the titular website for Anderson’s short, “Hotel Chevalier,” featuring Jason Schwartzman’s character having a rendezvous in Paris with his ‘ex’ (Natalie Portman), which will undoubtedly be part of the DVD.

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Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” (Universal Pictures)

This sequel to the highly acclaimed 1998 “Elizabeth” is a historical costume drama – with far more emphasis on the ‘costume’ than the ‘drama.’
It begins in 1585, when strong-willed, independent Queen Elizabeth I (Cate Blanchett) with her wily adviser, Sir Francis Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush) faces her biggest challenge from across the Channel. Backed by the Pope and the Inquisition, Philip II of Spain (Jordi Molla) is determined to conquer Protestant England, utilizing his mighty Armada, and to place Elizabeth’s treacherous Catholic cousin, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots (Samantha Morton), on the British throne.
Meanwhile, at court, the dashing explorer Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen) returns from the New World, bearing gifts – like ‘live’ Indians, potatoes, tobacco and gold – and intrigues Elizabeth with his tales of adventure, while clandestinely seducing her favorite Lady-in-Waiting, Bess (Abbie Cornish). Predictably, when Elizabeth discovers that Bess is pregnant, jealousy overwhelms reason.
Melodramatically written by William Nicholson and Michael Hirst and pretentiously directed by Shekhar Kapur, it’s lavish but as emotionally barren as Elizabeth herself. Resplendent Cate Blanchett still rants and raves but comes across shriller. While Her Majesty ages, Blanchett obviously doesn’t – the fact that the Queen’s now 52 is obviously irrelevant. Clive Owen oozes charisma, this time channeling that swashbuckling rogue, Errol Flynn.
Trivia buffs note that Bette Davis also played Queen Elizabeth I in “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex” (1939) and “The Virgin Queen” (1955) with young, pre-“Dynasty” Joan Collins as Bess.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” is a shallow, clichŽ-filled, deafening 6. There’s simply no excuse for Craig Armstrong and AR Rahman’s musical score to be so overpowering – except, perhaps, to keep you awake when you might be inclined to nod off.

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The Game Plan

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “The Game Plan” (Disney)

Genial Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has a huge fan following – which explains the astounding box-office success of this heart-warming if utterly predictable comedy.
The 6’4″-tall former wrestling champ plays legendary Joe “Never Say No” Kingman, an egomaniacal Boston Rebels quarterback whose swingin,’ Elvis-inspired bachelor lifestyle is interrupted by the unexpected arrival on his penthouse doorstep of a precocious eight year-old girl, Peyton (Disney Channel “Cory in the House” star Madison Pettis), who claims to be his daughter. It seems that her mother, Joe’s ex-wife, with whom he broke up nine years ago, is off to Africa to supervise a massive humanitarian effort in the Sudan and is utterly unreachable.
Suddenly, distracting ballet classes, baby dolls and bedtime stories must be sandwiched in between practices and dates with supermodels – much to the chagrin of Joe’s aggressive agent, Stella Peck (Kyra Sedgwick of TV’s “The Closer”), as time for the pro championship game grows near.
Revolving around what’s really important in life, the formulaic screenplay was written by first-timers Nichole Millard & Kathryn Price and generically directed by Andy Fickman – including the usual mischief-making slapstick and sight gags: i.e. starting the kitchen blender with the lid off, filling the bathroom with bubbles, dressing Joe’s bulldog Spike in a tutu. Plus there’s hotshot Joe’s unfortunate cinnamon-allergy and a “Swan Lake” dance recital supervised by Joe’s sexy dancer-love interest Roselyn Sanchez.
Credit Johnson’s undeniable charisma for gaining ground while carrying this cuteness along, even when he’s dressed in skintight green leotards and Peyton marches forth in her own mini-football uniform. Hopefully, Johnson’s next outing, starring as Agent 23 in “Get Smart,” will be better. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Game Plan” is a good-natured, family-friendly 5 – from playboy to paternity.

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Duck

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Duck” (Right Brained Releasing)

If you love animals and off-beat films, you’ll find them both in this quirky, whimsical, low-budget, independent road movie.
Philip Baker Hall plays Arthur, a retired history professor, who has not only lost his wife and only son but also summarily been evicted from his Los Angeles apartment. With no job and no money, no family and no friends, he’s homeless and hopeless. It’s 2009 and, under President Jeb Bush, all pensions, along with Medicare and Social Security benefits have been abolished.
Planning to kill himself, Arthur walks to a nearby park where he discovers an orphaned duckling – which he names Joe – and discovers a new lease on life. Joe becomes Arthur’s constant companion, like “Travels With Charley,” as this unlikely twosome gamely ventures forth on an odyssey to forge some kind of existence together – if and when they can reach the beach.
It’s not always easy – like when construction workers drain the park’s pond and throw stones at Joe and when a hostile bus driver refuses to allow Joe to ride on her bus. A psychiatric social worker consigns Arthur to a homeless support group where the appeal of the free donuts fails to make up for the hostile conversation. Nevertheless, Arthur befriends a blind man, Norman (Bill Cobb), with a seeing-eye dog, and an Asian immigrant pedicurist (Amy Hill) saves Joe’s webbed feet.
Writer/director Nic Bettauer concocts a truly original cinematic experience – and whether or not you’ll enjoy the various vignettes depends on your willingness to waddle along for the ride. Admittedly, some of their quacking encounters work better than others. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Duck” is a strangely endearing 7. And it’s certainly unique.

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