Movie/TV Reviews

Goya’s Ghosts

Susan Granger’s review of “Goya’s Ghosts” (Samuel Goldwyn)

In late18th century Spain, a Roman Catholic cleric, Brother Lorenzo (Javier Bardem), serves as an agent of the Inquisitor General (Michael Lonsdale). Their target is the painter Francisco Goya (Stellan Skarsgard), who is working on a portrait of Ines (Natalie Portman), the beautiful daughter of a wealthy merchant. Because Ines refuses to eat pork, they suspect that there’s Jewish blood in her ancestry. As a result, she is tortured and imprisoned in the church’s dungeon, where Lorenzo rapes her – after which, over dinner, he assures her father, Tomas Bilbatua (Jose Luis Gomez), that if Ines truly loved God, she would never sign a false confession.
Fifteen years later, the invading French Army vanquishes the Inquisition. Lorenzo has become Napoleon’s prosecutor. It’s sheer melodrama as the now-insane Ines tells him that she bore him a daughter whom Lorenzo discovers has become a prostitute (Portman – in a dual role).
Veteran Czech-born director Milos Forman (“Valmont,” “Amadeus,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”) has assembled an international cast, resulting in a polyglot of incomprehensible accents. To cast very Swedish Stellan Skarsgard as very Spanish Goya was a serious error. And Randy Quaid turns up as the violin-playing, dimwitted King Carlos IV with Queen Maria Luisa (Blanca Portillo) painted by Goya.
Collaborating on the soap opera-like political satire with Jean-Claude Carriere doesn’t help. Their sketchy script is awkward and stilted – with many vignettes revolving around “being put to the question,” a euphemism for torture – along with the assertion that, under duress, people will confess to anything. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Goya’s Ghosts” is a grotesque 4, completely lacking in emotional focus. Anytime you emerge from the theater praising the scenery more than the scenes, there’s a problem with the picture.

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Arctic Tale

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Arctic Tale” (Paramount Classics/National Geographic)

Venturing into “March of the Penguins” territory – on the opposite tip of the globe – this epic nature documentary follows the parallel stories of a polar bear cub, Nanu, and walrus pup, Seela, from birth through adolescence to maturity and parenthood in the frozen Arctic wilderness.
From the moment curious Nanu crawls out of her sheltering snow cave, she’s surrounded by a vast kingdom of astonishing cold, an unforgiving landscape where she and her brother must learn – from their mother – the skills necessary to survive.
After Seela’s birth in the blue watery depths, her greatest challenge is learning to use her flippers to haul herself up on an ice floe so she won’t die. She’s attended not only by her mother but also by another female, a vigilant “auntie,” who protectively flank her.
They’re joined by tiny white foxes, skittish ring seals, thick-billed murres that fly not only through the sky but also the ocean, watchful gulls and mysterious narwhals, the “unicorns” of the North Pole. For these Arctic creatures, dangers abound, particularly climate change. Only the strongest will survive now that their crystalline habitat is rapidly melting.
For the past 15 years, the filmmaking husband-and-wife team Adam Ravetch and Sarah Robertson have painstakingly photographed 800 hours of footage, expertly edited by Beth Spiegel to serve a profoundly disturbing environmental warning tale by Linda Wolverton, Moses Richards and Kristin Gore (filially connected to “An Inconvenient Truth”) and narrated by Queen Latifah, whose cloying anthropomorphizing oozes treacle. Discordant notes also emanate from the often distracting sound track, slipping into Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family” as a walrus herd experiences communal indigestion.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Arctic Tale” is an astonishing, adventurous 8, notably for its spectacular photography.

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The Simpson Movie

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “The Simpson Movie” (20th Century-Fox)

So the lights go down and Homer Simpson says, “I can’t believe we’re paying to see something we could see at home on TV for free. Everyone in this theater is a big sucker!”
What’s it all about? Well, let’s see.despite Grandpa’s ominous warning, Homer falls in love with a pig, dares son Bart to skateboard naked through town, ignores environmental pleas from daughter Lisa and wife Marge’s disapproval and becomes a prime polluter, potentially dooming his hometown of Springfield, located somewhere near Ohio, Nevada, Kentucky and Maine. Meanwhile, Lisa falls in love with an Irish boy named Colin and baby Maggie says her first word. (Nah, I’m not going to tell you what it is.) And somewhere towards the end, Homer has an epiphany (look it up) with an Inuit in Alaska.
After 18 television seasons and 400 episodes, America’s most irreverent dysfunctional family has finally made it to the big screen – and, yes, it’s worth the price of admission.
Amusement comes in many forms, beginning with Ralph Wiggum standing on the 20th Century Fox logo singing along with the company fanfare and continuing through Arnold Schwarzenegger as President of the United States: “I’m here to lead, not to read.”
Director David Silverman and his gang of writers make the most of the vocal talent – Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright and Yeardley Smith, as the family and various neighbors, along with characters created by Hank Azaria, Henry Shearer, Pamela Hayden, Tress MacNeille, plus cameos by Albert Brooks and Tom Hanks. While it drags a bit in spots, they’re few and far-between. Mostly, it’s really funny. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Simpsons” is a cleverly conceived, subversive 9, certainly the best Simpsons Movie – so far.

