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Friday, September 5, 2008
Back to reviews: Bunny, Man on Wire and Woody
It’s been about three weeks since I’ve reviewed a movie here, which seems like an awfully long time for this blog. But that’s what happens when you go on vacation for a week and then come back in the midst of the Labor Day dead period, when we get not-screened-for-critics junk like Babylon AD, College and today’s Bangkok Dangerous.
That doesn’t mean I haven’t been going to the movies, however. More importantly, it doesn’t mean I haven’t seen a few good ones. Here are some quick-ish takes on what I’ve watched lately.
The House Bunny
I wish I liked this movie as much as I liked its cast. Some very talented actresses do some very good work in this Legally Blonde by way of Revenge of the Nerds comedy. Anna Faris, who up to now has been an undervalued talent, deserves all the praise she’s been getting for her delectably daffy performance as a Playboy bunny who tries her hand at being a sorority mother of a house full of misfits.
Also delightful are Emma Stone (Superbad) as the head female geek and Kat Dennings as the uber feminist. It’s a little hard to buy American Idol runner-up Katharine McPhee as an outcast, but she has a lot of fun with what little she’s given to do.
Frustratingly, the screenplay keeps undermining the film. Case in point: the girls are asked to sing karaoke. Good showcase for McPhee, right? Well, it would have been had the movie not ruined the scene with crude jokes that seem to have been written by a first-grader. This being a production by Happy Madison, Adam Sandler’s company, I guess they had to obey the edict “Thou shalt have stupid bathroom humor.”
I still laughed at House Bunny because of the actors - even while I wished they were in a movie that really deserved them.
GRADE: B-
Man on Wire and Vicky Cristina Barcelona after the jump.
Man on Wire
It’s almost too bad there is already a documentary called Touching the Void. That would have also made a great title for this enthralling documentary about a man that waked a tightrope between the World Trade Center towers in 1974.
As it happens, this film smartly employs similar techniques to Void, a movie about mountain climbers who improbably survived a perilous journey. Mixing archival footage with dramatic recreations, Man on Wire often plays like a thriller as it recounts how wire walker Philippe Petit and his team pulled off their incredible (and illegal) feat. The indomitable Petit is especially fun to watch in his interviews; he is truly a one-of-a-kind character.
Cannily, the movie relies almost entirely on interviews with the team, putting us squarely inside their frame of mind as they tell their spellbinding story. It’s so effective that even though there’s no actual film footage of Petit’s walk, the movie made me feel like I was on the wire myself. One of my favorite moments was learning why the film is called Man on Wire as opposed to Man on A Wire.
Many reviewers have made note of the fact that 9-11 is never mentioned in the film, and that was the right move. It will do many hearts good to see the Twin Towers evoke joy and excitement again.
GRADE: A
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
The title may be a bit ungainly, but Woody Allen’s latest film is one of his more graceful efforts in awhile, as it deftly tells the story of a love quadrangle with one man (Javier Bardem) amidst three women (Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johannson and Penelope Cruz).
Cruz in particular impresses with her fiery and alluring performance, but all four leads are outstanding. They help smooth over an ungainly voice-over which sometimes helpfully fills in some blanks but too often underlines what we can clearly see.
The movie does not quite rise to the level of Match Point, Allen’s best film of this decade, but it’s a marked improvement over the underwritten Scoop and the pallid Cassandra’s Dream. Let’s hope Allen stays on the upswing when he returns to New York next year with Whatever Works, starring Evan Rachel Wood and Larry David.
GRADE: B+
Tell me what you’ve seen lately, on the big or small screen, for good or ill.
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