The Shirley Temple Collection, Vol. 6 DVD Review (2008)

“The Shirley Temple Collection, Vol. 6”

Sinking ship.

The set includes three films--the 1936 musical “Stowaway,” in which Temple’s “Ching-Ching” leaves Shanghai to work her magic in keeping Robert Young and Alice Faye together; John Ford’s 1937 movie “Wee Willie Winkie,” a so-so retelling of Rudyard Kipling’s story that finds Temple’s Priscilla Williams fighting the good fight in Colonial India; and 1940’s “Young People,” which was Temple’s final film with Fox.

After making dozens of films with Temple, the studio decided that at the tender age of 12, she was too long in the tooth to play the roles that had made her a star.

And so, for viewers armed with this knowledge, it’s now something of a curiosity to watch Temple launch into the title song’s telling lyrics: “We’re not little babies anymore! We don’t play with dollies on the floor! We know how to act our age! We have passed the infant stage! That’s why we are in a rage! We think children are a bore!”

Poor Shirley. The suits at Fox knew they were finished with her long before they hung her out to dry with this movie and that song.

Grade: C

Classic Musicals from the Dream Factory, Vol. 3: DVD Review (2008)

“Classic Musicals from the Dream Factory, Vol. 3”

A peppy yet uneven collection of nine films, some digitally remastered, all making their debut on DVD.

Included are 1955’s “Hit the Deck,” with Jane Powell, Debbie Reynolds and Ann Miller hitting the high notes; 1954’s “Deep in My Heart,” with Gene Kelly and his brother Fred in their only screen appearance together; and 1954’s “Kismet,” in which Vincente Minnelli attempted to capture on film the 1953 Broadway musical version of Edward Knoblock’s play.

His movie is so overheated, it nearly combusts, with Ann Blyth, Howard Keel, Vic Damone and Dolores Gray giving it their all and testing our endurance in the process.

Two additional Jane Powell movies are found in 1950’s “Nancy Goes to Rio” and “Two Weeks in Love,” with Busby Berkeley staging the latter.

Rounding out the set are four Eleanor Powell films--“Broadway Melody of 1936,” in which 15-year-old Judy Garland sings “Dear Mr. Gable,” and “Broadway Melody of 1938,” with Powell as a shoe-snapping horse trainer.

Powell also stars in 1936’s “Born to Dance,” which is a fitting since she taps herself into a frenzy, and 1941’s “Lady Be Good,” in which Powell is paired opposite Robert Young and Ann Sothern--and nearly steals the show.

Grade: B+

Walk the Line: Extended Cut DVD Review (2008)

“Walk the Line: Extended Cut”

This extended cut of James Mangold’s Academy Award-winning film offers viewers 17 additional minutes of footage.

Good luck finding them.

Still, considering the wealth of bonus features and commentaries this new edition offers, it’s highly recommended for those who still haven’t seen the film.

The movie follows the defining years of Johnny Cash's life, with Mangold taking us from Cash's difficult childhood in Arkansas to his rise to fame, his struggle with drug addiction, his marriages to first wife, Vivian (Ginnifer Goodwin), and great love June Carter (Reese Witherspoon), and his knockout, 1968 show at Folsom State Prison.

As with so many biopics focused on musicians, Mangold's movie is essentially a film about overcoming addiction in order to further one's path to legend.

That familiarity would have done the movie no favors had Mangold not had the strength of subtlety, which shows throughout, and especially the performances from his cast, who transcend formula by allowing audiences to fully invest themselves in what matters--the budding, turbulent relationship between Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) and June.

Read the full, unedited review here.

Rated PG-13. Grade: A-

Across the Universe: DVD, Blu-ray Review (2008)

"Across the Universe" DVD, Blu-ray

Watching Julie Taymor’s rock opera is such a trip, it’s surprising Sony didn’t include a bong as part of the packaging.