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The Bourne Ultimatum

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “The Bourne Ultimatum” (Universal Pictures)

Based on the third of the spy novel series by the late Robert Ludlum, this concludes the action-adventure trilogy of “The Bourne Identity” (2002) and “The Bourne Supremacy” (2004).
After his cover is blown by a London newspaper reporter (Paddy Considine), rogue CIA agent Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) once again becomes the prime target of the top-secret government agency that trained him as an assassin. With nothing left to lose, the amnesiac Bourne relentlessly seeks those responsible for turning him into a brutal killing machine, flying to and from London, Madrid, Tangier, Paris, Moscow and, finally, to New York City. All on a fake passport, carrying no luggage, evading detection and never suffering those annoying airport flight delays. Amazing!
CIA director, Ezra Kramer (Scott Glenn), and chief of the black-ops program known as Blackbriar, Noah Vosen (David Strathairn), are determined to rid themselves of this $30-million malfunctioning threat named Bourne – ‘to take him out’ this time – to the chagrin of CIA internal investigator Pamela Landy (Joan Allen). And Bourne has another ally: disillusioned CIA operative Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles), who joins him on the run.
Working from the screenplay by Tony Gilroy, Scott Z. Burns and George Nolfi, British director Paul Greengrass (“The Bourne Supremacy,” “United 93”) has obviously mastered the intricate plot twists, action choreography and terrific chase sequences – one through Manhattan – which characterize these ‘They can’t stop me!’ capers.
Cinematographer Oliver Wood creates spectacular shots, edited by Christopher Rouse to composer John Powell’s pulsating score. Is it formulaic? Yes – and the formula works. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Bourne Ultimatum” is an escapist 8, perhaps the strongest in the espionage series. But is it really the end? Don’t bet on it.

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I Know Who Killed Me

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “I Know Who Killed Me” (Sony/Tri-Star Pictures)

It’s impossible to separate gossip from film criticism when a talented young star like Lindsay Lohan sabotages her promising career not only with highly publicized substance abuse but also by choosing to make a morbid, unmitigated on-screen disaster like this.
Aubrey Fleming (Lohan) is an aspiring writer and gifted pianist who inexplicably vanishes on a date with her boyfriend, the New Salem quarterback, Jerrod Pointer (Brian Geragthy), and a couple of girlfriends, leaving her worried parents (Julia Ormond, Neal McDonough) thoroughly bewildered.
Weeks later, she turns up, blood-soaked, on the side of a country road, minus a hand and parts of a leg after escaping from captivity by a sadistic madman. Her amputations seem to match others maimed by a certain serial killer who has been targeted by the area police and FBI agents. But she can’t remember anything and insists she’s Dakota Moss, a tough-talking, pole-dancing stripper – or could she be Aubrey’s long-lost twin sister since they share the same DNA?
While indie director Chris Silverton (“The Lost”) demonstrates a modicum of visual style, despite several grotesquely ludicrous and violent torture sequences, his effort and John R. Leonetti’s hi-def cinematography are totally torpedoed by newbie scripter Jeffrey Hammond’s exploitive, incomprehensible plot and Joel McNeely’s deafening score.
But what’s most tragic is the willful self-destruction of Lindsay Lohan, the once-promising Disney moppet from “The Parent Trap,” who, more recently, delivered memorable coming-of-age performances in “A Prairie Home Companion” and “Bobby.” In one scene, she actually looks so haggard that it’s difficult to believe she just turned 21 years old. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “I Know Who Killed Me” is barely a trashy, incompetent 1 – as in one of the worst movies of the year.

