Gone Baby Gone

For his directing debut Ben Affleck, and co-writer Aaron Stockard, adapt a Dennis Lehane ("Mystic River") novel that resists being converted into the usual three-act structure like a circle being jammed into a square. Casey Affleck does leading man honors as Boston native Patrick Kenzie, a youngish private detective sharing his home-office business with love interest Angie (Michelle Monaghan). Relatives of a missing four-year-old neighborhood girl induce Patrick and Angie to take up the case in hopes of recovering her. The girl's mom is a negligent drug addict. Assigned to work with career cops (played by Ed Harris and John Ashton), our private-eye duo find their personal relationship threatened as they descend into a world of brutal drug dealers and lying cops. Strong performances from its ensemble cast can't compensate for undeveloped character-reversals, splashes of exploitation, and a broken storyline that feels like two different narratives pasted together. Special features include commentary by Ben Affleck and screenwriter Aaron Stockard, two making-of featurettes, and a selection of deleted scenes. Aspect ratio 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with sound quality processed in Dolby Digital 5.1. (Movie – Two Stars, DVD features – Three Stars) Rated R, 115 mins. (Miramax)

Martian Child

Another installment in a current spate of magical realist films, "Martian Child" focuses on the primal fear of abandonment of a young orphaned boy named Dennis (Bobby Coleman) who professes to be from Mars. John Cusack plays David Gordon, a widowed science fiction writer who sees himself in Dennis, and adopts the troubled boy. With help from his sister Liz (Joan Cusack) and would-be girlfriend Harlee (Amanda Peet), David breaks through Dennis's defense mechanisms and teaches him to see life on terms he can relate to-like baseball. John Cusack's favored co-actors (Oliver Platt, Joan Cusack, and Angelica Huston) add color to a sweet movie that intermittently gets bogged down by poor pacing. Special features include English and Spanish subtitles, a commentary track with produceres Corey Sienega and David Kirschner, and screenwriters Seth Bass and Jonathan Tolins, two making-of featurettes and fourteen deleted and additional scenes. Aspect ratio is 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with sound quality processed in choice of Dolby Digital Surround or 2.0 Stereo Surround. (Movie – Three Stars, DVD features – Two Stars). Rated PG, 108 mins. (New Line)

Michael Clayton

Screenwriter Tony Gilroy ("The Devil’s Advocate" and "The Bourne Supremacy") makes his directorial debut with the assistance of pedigreed producers and executive producers that include Sydney Pollack, George Clooney, Steven Soderbergh and Anthony Minghella. The list of Academy Award-nominated names sets a cultivated tone for a scathing corporate thriller that emanates from the same narrative petri dish that spawned films like "The Parallax View" and "The China Syndrome." The point of view in "Michael Clayton" is appropriately more alienated than that of those dated films, but is nonetheless rooted in the reality of a corporation’s tendency to chew up and spit out humanity in the name of quarterly profit gains. Special features include English, Spanish, and French subtitles, a commentary track from director Tony Gilroy and film editor John Gilroy, and three additional scenes. (Movie – Four Stars, DVD features – One Star) Rated R, 119 mins. (Warner Brothers)

A Mighty Heart

"A Mighty Heart," like the other post-9/11 Hollywood movies ("United 93" and "World Trade Center"), is a would-be documentary subject inflated with promotion in its incarnation as a narrative feature. The turgid emphasis on sentiment and emotion is intended to overpower the viewer into believing and agreeing with everything on the screen, lest he or she be thought of as callous or insensitive. All of the oh-so-sincere earnestness seems to say, you are either with us or you are a bad person. "Hokey" is a word that springs to the lips when I think of these films, but not hokey in a cool Humphrey Bogart in "Casablanca" way. No, these movies are meant to be perceived as "important" and "serious" because they ostensibly reveal "heroes" that we the audience should aspire to, but could never be, since we were not in the enviable position of the suffering person onscreen.