Visually, the film is a psychedelic triumph, the best part of the show, with Taymor weaving her unwieldy story around three friends (Evan Rachel Wood, Jim Sturgess and Joe Anderson) who come together in Greenwich Village during the 1960s, just as everything is about to go to hell.

Helping them through all of it is the soundtrack, which includes more than 30 Beatles songs, a good deal of which are murdered by new arrangements that are less successful than one might have hoped.

Still, you have to hand it to Taymor for carrying off her experiment with chutzpah, even if she doesn’t —much like Todd Haynes in "I’m Not There"—succeed in the end.

Rated PG-13. Grade: C+

Watch the trailer below:

La Vie En Rose: Movie Review, DVD Review, Trailer (2008)

Thorns and all

Directed by Olivier Dahan, written by Dahan and Isabelle Sobelman, 140 minutes, rated PG-13. In French with English subtitles.

Marion Cotillard, the French actress who portrays Edith Piaf in Olivier Dahan's "La Vie En Rose," takes a flawed movie and turns it into something memorable and haunting.

Dahan co-wrote the screenplay with Isabelle Sobelman, and what they have created is a testament to a few things--first, the power of Cotillard's fierce performance, which is nominated this month for an Academy Award for Best Actress, and second to Piaf herself, the hard-luck singer who survived her bum early years as a child in Paris to literally become Paris' favored child.

For those who know and admire the mix of strength, frailty, pluck and heart that rings through Piaf's voice--her "Milord," "Hymne a L'amour," "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" and the song that inspires the title of this film are classics--this movie based on her life wastes no time in underscoring the reasons behind the complex wealth of emotions that collide when Piaf sings.

In this way, "La Vie En Rose" can't help but court the trappings of melodrama, which sometimes works for it and against it. Furthermore, while it isn't always successful in tying up its loose ends--several subplots are oddly dropped, most curiously a critical one involving Gerard Depardieu as the nightclub owner who discovered Piaf--there is an admirable rawness to the production and to Cotillard's performance that gets to the core of a woman who existed on the fringe.

Since much of Piaf's early life is speculation, the movie explores the myth pop culture created for her. We see Edith as a child, when she was prodded by her abusive father to sing on the streets for money. Reluctantly, she did so, singing "La Marseilles" until people cheered. Later, when her father abandoned her, she was shuttled to her grandmother's brothel, where she received love and an enlightening education from a family of whores who came to adore her, most notably a prostitute named Titine (Emmanuelle Seigner) who treated Edith as her own daughter.

As good as these scenes are, it's in the film's exploration of Piaf's rise from sketchy cabaret singer to polished, superstar performer that the movie is at its best and most seductive. It was, after all, during this time in which Piaf fell in love with the boxer Marcel Cerdan (Jean-Pierre Martins), who looked like a movie star and loved her like no other. Later, in the wake of a devastating event that won't be revealed here, Piaf's decline into drug and alcohol abuse staked claim to her ruin.

Whether because of her addictions or in spite of them, there always was the sense in that tremulous pull of Piaf's voice that she was letting you into rooms that otherwise, in less giving hands, would have remained closed. To hear her voice wasn't just to hear a woman struggling with the highs and lows of life (she died at 47), but also to hear Paris itself.

In her voice was sorrow, life, defeat and humor, but mostly, like the city that came to embrace her as its own, a sense of absolute acceptance for those who came to it. It's this gift that Piaf possessed that the movie and Cotillard get exactly right, which turns out to be more important than the structural mistakes Dahan makes along the way.

Much like her American contemporaries Judy Garland, who also died at 47, and Billie Holiday, who died at 44, Piaf had that ability to draw everything out of you with a mere song. Her voice could do you in, lay you flat. In that way, there's a certain risk in listening to her, but that risk, in the end, is what made her so great.

Grade: B+

Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street Movie Review (2007)

A couple of cold meats--served hot

Directed by Tim Burton, written by John Logan, 117 minutes, rated R.

