End of Media

By James Slone

Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Ai G” characters were perfectly calibrated to hit very specific targets. The chav Ali G disarmed his intellectual targets with his bizarre syntax and colossal stupidity. Borat exposed hypocritical bigots by seeming like an ignorant bumpkin himself. Bruno was perhaps Cohen’s most finely tuned character, a gay Austrian fashionista. With Bruno in his arsenal, Cohen could go after superficial haute couture twits, gay-bashing conservatives, and celebrity-obsessed wannabes.

There were times on "The Ali G Show" when Cohen, as Bruno, placed himself in situations as dangerous as they were comic, including the hilarious attempted seduction of an angry survivalist at a gun show. These moments were extremely tense and seemed to point at a strange new frontier of comedy, subversive, confrontational and genuinely unnerving. Read the rest of this entry »

By James Slone

The kind of naturalist filmmaking “Tulpan” represents is declining throughout the world as fast as the semi-nomadic steppe lifestyle it portrays.

Filmed on location in rural Kazakhstan with non-actors, “Tulpan” follows the travails of Asa (Askhat Kuchinchirekov), a young man recently returned to the steppe from the Russian navy. When the film opens, he’s decked out on full navy regalia telling tall tales about fighting octopi in order to impress the parents of Tulpan, a local girl he wishes to marry. The bored look on the mom’s face bodes badly for poor Asa, and he’s soon rejected because his ears are too large. Read the rest of this entry »

By James Slone

Like “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” before it, “G.I. Joe: the Rise of Cobra” enlists pop culture nostalgia to sell toys and tickets. Both the Transformers and G.I. Joe properties have been lucrative for Hasbro in the last few years, raking in millions upon millions of dollars with intellectually challenged and emotionally stunted b-movies.

“G.I. Joe” and “Transformers” both prove that with the right property and corporate backing you can sell pretty much anything. Movies that would have at one time been considered crass, low-rent entertainment for kids are now considered acceptable for adults. Thirty-something men have no problem plunking down their hard-earned cash for cinematic junk that would insult a thirteen-year-old boy’s intelligence. Read the rest of this entry »

By James Slone

“Funny People,” Judd Apatow’s sometimes funny stab at dramatic comedy, stars Adam Sandler as George Simmons, a hugely successful comic who made it to the big time in a series of obnoxious comedies (a stretch, I know), and Seth Rogen as Ira Wright, a struggling stand-up comedian George recruits as a personal assistant.

Early in the film, George is diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia, and told he will probably die. After delivering a humorless routine on death at the Improv, he meets Ira, who capitalizes on George’s failed set with a vicious riff on suicidal comics. They form an unlikely professional relationship when George hires Ira to write stand-up material for him. Read the rest of this entry »

By James Slone

As the title helpfully explains, “Anvil! The Story of Anvil” is the story of Anvil, a Canadian heavy metal band that has been churning out its thrashy brand of metal in relative obscurity for thirty odd years now.

More specifically, it’s about the heterosexual love affair between its two founding members, guitarist/vocalist Steve “Lips” Kudlow and drummer Robb Reiner, two working-class Jewish boys now in their fifties, still passionate about metal and still dreaming of the super-stardom that eluded them in the early eighties. They never stopped releasing albums, but have to work tedious day jobs—Lips at a catering company, Robb in construction. Read the rest of this entry »

By James Slone

“Until the Light Takes Us” documents the crimes of the early-nineties Norwegian black metal scene. Fans and others already familiar with the music will learn nothing new. Most of the events the film depicts have already been packaged and sold many times over to novelty-starved consumers, most notably in the sensationalist tell-all book “Lords of Chaos.”

Outsiders won’t learn much about the music either, mainly because the filmmakers have focused on the warmed-over pulp details—the murders, the church burnings and the fascist political ideology of some of the music’s early practitioners—choosing to emphasize just a few personalities, mainly Fenriz (of Darkthrone) and Varg Vikerness (of Burzum). Read the rest of this entry »

By James Slone

Why is it that no one can seem to make a film about pregnancy that takes place in the real world? You know, where everyone isn’t an idiosyncratic cartoon or broad stereotype? What is it about pregnancy that lends itself so easily to goofiness?