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Hot Rod

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Hot Rod” (Paramount Pictures)

There have been many memorable on-screen daredevils – like Burt Reynolds in “Hooper” (1978), directed by former stuntman Hal Needham, and Peter O’Toole as a demented filmmaker in “The Stunt Man” (1980) – but Andy Samberg isn’t one of them.
Totally clueless, self-proclaimed ‘stuntman’ Rod Kimble (Samberg) believes he’s the son of Evel Knievel’s test-rider – and he’s committed to fulfilling his late father’s legacy. Problem is: he’s inept. A slacker, he lives at home with long-suffering mom Marie (Sissy Spacek) and abusive stepfather Frank (Ian McShane).
Rod’s loyal team consists of Dave (Bill Hader), the moped mechanic; Rico (Danny McBride), the ramp builder; and half-brother Kevin (Jorma Taccone), the videographer; and neighbor Denise (Isla Fisher), Rod’s love interest. When ornery Frank needs $50,000 for heart transplant surgery, they band together to help Rod stage a spectacular, death-defying jump over a fleet of 15 buses, one more than Evel Knievel ever attempted.
Working from a sketchy script by Pam Brady and directed by Akiva Schaffer, Andy Samberg, a veteran of “Saturday Night Live” digital shorts, depends far too much on the unreliable factors of slapstick, stupidity and a soundtrack of cuts from the heavy-metal band Europe. With his cool demeanor and engaging grin, Samberg deserves more support; despite this debacle, he has a promising future.
As for the highly-touted leap, forget it. Cinematographer Andrew Dunn and editor Malcolm Campbell utilize only close-ups and reaction shots. The best ‘stunts’ are the ‘falling-down-a-mountain’ training sequence and climactic fight between Rod and Frank.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Hot Rod” is a silly, sputtering 2, a goofball comedy gone gooey. Look for the funniest sequence – the “Cool Beans” rap – on YouTube since the “Stuntman Forever” short, an outtakes movie-within-a-movie, is already online.

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Bratz

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Bratz” (Lionsgate Films)

If Barbie had ever made the transition to the big screen, I’d like to think she’d have done it with more class than this live-action feature based on the popular fashion floozies.
As the ‘tweener’ story goes, Yasmin (Nathalia Ramos), Jade (Janel Parrish), Sasha (Logan Browning) and Cloe (Skyler Shaye) are “BFF” – Best Friends Forever. Inseparable, they’ve always supported each other but now they’re faced with the new social scene at Carry Nation High. (The school name must be some kind of an inside joke because the REAL Carrie Nation (1846-1911), a staunch member of the temperance movement, battling against alcohol in pre-Prohibition days, was a large woman – nearly six feet tall and weighing 175 pounds – definitely not Bratz chic.)
Anyway, the quartet is appalled by the peer pressure exerted by the insidious clique culture, as enforced by Meredith Baxter Dimly (Chelsea Staub), whose father is the uptight Principal (Jon Voight). According to the press notes, they learn “how true empowerment means standing up for your friends, being true to oneself and living out one’s dreams and aspirations.” Hah!
In the less-than-capable hands of screenwriters Susan Estelle Jansen (“The Lizzie McGuire Movie”), Adam De La Pena and David Eilenberg and director Sean McNamara, it’s really an incoherent paean to mall materialism, cloaked in ethnic diversity, lifting liberally from “Mean Girls,” “Election,” “Clueless” and “Raise Your Voice” – although the inclusion of a Mariachi band at the breakfast table, along with Laine Kazan, is an original touch.
Yet the message is definitely mixed – like, while it’s great to be athletic, it’s even better in stiletto heels. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Bratz” is an “awesomely” tacky 2. And since when did high school freshmen start to look like college seniors?

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Stardust

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Stardust” (Paramount Pictures)

Usually, this kind of sword ‘n’ sorcery fairy tale begins, “Once Upon a Time,” but this – being a PG-13 romantic fantasy – starts with a young man falling in love and its unexpected, unpredictable ramifications.
In the tiny British village of Wall, young Tristan (Charlie Cox) courts feckless Victoria (Sienna Miller), hoping to win her heart by retrieving a fallen star. His quest takes him into Stormhold, a fantastical parallel universe. It seems that when the star fell to Earth, it transformed into a radiant young woman, Yvaine (Claire Danes) – and Tristan is not the only one after her. There’s the evil witch, Lamia (Michelle Pfeiffer), who needs to devour the heart of the star for eternal youth and beauty, and Stormhold’s rival princes (Jason Flemyng, Rupert Everett, among others) who covet the gemstone in the necklace worn by the star to claim the throne.
As Tristan strives to protect the vulnerable star and bring her back as a birthday gift for Victoria, he encounters, among others, the fearsome airborne pirate, Captain Shakespeare (Robert DeNiro), and an unscrupulous mechant known as Ferdy the Fence (Ricky Gervais).
Written by novelist Jane Goldman with director Matthew Vaughn (“Layer Cake”), it’s a supernatural coming-of-age saga based on the visionary graphic novel by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess. In tone, it’s quite reminiscent of “The Princess Bride.” In addition to curses, enchantments, runes, talismans, ghosts, witches and Babylon candles, there’s a unicorn and the screen’s funniest buccaneer-in-drag. But the heavy-handed humor is sometimes problematic.
Filmed in rustic Iceland and Scotland’s Isle of Skye, it’s visually sumptuous, combining realism with fantasy. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Stardust” is an enchanting 8. It’s this summer’s playful ‘date movie,’ culminating in a glowing “happily ever after.”

