African Cats

OPENING: 04/22/2010

STUDIO: Disneynature Films

RUN TIME: 89 min

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
Meet two families living in the wildest place on the planet.

Opening Statement
The thing that kept coming into my mind as I watched African Cats is “Boy, I miss ‘Meerkat Manor’.” I know that Animal Planet show isn’t the first show/film to try and anthropomorphize animals or even the best one, but sitting through four seasons with those adorable rodents really embedded that formula into my brain. African Cats plays with the same formula. It attributes names to the animals so that we can follow that animal’s storyline (although I can never tell one lion/cheetah/meerkat from another). Then it builds drama and suspense though a voiceover that tells us what the animals are doing, are feeling and their motives for what they do. The voiceover also reminds us whom we’re watching, you know, in case they all look alike. Within each of these stories there are the heroic ones and the villains, the courageous and the cowards. It’s all very black and white but the thin plots accompany some rather remarkable photography and at times, some pretty cute animals so it all makes for a very enjoyable evening.

Facts of the Case
African Cats tells the story of Mara, a lion cub who strives to grow up with her mother’s strength, spirit and wisdom. Fang is the leader of Mara’s pride who must defend his family from a rival lion. It also tells the story of Sita, a fearless cheetah and single mother of five mischievous newborns. This is the story of mothers and of the power and courage of a mother’s love. The males in all the stories are either tyrants, weaklings or just absent.

The Evidence
The photography is the main draw of this film. Go to a theater where you can see it big and clear and it will take your breath away. Director Keith Scholey along with Alastair Fothergill, here in the role of co-director, and Keith Scholey, here producing, are all part of the team that brought us the gorgeous and astounding BBC series, “Planet Earth.” In fact, Disneynature’s other releases, Earth and Oceans, pillaged…I mean borrowed a large amount of the footage that was previously released on “Planet Earth.” However, the footage for African Cats seems to all have been shot specifically for this or at least not released on anything before. That said, all the collaborators poured the same amount of care and love into their current work as they ever have.

The only criticism I level at this film is the overbearing, overwrought voice over narration brought to you by Oscar nominated actor, Samuel L. Jackson. Now, some of that blame can be placed on whoever gave Sam lines like, “She is risking E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G now” and “He has become THE MOST DANGEROUS ENEMY to Mara” and other such hyperbole filled lines. But there were times that the lines just didn’t sound right, that Sam couldn’t sell the drama he was meant to. I assume Disney was thinking of the little ones, thinking that they would need to be spoon-fed the story, but unfortunately it brings the production value of the entire show down. Disney was not thinking of the little ones, however, when they were including shots of lions taking down zebras; their blood soaked maws coming up from their kill.

Closing Statement
After getting home from African Cats I watched Oceans (it was on my Netflix Watch Instant Queue) to contrast and compare what Disney had done previously. Oceans not only is expertly narrated by Pierce Brosnan but it almost can’t fall into the trap of over-chatty voice over because it doesn’t try to tell us a story; it instead is content to show us a great variety of different wonderful and diverse sea life. In attempting to create a narrative, it seems that the filmmakers may have attempted something that was beyond their comfort zone. Truth be told, the filmmakers should have trusted their footage and their audience more because the images they were able to capture told enough drama that did not need to be commented on.

The Verdict

7/10

Lakeview Terrace

OPENING: 09/19/2008

STUDIO: Screen Gems

TRAILER: Trailer

ACCOMPLICES: Official Site

The Charge
What could be safer than living next to a cop?

Opening Statement
For the first ninety minutes or so, Lakeview Terrance is a sharp, engaging, fiercely intelligent and provocative film. Things get a bit more generic in the finale, but the film is good enough to survive the ordinary ending. Much like Michael Mann’s Collateral, the journey there is compelling enough to make the somewhat predictable destination worthwhile.


Facts of the Case
Kerry Washington and Patrick Wilson play an interracial married couple who move into a nice new subdivision. They’re finally settling down in a nice home, and they’re looking forward to getting started with the American Dream. Unfortunately, one of their neighbors isn’t particularly keen on seeing that happen. That neighbor is Abel (Samuel L. Jackson), a widowed police officer with two children. Abel begins by making vaguely insinuating statements that could just be interpreted as unintentional insults or bad jokes. Things gradually get worse, and before long the couple becomes convinced that Abel wants them out of the neighborhood.
Abel’s reasons for this seem to be primarily racial. He is uncomfortable with the idea of a white male being married to a black female, and he doesn’t want his children “exposed” to such things. He continues his hostile measures against the couple, but is careful to leave them with no legal ground to take action against them. Besides, even if the couple did want to take action, Abel is a cop. It’s not like the police are going to do anything, right?