The new Tim Burton movie, "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," is bloody, yes--and it's also bloody excellent.

Screenwriter John Logan based the film on Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's long-running musical, and what he and Burton have created is one of the year's best movies, a dark, violent musical that thrums with menace, mischief and malice.

This highly stylized, great-looking film finds cinematographer Dariusz Volski draining it of so much color, the characters and sets take on the hues of a corpse.

Throughout, the screen almost looks refrigerated--you'd swear that if you touched it, you'd be bitten by cold. Increasingly, things heat up with flashes of red, but that's only when someone's throat is slit and gruesome, gushing ribbons of crimson spray forth to warm up the screen.

Decked out in a blowout fright wig that challenges anything he wore in Burton's "Edward Scissorhands" is Johnny Depp in the title role.

Here, taking another risk in a career built on taking risks, Depp gives a meaty performance (sorry) as Todd, the gifted, 19th-century barber who knows his way around a close shave and who begins the movie armed with revenge.

Early on, we're offered a glimpse into Todd's past, when he was named Benjamin Barker and was a happy family man with a beautiful wife and baby daughter. Each was undone by the evil Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman, wonderful as usual), a greasy snob who wanted Barker's wife for himself and who set about getting her by devising a plan that sent Barker to prison.

Fifteen years later, Barker has escaped, assumed the name Sweeney Todd and is stealing back into London, where he meets the not-so-lovely Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), a glowering frump of a woman famous for making some rather shoddy meat pies. She knows it, too, not that she cares. She also knows who Todd really is, which complicates their relationship nicely as she reintroduces Sweeney to his gleaming set of razor blades, all hidden in his old barber shop above her pie shop, and makes a pact with him that is mutually beneficial.

Mrs. Lovett will keep her mouth shut and allow Todd his revenge on the hateful Turpin (and eventually all of London when his first attempt at killing Turpin goes wrong), so long as he provides her with a steady supply of meat for her increasingly popular pies. Since Todd has gone mad, let the slicing and dicing begin.

Not to mention the singing, which is very good, as is the energy that comes from the film's darkly funny musical numbers. Supporting turns from Timothy Spall as the grotesque Beadle Bamford, Sacha Baron Cohen as the mincing Italian barber Pirelli, and Jayne Wisener as Todd's daughter Johanna, are excellent. Same goes for Jamie Campbell Bower as Anthony, the young sailor working to save Johanna from her unfortunate fate with Turpin.

But the movie's real magic is sparked by Depp and Carter, who seem to share the same lost, twisted soul. They are so good together, so bruised, each seamlessly blending into the moldy damp of Burton's old world, that in this movie, they make a compelling argument for ditching the standard holiday fare of fruit cakes in favor of enjoying Mrs. Lovett's meat pies, regardless of all the sins ground within.

Grade: A

View the video review below:

Rent: Blu-ray Review (2007)

“Rent” Blu-ray

Evict them.

Toward the nerve-jangling midpoint, when the story and its Bohemian-wannabe characters have whipped themselves into a froth, there's no question that we're dealing with a film that apparently broke a hip upon its leap from stage to screen.

The movie is a mess, collapsing in ways from which it doesn't recover, though God knows it tries. Homelessness, death, drug addiction, sexuality, HIV and AIDS all are tackled, yet in spite of this, the movie packs the dramatic punch of a feather.

Its problem is that it demands to be taken literally.

In one scene, a character might be having a perfectly engaging conversation about the dangers of shooting up dope or the worry of not being able to pay the rent, and then suddenly be singing his heart out, setting trash cans ablaze and dancing on tables as if that'll keep on the lights.

It doesn't.

Rated PG-13. Grade: C-

Read the full review here.

Hairspray: DVD, Blu-ray Review (2007)

“Hairspray: DVD, Blu-ray”

Far from a drag.

Adam Shankman’s "Hairspray" is one of the year’s best comedies, which is a surprise given that Shankman directed "The Pacifier" and "Cheaper by the Dozen 2," each of which put a flop in the box office’s flip.

