Burlesque

At nearly two-hours long, "Burlesque" has a decent 90-minute musical hiding somewhere in it. Born of every campy musical cliché, the story follows singer/dancer Ali (Christina Aguilera) from her truck-stop-diner existence in Iowa to Los Angeles where she stumbles across a dance club called the Burlesque Lounge. It's a swanky place owned and operated by a serious force of nature named Tess (well played by Cher). Although it's a far toss from the mid-20th-century style of "burlesque" it pretends to represent, Ali makes herself a permanent fixture as a self-appointed cocktail waitress chomping at the bit for a chance to prove her abilities. Aguilera performs eight of the film's ten set-piece songs, leaving Cher to take honors with two bang-up anthems "Welcome to Burlesque" and "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me." When either performer is on the cabaret stage, the movie transforms into a brilliant showcase for their overflowing talent. Then it evaporates quick as roller blinds with meandering subplots about things like the threat of Tess having to sell the club, and Ali's romantic connection to two disposable male characters. The biggest gyp is the lack of a duet between Cher and Aguilera, whose naturally compatible voices seem to promise just such a harmonic resolution. "Burlesque" never approaches the naughty complexity of "Cabaret" or the precision of "Chicago." For director/screenwriter Steve Antin to approach such musical high-stakes without his A-game is unforgivable.

Rated PG-13. 100 mins. (C) (Two Stars - out of five/no halves)

Nine

In 2005 director Rob Marshall had a runaway hit with his film version of the Broadway musical "Chicago." Let's hope he enjoyed it. If a Broadway musical loosely based on Federico Fellini's 1963 deconstructionist masterpiece "8 1/2" sounds like a recipe for disaster, it is. As if 2009 needed one more nine-related movie title--we've already suffered through "$9.99," "District 9," "Cloud 9," and the animated travesty "9"--Marshall and his crew run through every musical set-piece as though checking off a list that leads to the grave. Where "8 1/2" captured the zeitgeist of '60s Italian tedium, "Nine" is a self-conscious, wrongheaded attempt at riding Fellini's coattails with musical numbers that fawn over every Italian cultural touchstone satirized by the original. "Nine" is constructed around Daniel Day-Lewis's knock-off of Marcello Mastroianni's Guido Anselmi (here the Fellini alter-ego is named Guido Contini). The seven muses in Guido's rudderless life each get a chance to sing and dance their reason for existence, namely their love of Guido. As Guido's haughty mother Sophia Loren strikes museum-quality poses, Stacy Ferguson (a.k.a. Fergie) goes hog wild as a half-remembered and half-dressed nymphomaniac from Guido's childhood. Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, and Marion Cotillard attempt to out-hot one another in steamy routines filmed with clinical precision. By trying to reconstitute the essence of Fellini during a crucial period of artistic anxiety, the writers of "Nine" have missed the point entirely. Bad enough that such a mockery was presented on Broadway, but now there's a film that mocks Fellini's genius with confused reverence for his seminal work. Daniel Day-Lewis's weak embodiment of Marcello Mastroianni is disconnected from what should have been a man with too much imagination. Very sad.

Rated PG-13. 118 mins. (C) (Two Stars)

Dancer in the Dark

Danish writer/director Lars von Trier completes his Gold Heart trilogy (behind Breaking the Waves and The Idiots) with a tragic melodrama thinly disguised as a musical. Forget that Dancer in the Dark garnered the coveted Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for Best Film, and provided Icelandic rock singer/cum actress Bjork the prize for Best Actress. It’s a movie that audiences find at turns to be simultaneously boring and exasperating, while at the same time, paradoxically original and emotionally wrenching. By setting the story in a 1962 Washington state that never existed, von Trier casts a multi-national shadow of social satire over a thought provoking film that pushes cinema off the edge again and again.

Rated R. 141 mins. (A-) (Four Stars)

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Classic Film Pick)

Like the hugely successful B-Movie that inspired it, Harry Novak's 1965 sexploitation classic "Kiss Me Quick!" "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" is an exploitation film that draws on a grab-bag of social identifiers to expand on conventional hypocrisies with more than just a nudge and a wink. Writer/composer/actor Richard O'Brien's 1973 British stage play became a hit and the play's director Jim Sharman wisely insisted on using the original cast, with the exception of American newcomers Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick, when time came to direct the film version in 1975. Famous as more of a social phenomenon than as a great piece of cinema, I would argue that The Rocky Horror Picture Show is both thanks to an inspired musical score, and unforgettable camp performances. As part of the '70s midnight movie craze that coincided with the advent of punk music, the film attracted a playful young audience more than prepared to interact with it's innuendo-riddled dialogue around a fetish-based story about an alien transvestite from the galaxy of Transylvania called Dr. Frank N. Furter (played with Mick Jagger charm by Tim Curry) who seduces two stranded newlywed visitors to his castle where he creates life in the form of a chiseled male named Rocky Horror. This is a movie you have to see with an audience.