The Evidence
You may think that the plot sounds a good deal like the film Pacific Heights, an enjoyably nasty little thriller that starred Michael Keaton as Melanie Griffith’s evil neighbor. However, director Neil Labute is interested in making something far more interesting than a mere “neighbor from hell” thriller. He uses that reasonably engaging concept as a way of exploring one of his favorite subjects (men behaving in particularly abhorrent ways). He also explores themes of race and prejudice, and in a way makes a film that feels like the subversive cousin of Crash. You may think that making the married individuals an interracial couple is a way of deflecting any criticism that could come from the fact that the villain is an African-American man. If this were just a thriller, that might be the case. Here, the casting is the entire point. Labute takes the buried stereotypes and prejudices of these characters of these characters and boils them to the surface. It gets pretty ugly, but it’s also darkly fascinating stuff. Labute is at his best when he deals with extremely unpleasant people, and this film marks a genuine return to form.

The complexity of the characters surprised me. Jackson is the villain, but he is not just some mysterious force of evil like Keaton was in Pacific Heights. We see a good deal of his personal life and work and at home. The movie wants us to understand what makes this man tick, and why he is going to such extremes. Chris, Patrick Wilson’s character, is also surprising. As Abel increases his hostility, we are surprised to discover that we don’t find ourselves feeling increasingly sympathetic towards Chris. The harder Abel strikes, the less noble Chris becomes, and soon begins to veer precipitously close to Abel’s level of (dis)honor. As for poor Kerry Washington, she is relegated to standing in the background… but in a good way, actually. Despairingly, she attempts to serve as the voice of reason as these two alpha males scratch and claw their way towards the finish line.

We’re so lucky to have a guy like Samuel L. Jackson in the movies. He’s one of those actors who is both a great movie star and a great actor. In half of his roles, he plays “The Samuel L. Jackson character.” See Snakes on a Plane for an example of what I mean. The rest of the time, he digs deep into the soul of the character he plays, and creates someone new and convincing. That can be immensely moving when you have someone like his homeless hobo in The Caveman’s Valentine or the blues guitarist in Black Snake Moan. Here, as he plays a man with a very dark soul, it’s nothing short of terrifying. The Academy will not give Jackson a best actor nomination (as with Black Snake Moan, the film and his performance are simply too risky), but he deserves one.

As I mentioned, the film isn’t perfect. You will recognize the showdown of the film from another movie that you have probably seen, and the final scene felt a bit too optimistic for a cynic like me. Nonetheless, Lakeview Terrace is strong, thought-provoking stuff that is bound to leave the viewer with a whole bucketful of complex feelings.

Closing Statement
Many have criticized the movie because they feel it fails as a thriller. If you see Lakeview Terrance and leave thinking that it was nothing more than a thriller, then you’ve missed what this movie is about. Strongly recommended for those who want a little something to chew on.


The Verdict

9/10

Approximately nine months ago, my wife brought up an interesting proposal: “Why Don’t We Go to San Diego for Comic Con?” This was without virtually any prompting on my part; I had no horse in the race, so to speak. I’m not that big of a comic book fan, but we were looking for something to do. So why not go, right? And if you’re going to go, go in style; I booked a room at the newly opened Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego, which seemed like a pretty cool status symbol. Aside from an experience at the franchise’s New York restaurant years ago, I did forget that the Hard Rock plays music. All the time. But, compared to other places, it was rock music. The merchandise shop played Black Flag in there, so booyah bitches!

Anyway, the film lineup was pretty good, and I’ll be sharing those here after the jump of the films I managed to sit in on. I’m sure the webs have the footage somewhere, so feel free to search on your own time. On with the opinions!

The Day The Earth Stood Still: Fox was the first to the show, and Keanu Reeves (The Matrix), Jennifer Connelly (A Beautiful Mind) and Scott Derrickson (The Exorcism of Emily Rose) came out to pimp the remake of the 1951 classic to be released in December. It was discussed, sometimes at great length, with a couple of shots from the film, and an extended trailer. No, we didn’t get to see Gort, but WETA is doing the work on him now, and things are still very close to the vest. Aside from Connelly being VERY much out of place, barely talking, I’d come in fresh to this, and personally am still wondering why it’s being remade to begin with.

Max Payne: Mark Wahlberg (The Departed), Mila Kunis (Forgetting Sarah Marshall), Chris Bridges (a.k.a., the artist formerly known as Ludacris) and John Moore (The Omen) discuss the film which is coming out in October. Wahlberg clearly had fun and played up to the crowd, and everyone talked about how fun it was to do it, meaning how cool it was to fire weapons all day. Moore talked about their own little version of “bullet time” that was employed for the film. Aside from an extended trailer cut to a live version of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love,” this was a bit of a yawner.