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If I Didn’t Care

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “If I Didn’t Care” (Artistic License Films)

Homicide in the Hamptons. It happens – all too frequently, it seems, in this low-budget noir/thriller that begins with a murder. Who’s the victim? Who are the perpetrators?
The intriguing drama revolves around a philandering, duplicitous househusband, Davis Meyers (Bill Sage), whose career-propelled wife (Noelle Beck) commutes via the ubiquitous Hampton jitney to Manhattan, leaving him to hawk wishful real estate ‘deals’ on his cellphone and walk the beach with their basset hound, schmoozing with the local police investigator Linus (Roy Scheider, channeling “Columbo”) who’s also into walking his dog. While dawdling during the off-season at a local watering hole with an ambitious, available blonde, Hadley (Susie Misner), Davis and the dame cook up a plan to murder his wealthy wife – a sleazy scheme that goes tragically awry.
Filmmaking brothers Benjamin and Orson Cummings capture not only the picturesque setting of the exclusive Long Island resort community but also the paranoia of privileged people with far too much free time coupled with an acute awareness of the ‘easy money’ that’s slipping through their hands. Seizing the opportunity, they’ve utilized familiar Hamptons landmarks (Barrister’s, Shippy’s, Suki Zuki) and enlisted the considerable talents local residents – Roy Scheider, Noelle Beck and Ronald Guttman – who artfully propel the predictably ‘noir’ plot to its all-too-abrupt conclusion. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “If I Didn’t Care” is an unsettling, suspenseful 6.
As a side note, the song “If I Didn’t Care,” which made the Inkspots internationally famous, was the first solo music-and-lyrics effort of now-95 year-old Jack Lawrence, a resident of West Redding, Connecticut; his hit parade includes “Tenderly,” “Sleepy Lagoon,” “Linda,” “Beyond the Sea,” “All or Nothing At All” and “What Will I Tell My Heart?”

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Delirious

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Delirious” (Peace Arch Films)

Aimed at a hip, sophisticated audience, this satiric fable from independent filmmaker Tom DiCillo (“Living in Oblivion,” “The Real Blonde”) reveals the soft, subversive underbelly of contemporary celebrity and glitzy fame. DiCillo wrote the leading role of the frustrated, insecure, self-absorbed paparazzo specifically for actor Steve Buscemi.
Living in oblivious squalor in New York, garrulous Les Galatine (Buscemi) befriends Toby (Michael Pitt), a hunky, good-natured aspiring actor whom he teaches the ‘stakeout’ ropes (“Im not paparazzi! I’m a licensed professional!”) and allows to crash in his shabby, lower East Side pad which doubles as office/living space.
At a Soap Stars Against STD Convention, Toby charms a sexy casting director (Gina Gershon) and launches an unlikely romance with a talentless teen sexpot named K’harma (Alison Lohman), who was ditched by her British boyfriend Jace (Richard Short). Surrounded by a couple of fawning assistants, K’harma is a wannabe singer who is famous for being famous – like Paris/Nichole/Lindsay crossed with Britney – even inveigling Elvis Costello to show up as one of her trendy party guests. While Les feeds at the freebie buffet trough, stashes away gift bags and tries – in vain – to connect with his parents (Doris Belack, Tom Aldredge) in New Jersey, Toby gets his big break photographing a reality show featuring a homeless serial killer.
DiCillo gleefully, yet surprisingly sympathetically, skewers the sycophantic entertainment press – from battling rival publicists to eccentric bottom-feeders. While young Michael Pitt (“Dawson’s Creek”) is disarming, Steve Buscemi delivers a career-defining performance – and they share the movie’s most memorable moments. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Delirious” is a hilariously shallow, sleazy 7. It’s one of those savvy, low-budget crowd-pleasers that arrive in local theaters only via film festivals like San Sebastian and Sundance.

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