(A-) (Four Stars)

A Knight's Tale

Heath Ledger does a pretty good movie-star poker face and has that rakish Australian swagger that pop movie audiences gravitate toward. Behind the failure of "10 Things I hate About You" and a near miss with "The Patriot," Ledger digs his stakes deep into a movie designed purely for teen idol gratification. "A Knight's Tale" is a cinematic defilement that plays under a banner of a "rock & roll fairy tale." Set in 14th century Europe, a crowd of period costumed spectators clap and chant to Queen's stadium rabble rouser "We Will Rock You" at a jousting tournament. What follows are a long string of '70s songs, like David Bowie's Golden "Years," playing while Ledger's William Thatcher (any relation to Margaret?), a poor commoner and former footman to a real Knight, begins his own illegal (as he is not of Royal descent) jousting career. Endless jousting tournaments transpire with lots of balsa wood jousting poles splintering across the screen. It's a classic example of a "'what-on-earth-were-they-thinking" movie that no group of filmmakers and actors could have ever pulled off with much success.
Rated PG-13. 132 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)

Tosca

Benoit Jacquot (“School of Flesh”) directs this stylistically challenging cinematic rendering of Giacomo Puccini’s famous 1899 opera with an appropriately powerful performance by opera diva Angela Gheorgiu. Nineteenth century Rome is the setting for the story in which Tosca (Gheorgiu) is humiliated by a sadistic police chief who taunt s her with freeing her lover (Roberto Alagna) in trade for sexual favors. Jacquot combines black-and-white footage of the singers in a recording studio with shots of locations indigenous to the story, against scenes of the singers performing their roles in full costume while lip-syncing the lyrics. Much drama and bloodshed occurs in the film’s relatively short two-hour running time.
No Rating 119 mins. (C+) (Two Stars)

Duets

"Duets" is a frustratingly mediocre road movie that connects three unlikely pairs of people in the much maligned phenomenon of Karaoke singing as a metaphor for "finding the meaning of life" by sharing their interpretations of pop songs. Ragged plot threads hang in a script incapable of juggling its six characters. Maria Bello ("Coyote Ugly") is the surprise at the bottom of the box as Suzi Loomis, a tough chick who hustles her way through life with sex like a fisherman shucking oysters. Gwyneth Paltrow looks like she’s acting in every scene, and although her climax duet of Smokey Robinson’s "Cruisin,’" with father figure Huey Lewis, is pleasing in a soft-soap music video kind of way, it’s not enough bang to compensate for the slow pace that precedes the scene. "Duets" shows Paltrow to be not yet up to snuff in the leading lady arena. She’s easy enough on the eyes, but there’s just no there, there.
Rated R. 113 mins. (C) (Two Stars)

An American In Paris

This musical precursor to the superior "Singing In The Rain," (also starring Gene Kelly) is marred by some iffy arrangements of Gershwin standards such as "I Got Rhythm" and "Our Love Is Here To Stay." The film's ridiculous 18-minute "ballet" that closes the festivities is the most ostentatious misappropriation of the form (ballet) ever done in cinema. Gene Kelly is impossibly charming as Jerry Mulligan, an American GI who remains in Paris after the war to study painting. Jerry's paintings catch the eye of a rich sponsor (Nina Foch) interested in all the Jerry she can buy, which turns out to be not too much when a young Leslie Caron steals Jerry's heart. George Guetary's singing scenes should have been left on the cutting room floor, but Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron are mesmerizing, and Oscar Levant is amusing as Jerry's piano playing buddy. "An American In Paris" (1951) swept the Academy Awards for Best Picture, Writing, Cinematography, Art Direction, Scoring, and Costume. 
Not Rated. 113 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)

The Singing Detective

Robert Downey Jr. is in fine form as an alienated skin disease suffering hospital patient who finds refuge, and ultimately redemption, by imaging himself in the world of the pulp noir novels he’s written. Like a cross between “All That Jazz” and “Blue Velvet,” the story bounces between Downey’s bizarre reveries, past experiences and comical confrontations with his psychiatrist (Mel Gibson) that make up the best scenes in the movie. The film’s colorful song-and-dance set pieces rely on lip-synced ’50s songs that are the weakest link in a bumbling but gregarious movie.
Rated R. 109 mins. (C) (Two Stars)

Mamma Mia! The Movie

Once it gets past its high-pitched squeals of estrogen-fueled excitement in the opening sequences, director Phyllida Lloyd’s screen adaptation of the popular Broadway play based on Abba songs, settles into a harmonically pleasing musical comedy set amid the extraordinary beauty of the Greek isle of Skopelos. Former 80s’ girl-trio singer Donna (exquisitely played by the ever-surprising Meryl Streep) has single-handedly raised her daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) on the island where the two operate a hotel villa. On the eve of her marriage to local hunk Sky (Dominic Cooper), Sophie has used information she culled from her mom’s old diary to invite Donna’s three former boyfriends to the wedding in the hope of discovering her unknown father. Stellan Skarsgard, Pierce Brosnan, and Colin Firth do the honors as the trio of possible dads, and their arrival times well with that of Donna’s cherished band pals Rosie (Julie Walters) and Tanya (Christine Baranski). "Mamma Mia! The Movie" is tilted toward the play’s target of middle aged to elderly audience members, but that’s not to say there isn’t plenty of entertainment to be had for everyone else in this pop-tinged travelogue of Grecian opulence.