Wolverine: Ole Wolverine himself Hugh Jackman came onstage as an unannounced surprise to throngs of delirious hysterics. After shaking the hand of Len Wein, the creator of the comic book icon, Jackman was happy to finally actually be onstage, as he’d apparently missed the X-Men presentations that occurred in previous Cons.  I’m going to rattle off the cast here; Ryan Reynolds (The Nines) as Deadpool, Liev Schreiber (The Sum of All Fears) as Sabretooth, Tim Riggins from Friday Night Lights as Gambit, to name a few who appear in the trailer. And it’s loaded with action too, which doesn’t hurt. Definitely the one people will be looking forward to in ‘09, unless the GI Joe teaser comes strong.

As a side note; what was particularly interesting about the Fox presentation was that a lot, and I mean A LOT of people got in early so they could be ready for Summit Pictures’ presentation of Twilight. Everyone around my wife and I was there in their “Team Edward” and “Team Jacob” shirts, whatever that means, but unfortunately I was called away for other events. I’m told though that the Twilight footage was essentially an extended version of the second trailer with the climatic ballet room sequence, and everyone ate it up. As they should I suppose. But I thought it was a little funny that the Fox gang seemed to trot out their products to hordes of Twilight fans, without knowing what they were getting into. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Watchmen: Try as I might to stay away from the masses, I snuck in for a second, where Zack Snyder (300) and the cast were discussing the film. Aside from an extended trailer, more shots of the heroes were shown which really illustrated Snyder’s vision and faithfulness to the source material, and since this is being released in March, expect some more mad money on a Snyder production.

The Spirit: Frank Miller (Sin City) might be an influential comic book figure, but he needs to lay off the liquor or something. At times he seemed to ramble, and cast members Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction) and Jaime King (Blow) seemed to notice. Still though, the footage that was shown of the film looks good, done visually much in the same way that Sin City was. While there’s humor, there are also a couple of required action sequences that look impressive as well. A concern I have a little with this film is that it might not seem to possess the spark of similar comic book films that possess a similar visual style, but I hope I’m proved wrong in this because at least from what I saw, The Spirit could potentially be a good film.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno: Showed up a little late to the game on this one, as I was drinking with some of the cast of ABC Family’s Samurai Girl, which appears to be a Buffy-ish show, except without some of the wit and wisdom. But I will say this about Kevin Smith, he’s got some fans in the biz, for sure, and now in this film, he’s got a couple members of the Judd Apatow stock company in Seth Rogen (Knocked Up) and Justin Long (Accepted) together in this film that looks pretty funny. Bonus points for Long’s, er, “moment” with Brandon Routh. Yes, that Brandon Routh, from Superman Returns. Aside from listening to Rogen’s kind of funny Ian McKellen joke and Jason Mewes looking very impressive all cleaned up from addiction, Zack and Miri comes out in October hopefully, and should be worth the hubbub, even if they might have to change the title.

Terminator Salvation: You know, Christian Bale and Bryce Dallas Howard(?) aside, McG seems to carry himself as a bit of a pompous arse. Why exactly would we want to see a film about a battle with first-generation terminator robots? Why would Arnold Schwarzenegger even consider appearing in this? Ugh. To be fair, McG (Charlie’s Angels) likes paying homage to the previous three films, even including attendees who dressed like Robert Patrick and Linda Hamilton from T2 on stage with him, along with an Asian kid whose Arnold accent seemed to venture into Walken-esque territory. He showed an extended teaser of sorts, without any CG shots in it, and the results? Meh. I counted nods to The Road Warrior and The Great Escape in there, along with something that looked visually a little like Charlie’s Angels, right now to the hot chick almost taking her top off. I’ve got to say I liked the teaser in front of Dark Knight more than I did this stuff, and unlike some of the buzz so far, am concerned that this “reboot” might nuke the franchise from orbit.

Pineapple Express: Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to sneak into the preview screenings that apparently were going on in town, and the footage that Judd Apatow (40 Year Old Virgin), Rogen and gang brought seemed a little to be desired. It seemed like they basically brought stuff from the website or something. One of the scenes came from the Superbad DVD. But come on, you know what this film is going to be about, you’re either going to go see it or you’re not. Oh, and Green Hornet is still on the track of getting made, so yay to that.

Well, that’s the short story on the film side. A quick note on things to come, expect a review of Tropic Thunder in the very near future, along with TV Verdict thoughts from the Heroes and Lost panels, including some teasing of Heroes 3^rd season, as the opener was aired in its entirely exclusively for the Comic Con folks. Until next time, get the funk out your minds and into your hearts people!