The "mighty heart" of the film’s title refers more to the long suffering wife of the deceased Wall Street Journalist reporter Daniel Pearl than it does to the man himself. We know this because the climax of the piece arrives when the protagonist, a pregnant Mariane Pearl, goes into an extended primal scream session after hearing news of her husband’s long foreshadowed death. Never more has the Shakespeare quote from Hamlet, "the lady doth protest too much" applied so obviously to a crisis decision in a movie. Daniel Pearl and his wife were acutely aware of the dangers of his job. He was in Karachi trying to get interviews with known terrorists. That Mariane Pearl chose to improperly apply for the 9/11 victim’s relief fund, even though her husband did not perish in that event, informs her unflinching sense of opportunism that carried over to writing a book and participating in making a film about her husband’s death.

Somehow, all of this obvious motivation escaped director Michael Winterbottom, the film’s producer Brad Pitt and his wife Angelina Jolie, because they bought into Mariane Pearl’s money grab pity party hook, line and sinker. Never mind that the linear story isn’t capable of maintaining a three-act structure merely because actress, star and supermom Angelina Jolie plays the rather homely-looking Mariane Pearl with every curly hair flawlessly in place. If only Warren Zevon’s "Werewolves of London" played on the soundtrack, then we’d know for certain that her "hair was perfect."

Special features include English, French, and Spanish audio and subtitles and a making-of featurette and a promo short. Aspect ratio is 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with sound processed in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround. (Movie – One Star, DVD features – One Star) Rated R, 103 mins.

Wassup Rockers

By now most film audiences have made their peace with Larry Clark as a voyeur pedophile living out his sexual fantasies from behind the relative safety of a movie camera where he can somehow avoid arrest. The maker of such stinkers as "Kids" and "Bully" slightly rebounds from his notoriously graphic banned film "Ken Park" with a conspicuously manufactured story about a group of teenage Latino boys from South Central. When they’re not playing hardcore punk music together in their garage band, the boys go on a skateboarding expedition to Beverly Hills where they clash with cops and are invited into rich homes to bed the bored mothers and daughters of the entitled class. Boredom is the loftiest running theme in Larry Clark’s films, and "Wassup Rockers" (imagine asking to buy a ticket for that title) takes dullness to a new low. Special features include a commentary track by Larry Clark and deleted scenes. Aspect ratio is 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with sound processed in Dolby Digital 5.1 surround. (Movie – One Star, DVD features – Zero Stars) Rated R, 99 mins. (First Look Home Entertainment)

The King (DVD)

By Cole Smithey

James Marsh’s slow-burn meditation on the long term potentially violent effects of child abandonment, military discipline, religious obsession and attempted familial reconciliation is like a social abscess that the director barely pokes at before allowing the narrative to simmer to its inevitable climax of destruction. Gael Garcia Bernal gives a knockout performance as Elvis Sandow a 21-year-old man recently discharged from the Navy who returns to his childhood home in Corpus Christi, Texas to reconnect with his father David (William Hurt) who abandoned him and his mother more than 20 years ago.

Speaking with a perfect English accent Bernal embodies his troubled and opportunistic character with a seductive quality that lures the viewer into siding with his volatility before trapping you in his perilous clutches. Elvis approaches David, now the Baptist pastor of a local church, and identifies himself as the man’s bastard son. Caught off-guard, David tells Elvis to call him later so he can have time explain the situation to his picture-perfect suburban family. However, Elvis is more interested in seducing his 16-year-old alleged stepsister Malerie (Pell James) whom he neglects to tell of his relationship to her father. Elvis baneful intentions quickly escalate as he ingratiates his way into the home of the family he detests with a pitch-black passion. This unsettling and daring movie regards American narcissism with a cold eye.

Special features include a commentary track with James Marsh and co-screenwriter Milo Addica, deleted scenes, and a rehearsal reel. Aspect ratio is 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, with sound quality processed in Dolby Digital 5.1, with Dolby 2.0 stereo track optional along with Spanish subtitles.