Adapted from the Dave Eggers novel, “Away We Go” follows a young “loser” couple (no seriously, that’s how they describe themselves) as they travel around North America looking for the ideal place to raise their kid. I'm not sure how a young couple expecting a baby can afford to take time off work and shop around the continent. But I protest too much. This is, despite its halfhearted stabs at authenticity, essentially a fantasy film. Read the rest of this entry »

By James Slone

Cary Joji Fukunaga's debut film, “Sin Nombre” follows the journey of two teenagers—Willy ‘El Casper,’ a member of the Mara Salvatrucha gang from Chiapas, and Sayra, a Honduran migrant—to the US border. They end up together when El Casper kills the leader of his own outfit, Li’l Mago (Tenoch Huerta Mejía), to protect her during a violent robbery.

“Sin Nombre” is matter of fact about El Casper’s gang life, showing him participating in the beating initiation of Smiley(Kristyan Ferrer), a young boy he has helped recruit into the gang. The film makes no excuses for his lifestyle, but doesn't judge him either. For the world's impoverished, gangsterism is often the only way out. When Li’l Mago finds out that El Casper is secretly seeing a girl in a rival territory, he responds by trying to rape her, accidentally killing her instead. Read the rest of this entry »

By James Slone

The Baader-Meinhof Complex was the name given to the Red Army Faction, a politicized gang that terrorized the West German public throughout the 1970s. Its members came out of the radical left, moved to violence by anger over the war in Vietnam, the hypocrisy of state officials (who were in many cases former Nazis), police brutality directed at the student protest movement, perceived Israeli imperialism and the stifling status quo. Once you factor in extreme narcissism and a fetish for violence, you end up with the perfect object lesson in Nietzsche’s warning about fighting monsters.

Directed with drab attention to detail by Uli Edel (“Last Exit to Brooklyn”) from a screenplay by Bernd Eichinger, “The Baader-Meinhof Complex” methodically dramatizes the Red Army Faction’s bloody rise and decline over the course of a decade. Fed up with West Germany’s close relationship with the warmongering United States, the group abandoned protest in favor of concrete action—robbing banks, murdering officials and planting bombs. Read the rest of this entry »

By James Slone

“Sherlock Holmes” stars Robert Downey Jr. as the eponymous super-sleuth, and Jude Law as his intrepid sidekick Watson. Since this is a Guy Ritchie film we can expect self-consciously fancy visual tricks and a special emphasis on the sleazy London underworld. London is actually one of the best things about the film, a soot-drenched industrial hellhole festering beneath rising Victorian modernity, somewhere between the touristy London of today and Tim Burton’s stewing Gotham City. This is a city of dark dead end allies, churning factories and sweaty proletarian dives.

Despite Ritchie’s tendency to oversell his story with too much bruising spectacle, urban ugliness and cheesy special effects, Downey’s Sherlock Holmes remains remarkably close to the Arthur Conan Doyle character, a drug-abusing, logic-wielding eccentric in love with his sidekick and afraid of women, given to bouts of melancholy and aloof when it comes to human suffering. Downey’s performance is characteristically unhinged, though a notch more flamboyant and strung out than usual. He reads gay but remains asexual, conforming to heterosexual Hollywood expectations by flirting with Irene Adler (Rachel Adams), who is perhaps a little untoward for a Victorian woman, even one from New Jersey. Read the rest of this entry »

By James Slone

Quentin Tarantino has been driving on fumes since his last good film, “Jackie Brown,” recycling imagery and ideas from b-movies and pulp in cinematic pastiches with little or no artistic value (see “Kill Bill” and “Grindhouse”), and reveling in the slop of ‘wink wink’ homage. With the spelling-challenged “Inglourious Basterds,” Tarantino has finally drawn on his extensive film knowledge to craft something worthy of his often overblown reputation, an actual film with plot and characters, and a giddily entertaining one at that.