Not so with "Hairspray."

Based on the hit Broadway musical by way of John Water’s 1988 camp classic movie, the film is expertly conceived, fun and infectious.

In the lead is newcomer Nikki Blonsky as Tracy Turnblad, the impossibly perky, plus-sized Baltimore lass whose beaming naivete and kindness are about to be challenged when, in 1962, the country nudges forward with the ramifications of segregation and integration.

Those are serious subjects to explore, so it’s to the movie’s great credit that it manages to make you feel just how serious without ever sacrificing the film’s mischief and fun.

Beyond Blonsky, whose unflagging energy should be canned by Red Bull, Michelle Pfeiffer, Queen Latifah, Zac Efron, Elijah Kelley, Amanda Bynes, James Marsden, Allison Janney and Taylor Parks are terrific.

As Tracy’s robust mother Edna, John Travolta tucks himself beneath so much foam padding, he could double as a three-piece living room set. Unlike Harvey Fierstein and Divine before him, Travolta’s Edna is sweet, soft-spoken and shy, with the actor playing the part with barely a wink that it’s John Travolta beneath all that makeup.

As such, for purists, this particular man in the fat suit might not suit, but for mainstream audiences, for whom the movie is targeted, Travolta likely will win over plenty. Helping him to that end is Christopher Walken as Edna’s husband, who shares with her a dance and a song that’s one of the film’s highlights.

The song is called "You’re Timeless to Me," which, given the film’s themes of acceptance in a world that continues to resist it, easily could speak for the movie itself.

Rated PG-13. Grade: A-

Read a full review of the movie here.

Viva Las Vegas/Jailhouse Rock: HD DVD Review, Blu-ray Review

"Jailhouse Rock"

"Viva Las Vegas"

Just out on HD DVD and Blu-ray disc are “Viva Las Vegas” and “Jail House Rock,” two swell throwbacks for the Elvis fan, with each release receiving a nice technical lift given that sound quality is superior in high definition.

For these movies, the remastered soundtracks prove a bonus, particularly since in each, Elvis is given to launching into enthusiastic bouts of song.

In “Vegas,” the King waxes cute opposite Ann-Margret--and a muscle car. In “Rock,” he shoots for recording stardom after a flamboyant stint in the big house. But will he forget his friends along the way?

The songs and the stagy performances remain the selling points of each movie, but so does the kitsch, which still defines these films--and which still serves them well.

Grades: "Jailhouse": B+; "Vegas": B+

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The Producers: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

An overproduced jewel

(Originally published 2005)

Susan Stroman's "The Producers" presents a tricky balancing act for the director. It's a film that comes with something of a pedigree--Mel Brooks' 1968 original film, which is a comedic masterpiece, and Brooks' over-the-top Broadway musical, which is among the biggest hits in recent Broadway memory.

Given the comparisons that were sure to follow--and the pressures that accompanied them--this new film could have been a disaster. True enough, in the early scenes, when Stroman is still finding her way around the quirky rooms that fill Mel Brooks' mind, there is every indication that it will be a disaster. Initial scenes are awkward, the meter is off, there's the sense that the film is getting ahead of itself, the tone is wrong.

But then, without warning, the laughs start to hit, then hit harder, and then the film achieves that zenith for which it was meant--the stratosphere, where political correctness doesn't exist and camp can run amok.

As written by Brooks and Thomas Meehan, this "Producers" is two hours of increasing lunacy, with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick reprising the characters they played (and some might say the boisterous performances they gave) on Broadway and in London.

Lane is Max Bialystock, the down-on-his-luck producer who realizes that a major Broadway flop might be a way to achieve great wealth. He's a shameless opportunist, a con who beds little old ladies in an effort to have at their retirements, which they're more than happy to give up, but not without a sexual return on their investment.