Rated PG-13, 108 mins. (B+) (Four Stars)

Sweeney Todd: The Demon of Fleet Street

Director Tim Burton’s screen adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s 1979 Grand Guignol musical is at once mesmerizing and disappointing. Outstanding singing performances from its gifted ensemble cast contrast unfavorably with Burton’s trademark affinity for a drab monochromatic color scheme of white, blue, brown and gray. Gallons of orange/red blood pour out beneath thankfully abbreviated songs performed in all-too-predictable orchestrations meant to cater to Broadway audiences familiar with the original Sondheim production. For such an idyllic gothic setting, Burton misses his cue to update the songs with reharmonized arrangements (including tempo and key changes) for a non-traditional orchestra that could have corrected the music’s tendency to slip into a drone of same-sounding tonality.

Rated R, 117 mins. (B) (Three Stars)

August Rush

A perfect example of everything wrong about Hollywood films, "August Rush" is an obstinately perverse, hammy piece of instant-gratification cinema that weeps from the screen as so much emotional sludge. Young Evan Taylor (Freddie Highmore) braves an orphanage existence with the abstract knowledge that he will eventually attract the attention of his biological parents if only he can compose, conduct and perform a piece of music that will harmonically draw them to him. Evan seems more touched in the head than in the ear when he runs away from the orphanage to Manhattan where he takes up residence with a freak of nature named the Wizard (Robin Williams) who runs a squatter’s music school for young runaways. Williams stinks up the movie with his signature range of character tics that are all the more disturbing for their violent subtext. Milquetoast Keri Russell and Jonathan Rhys Meyers play Evan’s ever-youthful parents Lyla and Louis who are torn apart by Lyla’s cruel father (William Sadler).

Rated PG, 133 mins. (D) (1 Star)

Dreamgirls

Set amidst the R&B heyday of the '60s, "Dreamgirls" is a musical that owes as much of its harmonious heritage to the Memphis Stax records sound as it does to the Motor City where the story takes place. Director Bill Condon (screenwriter on "Chicago") captures the musical set pieces with vitality as our trio of soul singers The Dreamettes climb the ladder of success before their leader Effie White (Jennifer Hudson) is kicked to the curb by the group's manager Curtis Taylor, Jr. (Jamie Foxx). By the time the ever-modulating songs start to expose their monotonous arrangements, it becomes clear that Effie's replacement Deena Jones (Beyonce Knowles) is no match for Jennifer Hudson in the singing or charisma departments. Eddie Murphy gives the strongest performance of his career as James "Thunder" Early, an aging James Brown kind of performer unable to adjust to the musical changes occurring around him. However, it is newcomer Jennifer Hudson who owns the movie with her magnetic presence and go-tell-it-on-the-mountain voice.         
Rated PG-13, 131 mins. (B-)

A Prairie Home Companion

Consummate blowhard radio personality Garrison Keillor sees his self-penned script fantasy about the final installment of his wispy radio show "A Prairie Home Companion" realized by Robert Altman. Just as the word "prairie" connotes Anglo pretension, Altman’s movie bounces between phony characters going through inflated backstage preparations before stepping onto Keillor’s stage at the Fitzgerald Theater to perform songs before a live audience marveling Keillor’s billowy enunciation of arcane references like "rhubarb pie." Tommy Lee Jones plays "The Axeman," a Texas real estate mogul anxious to raze the Midwest theater.

Rated PG-13. 105 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)

Awesome; I Fuckin’ Shot That

The Beastie Boys relive their former glories in an inspired live performance at Madison Square Garden on October 9, 2004 where 50 members of the sold-out audience use handheld cameras to capture the show. While the Beastie Boys are great at delivering their synchronized hip-hop songs, the band lacks sufficient musical variety to sustain a 90-minute movie. Necessarily low production values create viewer fatigue that takes its toll well before the final credits roll. "Awesome; I Fuckin’ Shot That" is the sole province of dyed-in-the-wool Beastie Boys fans.

Rated R. 90 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)

Take The Lead

Since the success of last year’s dance documentary "Mad Hot Ballroom" Hollywood has thrown together a formulaic narrative riff on the idea of New York public school students learning ballroom dance as a way of socializing poor kids out of their lower class traps. Antonio Banderas saunters through his performance in a glorified rendition of real-life ballroom dance teacher Pierre Dulaine, who brings classical dance training to bear on a group of tin-eared hip hop-crazed high school misfits. Forget that the real life Dulaine taught much younger elementary school kids because this is by no means a biopic. Director of Photography Alex Nepomniaschy ("Narc") fumbles with where to put the camera to capture JoAnn Jansen’s ill-conceived choreography. Every sub-plot wilts on the vine in a redundant movie lacking narrative focus.

Rated PG. 108 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)