“Inglourious Basterds” is a WWII adventure film worked through a spaghetti western strainer, complete with soaring Ennio Morricone score and revenge-driven story arc. This is no historical drama, and in fact, Tarantino dispenses with the history altogether for a counterfactual “what if” narrative that teases his audience with a saucy revenge fantasy that’s likely to appeal to Zionists and fans of war films in equal measure—it’s not even remotely realistic of course, but there’s something refreshing about Tarantino’s willingness to abandon the illusion of verisimilitude altogether. Most “authentic” war movies are bullshit anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

By James Slone

Pixar’s latest work of fantasy, “Up,” does what few ‘serious’ dramas dare to do: it deals with aging and death head on. It’s a testament to the magic of Pixar that the film is both whimsical and a lot of fun while still managing to be serious about its real subject. Unlike most movies about old people, it’s not condescending—old age need not be seen as an impediment. It’s too busy finding new adventures for its geriatric hero, Carl (voiced by the gruff Ed Asner), to stare teary-eyed at the past.

We first meet Carl as a shy young boy in the 1930s, fantasizing about the adventures of his hero Charles F. Muntz (Christopher Plummer) during a news reel. Soon after leaving the theater, he encounters a hyperactive tomboy Ellie, who immediately inducts him into her adventure club. Her dream is to build a house on top of Paradise Falls, a stand-in for Venezuela’s Angel Falls, and explore the tepui mesas surrounding it. But we see in a montage that Ellie, despite falling in love with and marrying Carl, never got around to fulfilling her dream. Read the rest of this entry »

By James Slone

“Drag Me to Hell” is like manna from the heavens for horror fans tired of artistically bankrupt torture porn and Japanese-influenced ghost stories with art house aspirations. After plying his trade in the “Spiderman” franchise with varying degrees of success, Sam Raimi has returned to his roots with a demonic suspense movie both wickedly inventive and slyly comic, employing every trick in his arsenal to push the audience’s buttons.

“Drag Me to Hell” has none of contemporary horror’s shock pretenses or convoluted plotting. Its story is as direct as they come. Alison Lohman stars as Christine Brown, a passive insecure woman with a sunny disposition who works at a small bank. She’s the kind of well-meaning, moderately ambitious woman who listens to self-help tapes on the way to work. Underappreciated by both her nebbish boss (the dependable David Paymer) and a new hotshot employee jockeying for position (Reggie Lee), she’s compelled to take a tough business-savvy stance with a customer seeking an extension on her home loan. Read the rest of this entry »

By James Slone

Director Jody Hill specializes in stories about macho losers, racist and sexist cretins occupying the bottom rung of American society. His first film, “The Foot Fist Way,” featured Danny McBride as an egotistical Taekwondo instructor who bullies, berates and sexually harasses his students.

His latest black comedy, “Observe and Report” stars Seth Rogan as Ronnie, the pudgy, simpleminded head of security at a generic indoor mall. He spends his time patronizing the women who work there, harassing foreign-looking employees and playing the role of hardass cop to his subordinates. He wants to be a real cop but can’t pass the psych evaluation—his idea of law enforcement is dispensing vigilante justice from the barrel of a gun. He lives with his drunk, sluttish mother, who feeds him pills to treat his bipolar disorder and encourages his heroic fantasies. He’s a ticking time bomb. Read the rest of this entry »

By James Slone

“Star Trek” is the Paramount license that won’t die. Just when you think the series has petered out, someone comes along and resurrects it. This time the resurrection is more literal. Instead of creating another spinoff, J.J. Abrams (creator of the ponderous, over-praised television series “Lost”) has started over from the beginning, creating a sexed-up parallel timeline for the original crew, recast with hot twenty-something actors who look like, and sometimes uncannily inhabit, the old characters.

The first two things you notice about this Trek outing are the up-to-the-minute digital effects that make the stodgy old trappings new and shiny, and the swinging sixties design aesthetic. The heavy makeup and skirts are back for female crew members and the interiors all have a bright Camelot-era, bachelor pad sheen. This is a far cry from the brutal faux-realism sought in the revamped “Battlestar Galactica,” with its grim and grimy space hulks. The everything-old-is-new-again style, born out of the desire to make “Star Trek” match the original series, is one of the film’s best and most salient features. Read the rest of this entry »

By James Slone

The documentary “Food, Inc.” sets its critical eyes on industrialized agriculture in the United States, revealing a nightmare landscape of brutalized animals, E. coli-infested meat, exploited workers, impoverished farmers, factory runoff, diabetes-riddled consumers, wasted land and lax regulations. Instead of protecting American consumers, federal regulatory bodies like the FDA protect the small cabal of agribusiness companies that produce and distribute over 90 percent of the food on our grocery store shelves, allowing them to sell low-quality, high-risk food at extremely low prices.