Broderick is Leo Bloom, the jittery accountant with the security blanket at the ready whose creative number crunching is exactly what Bialystock needs to fulfill his wild new plan.

Together, they become a team, with Bialystock's idea coming down to this--once they secure the worst script possible, Bialystock will collect $2 million in financing from his elderly lady friends. When the musical shuts down after a crushing opening night, they will make off with the loot and enjoy their own retirements, presumably in some tropical paradise, far away from Broadway's Great White Way.

To achieve such a feat, they seem to be on the right track--from the crazed, pro-Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind (Will Ferrell) they purchase a musical called "Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp with Adolph and Eva at Berchtesgaden." Touchy subject? You could say that. Poor taste? Oh, yes.

Unwittingly helping them to complete their dream are showbiz hopeful Ulla (Uma Thurman, towering and fantastic), who hails from Sweden and takes a shine to Leo, as well as the outrageous, mincing gay couple Roger De Bris (Gary Beach) and Carmen Ghia (Roger Bart), who take the gay stereotype to a whole new level, but not without a very broad wink at the audience.

De Bris is the show's director, but when the actor playing Hitler literally breaks a leg on opening night, De Bris is cajoled into stepping in for him, which essentially means that this Hitler in this play is going to be played by a man whose inspiration is less Third Reich cum the Holocaust and more Judy Garland cum the Palace Theatre.

As such, what ensues can be hilarious, particularly in the song and dance numbers, which tap into the festering root that is Mel Brooks' brain and find there an absurdist's release. There is not one subtle moment in this film--hell, subtlety is tossed into the air and shot to the ground. The movie is pure anything-goes overkill, with Stroman embracing a sensibility that is appallingly undisciplined.

You know, just as it should be.

Grade: B+

A Prairie Home Companion: Movie & DVD Review (2006)

Prairie dog

(Originally published 2006)

The new Robert Altman movie, "A Prairie Home Companion," is set within the closed world of radio performed via the stage, with the audience in attendance at St. Paul's F. Scott Fitzgerald Theater watching what will be the last performance of a long-running radio show. Given the ripe possibilities for real theater to explode at such an event, the movie sounds as if might offer the juice of, say, Altman's "Gosford Park."

It doesn't.

"Companion" is as wide open and as gentle as its title suggests. Sometimes you appreciate it for Altman’s typical breezy looseness and disregard for structure. Other times you wish a snake would cut across this "Prairie" and bite somebody on the ankle, if only to liven up a movie seriously in need of dramatic tension.

The film, which screenwriter Garrison Keillor based on his popular public radio program, is little more than a sweetly nostalgic, mildly entertaining diversion. It's best reserved for fans of the radio show, or for its release on DVD.

Its virtue is its cast, which includes the great Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin as singing sisters Yolanda and Rhonda Johnson, as well as John C. Reilly and Woody Harrelson as two singing cowboys, Lefty and Dusty. Backed by Keillor, who plays a mirror image of himself as GK, these five leave the strongest impression in a movie otherwise filled with blank slates.

The thin plot is an afterthought. The theater has been purchased by an out-of-town businessman named the Axeman (Tommy Lee Jones), who cometh to put the kibbutz on the theater and an era. Running security at the joint is Guy Noir (Kevin Kline), who is the only person to have any interaction with the Axeman, not that there's much of it since each actor is squandered here.

Faring no better is an expressionless Virginia Madsen as a ghostly angel of death, who roams the theater's halls cinched into a white trench coat. More Stepford robot than heavenly creation, Madsen’s weirdly disconnected performance is the movie’s biggest letdown. By the end of the film, you wish she would just lose the wooden act, unbutton the coat and flash somebody, if only to shake thing up.

As Streep’s disgruntled daughter, Lola, who writes punchy poems about suicide, Lindsay Lohan slumps in chairs and generally looks unhappy until she's given the chance to sing onstage, where still she struggles to come to life. Maya Rudolph of Saturday Night Live, however, is nicely cast as a pregnant, gum-snapping producer.