Rated R, 105 mins. (B)

Find Me Guilty

Director/writer Sidney Lumet comes full circle on a distinguished career punctuated by powerful films concerned with America’s legal system ("12 Angry Men," "Serpico," "The Verdict"). Vin Diesel reveals his convincing acting abilities as Lucchese crime family mobster Giacomo "Jackie Dee" DiNorscio in Lumet’s brisk courtroom drama about the longest criminal trial in U.S. history. If watching a jury disregard mountains of damning evidence in favor of a charismatic gangster who calls himself a "gagster" seems a morally challenging proposition, well that’s all part of the bargain in Lumet’s topical drama. Special features include English and Spanish subtitles and a making-of Q&A featurette with Sidney Lumet. Aspect ratio is 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with sound quality processed in Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound.

(Movie – Three Stars, DVD features – Two Stars) Rated R, 124 mins. (Fox)

Tsotsi

Best Foreign Film Oscar winner "Tsotsi" is a solid-if-predictable drama set in the ramshackle townships of Johannesburg, South Africa where Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae), a young thug, gets more than he bargains for when he car jacks a BMW with an infant in the backseat. Tsotsi struggles with keeping the baby alive as he desperately attempts to reconcile his life of crime with the newfound respect for life he learns from the woman that he enlists to help take care of the baby. Writer/director Gavin Hood shows great promise with a socially relevant drama that could just as easily take place in America. Special features include a director’s commentary track, three alternate endings with director’s commentary by the director, deleted scenes with optional director’s commentary, a making-of featurette, a music video, and a short film by Gavin Hood. Aspect ratio is 2.35:1, with sound quality processed in Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound.

(Movie – Four Stars, DVD features – Three Stars) Rated R, 94 mins. (Buena Vista Home Video)

Marilyn Hotchkiss’ Ballroom Dancing & Charm School

Yet another ballroom dancing movie presents dance as a universal balm that heals life’s problems in this mildly inspired dramatic comedy. A lonely widowed Frank Keane (Robert Carlyle) witnesses a car wreck and takes instruction from accident victim Steve Mills (John Goodman) to meet the dying man’s childhood love at Marilyn Hotchkiss’ Ballroom Dancing and Charm School, 40 years after the date was made. Frank discovers more than he bargained for in the alien environment of ballroom dance where a young woman named Meredith (Marisa Tomei) possesses a romantic glow. Special features include a commentary track with by writer/director Randall Miller, co-writer/producer Jody Savin, and actor Eldon Henson, and the original short film upon which the movie was based. Aspect ratio is presented in choice of widescreen 2.40:1 anamorphic or a "pan-and-scan version," sound quality is processed in Dolby Digital 5.0.

(Movie – Two Stars, DVD features – One Star) Rated PG-13, 103 mins. (Sony Pictures)

16 Blocks

Bruce Willis dons yet another hairpiece toward reprising his more hirsute era during the box office heydays of his trio of "Die Hard" movies. "16 Blocks" is a sporadic chase sequence set around petty crook Eddie Bunker (Mos Def) who needs to be transported from his jail cell to Manhattan’s main courthouse, 16 blocks away, to give crucial testimony in a grand jury case that could end the careers of many dirty police officers. Alcoholic NYPD veteran Jack Mosley (Bruce Willis) is coming off of a long night shift when he’s relegated to chaperone Eddie to his 10:00 a.m. court appointment. Every dirty cop in town comes to the aid of head police baddie Frank Nugent (David Morse) in attempting to catch or kill Jack and his handcuffed ward before they reach the courtroom. Mos Def makes the most of his valuable co-star screentime by creating a humorous character that periodically elevates the strictly formulaic script. Special features include an alternate ending (optionally viewed separately or as part of the movie, a deleted scenes featurette with commentary by director Richard Donner and screenwriter Richard Wenk, and the film’s theatrical trailer. Aspect ratio is 2.35:1 encoded in HD DVD, with sound quality processed in Dolby Digital Plus 5.
(Movie – Two Stars, DVD features – One Star) Rated PG-13, 92 mins. (Warner Brothers)

August 4, 2006 in Action/Adventure, Drama | Permalink

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