Naturally, “Food, Inc.” has attracted controversy for stating what should be perfectly obvious at this point: big business and the bottom line have compromised the health of the American public, and the negative impact on the environment, labor rights and animal welfare have been even worse. But, reality is never very popular in lobbyist land, where the only measurement stick of the good is profit. Read the rest of this entry »

By James Slone

With ‘sunshine’ in the title, a precocious kid, a sad-happy story arc and Alan Arkin in a supporting role, “Sunshine Cleaning” practically demands comparison to 2006 audience favorite, “Little Miss Sunshine.” But “Sunshine Cleaning,” which stars Amy Adams and Emily Blunt as sisters who go into business as crime scene cleaners, is both darker and truer to life than its eager-to-please predecessor. Sure, it lapses into pop psychology and gives its characters an easy out, but it contains that rarest of ingredients in American film: working-class grit.

Some of the reality is mitigated by the better-than-average Hollywood looks of its heroines. When the wealthy local women condescend to Amy Adams, you have to question the natural order of things. But her performance as Rose, a vulnerable but strong-willed maid looking for a break in Albuquerque, is an endearing one. A single mom stuck in a dead-end affair with a married cop (Steve Zahn), and saddled with an irresponsible screw-up of a sister, Rose is forced by economic circumstances to go into business for herself, cleaning up the messes left by suicides and murders. Read the rest of this entry »

By James Slone

“The Girlfriend Experience” finds Steven Soderbergh as his most detached and analytical. Even the gimmicky casting of porn star Sasha Grey as a top tier escort can’t enliven it. The film’s major themes—the parallels between consumer goods and prostitution, one-way relationships, the impossibility of love and the desperation of successful men in a broken economy—are theoretically interesting, but oblique characters, a bland visual palette and distant direction make the whole thing about as fascinating as the narcissistic alpha males that populate its anonymous urban landscapes, i.e. not very.

The film follows NYC-based escort Chelsea (Grey) as she makes her rounds with a handful of elite clients, including financial consultants, lawyers, screenwriters, jewelers, all upstanding family men with a taste for the good things in life. Chelsea specializes in providing the ‘girlfriend experience,’ which means being there for her clients emotionally as well as sexually. But the clients, she observes to a journalist, aren’t really interested in her real personality, but “want what they want [her] to be.” Is this really a shocking revelation? Read the rest of this entry »

By Jamed Slone

Like a lot of young adventurous girls on the cusp of adolescence, Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning) is devious, mischievous and a bit of a brat. Dragged from Michigan to a rundown old mansion in rural Oregon, she sets out for adventure, annoying her inattentive parents (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman), both writers, and tormenting a weird local kid, Wybie (Robert Bailey Jr.), and his black cat. Disgruntled and bored (what kid wouldn’t be in rainy gray isolation?), Coraline explores the house, discovering a small door hidden behind wallpaper.

The door performs the same function as the rabbit hole in “Alice in Wonderland,” leading to another world, a shiny mirror image of the real one, where Coraline’s drab parents and neighbors are replaced by ideal version of themselves. Read the rest of this entry »

By James Slone

“X-Men Origins: Wolverine” is the kind of movie where the hero, arteries bulging, screams ‘No!’ to the heavens. If the entire film was delivered at that pitch it might have been a camp classic, but its grave brand of silliness is, on whole, less inspired.

Wolverine is an interesting character in the original comics and Bryan Singer’s “X-Men” films, a tough masculine outlaw in a crew of sensitive mutant man-children, but he's a surprisingly weak protagonist in his own vehicle. Hugh Jackman has the feral looks and the low, rumbling voice, but a dumb script and weak, unfocused direction by Gavin Hood renders him impotent, and worse, a little silly. Liev Schreiber, who plays Wolverine’s brother and arch enemy Sabertooth, is given the best lines and spits them out with believable malice, upstaging Wolverine with more genuine weasel-like behavior. Read the rest of this entry »