Streep, Tomlin and Keillor are the reasons to see the movie--they have their bag of tricks and they dip into them liberally to keep things interesting, at least when they’re onscreen. As for rest of the cast, they are lost within the presumably lost time the movie evokes.

Grade: C

Rent: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

Evict them

(Originally published 2005)

Toward the nerve-jangling midpoint of the new movie “Rent,” when the story and its Bohemian-wannabe characters have whipped themselves into a high froth of full-blown camp, I waited for a break in the deluge of song and dance numbers to ask my movie companion a question: “Where in the hell are we?”

“In a movie script” came the reply.

An excellent point. In Chris Columbus’ self-aware adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s robust 1996 stage musical, “Rent,” there never is a question that we're dealing with a film that apparently broke a hip upon its leap from stage to screen. Occasionally, the movie is entertaining and engrossing, but too often for the wrong reasons. It's a mess, collapsing in ways from which it doesn't recover, though God knows it tries.

The problem is that "Rent" never was intended for the screen. It’s designed for the stage, a completely different beast with different needs, starting with the electrical give and take between a cast and its audience. Broadway and Hollywood know the difficulties of pulling off this sort of film, but hope, I'm afraid, is more powerful than logic, and in this case, hope got the best of "Rent." Hope sent it to hell.

A contemporary retelling of Puccini's "La Boheme," the film does bring back much of the original cast, who do their best here, and it's hardly lacking in big issues as it deals with homelessness, death, drug addiction, sexuality, HIV and AIDS. And yet in spite of this, it packs the dramatic punch of a feather. The movie has a rushed, awkward feel to it. It strains to be as engaging as Larson's songs.

Unlike Rob Marshall's excellent adaptation of “Chicago," in which the song and dance numbers ingeniously stemmed from Roxie Hart’s imagination, or the upcoming "The Producers," which exists to spread its wings in the ether, "Rent" demands to be taken literally, which is its problem.

In one scene, a character might be having a perfectly engaging conversation about the dangers of shooting up dope or the worry of not being able to pay the rent, and then suddenly be singing his heart out, setting trash cans ablaze and dancing on tables as if that'll keep on the lights. It doesn't.

What Larson's "Rent" had going for it was rage; it was conceived out of fear and desperation. What Columbus' "Rent" has against it is apathy; it was conceived to make a buck. With the exception of World AIDS Day, in which the mass media finally puts HIV and AIDS above the fold, neither is given the focus they demand. Somehow, in spite of a pandemic that continues its dark march, we've grown so inexcusably comfortable with it, news about its progress has been relegated to the fringe.

That's the real crime this movie does make us face. It's also the reason it can't totally be dismissed.

Grade: C-

Dreamgirls: Movie & DVD Review (2006)

One star soars

(Originally published 2006)

Given the groundswell of hype surrounding the new Bill Condon musical “Dreamgirls,” there’s every reason to expect it to be on par with Rob Marshall's “Chicago,” which was based on Condon’s script and which was one of 2002’s best films.

The reality, though, is somewhat different.

While “Dreamgirls” is a good movie, what’s missing is the soul that could have made it a great movie. This glittering adaptation of the long-running 1981 Broadway show has fine production values and it’s enjoyable in parts, but it isn't memorable as a whole.

Unlike "Chicago," for instance, or "Ray," "Cabaret," “Moulin Rouge,” "My Fair Lady," "Funny Girl" or the 1954 version of "A Star is Born" with Judy Garland and James Mason, you don't leave the film exhilarated or spent. Instead, you leave it feeling somewhat ambivalent, with one major exception--Jennifer Hudson, who gives the film’s best, most heart-felt performance as Effie White, the brassy member of the 1960s girl group the Dreams, itself a thinly veiled version of the Supremes.

Though Hudson falls short in those scenes where her lip sync is distractingly out of sync, her undeniable talent and powerful voice nevertheless pummel through the movie in ways that give it a generous lift.

An “American Idol” castaway now enjoying her hey day, Hudson may be the film’s novice actor, but she steals each scene she’s in, deftly bulldozing over her seasoned co-stars with a rawness and a confidence that’s magnificent to behold. Her star isn’t just born here, it’s sent over the moon and we’re all better for it.

As you'd expect, her defining moment comes when she sings the powerhouse ballad “And I Am Telling You (I’m Not Going),” which was made famous by the great Jennifer Holliday and which Hudson does proud in an extended sequence that proves the movie's highlight and the story’s turning point.

Just before she sings it, Hudson’s Effie was ousted from the Dreams, which includes singers Lorrell Robinson (Anika Noni Rose) and her unexpected rival, Deena Jones (Beyonce Knowles, beautiful yet slight). Effie’s trouble is that she’s considered trouble, a diva with a self-destructive attitude that might bring down the group just as they’re on the cusp of stardom.

Worse for her is that her lover and the group's manager Curtis Taylor Jr. (Jamie Foxx, coasting) believes Effie is too ethnic for a country divided by the civil rights movement. And so, by turning his back on her by championing the thinner, more white-friendly Deena as the new star of the group, he essentially has turned his back on his own race.

All of this could have made for a revealing, powerful film about how blacks were treated in the music industry during the 1960s and 70s--and how they had to strategize to be successful--but it doesn’t. Instead, Condon ("Kinsey," "Gods and Monsters") goes for the glitz, the glamour and the infighting, which generates its share of energy but no depth.

Working hard in a subplot is Eddie Murphy as James "Thunder" Early, a James Brown-like entertainer who is on fire as the movie begins, yet whose collapse into disillusionment and drug addiction becomes disappointingly flat when the industry turns against him. The flatness isn't Murphy's fault--he's good here, particularly in early scenes--but a fault of the script, which doesn't allow the actor to have his moment the way it absolutely allows Hudson to have hers.

Grade: B

8 Women: Movie & DVD Review (2002)

Catfight: The Musical

(Originally published 2002)

Francois Ozon's "8 Women" tries to make George Cukor's 1939 catfight, "The Women," look like a quaint Sunday prayer meeting among the best of friends. While it doesn’t quite pull that off (what could?), it has a great time trying and, in the end, it stands as a worthy homage to the unforgettably bitchy mood Cukor created in his film.

Set in the 1950s, "8 Women" is a haughty, heavy-breathing melodrama based on Robert Thomas' play. It's so over-the-top, it almost knocks itself out.

The film begins with a rush of strings and trumpets from Krishna Levy's triumphantly purple score and a glimmering curtain of crystal beads shimmering in a soft pastel hue. Both ground the movie in camp while priming the viewer for what’s to come. Certainly, you hope, that whatever is lurking beyond that curtain will be just as festooned, bejeweled and grotesque as the curtain itself.

It is. Indeed, when the beads wink apart, they reveal a huge snowbound French country estate that, inside, is the sort of Technicolor dreamworld that could put a crease in Vincente Minnelli's pants.

What ensues feels like Robert Altman's "Gosford Park" as written by Agatha Christie on a nitrous oxide drip. The film has more bite and more histrionics than Altman’s film, but then it also has six full-length musical numbers performed by eight famous French actresses, all of whom play suspects in the murder of the estate's wealthy owner, a man found dead early on with a knife in his back.

Who did it? Take your pick. The film’s bevy of lusty, busty babes--Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux, Fanny Ardant, Isabelle Huppert, Firmine Richard, Virginie Ledoyen, Ludivine Sagnier and Emmanuelle Beart—all could be the killer. But who has the true motive? And is the film ever really what it seems?

As it becomes clear that somebody here is more clever with the cutlery than she’s letting on, the film channels everyone from Jacques Demy to Douglas Sirk as these women work hard to root each other out. If the story sometimes strains against its seams--not unlike Deneuve in her dress--the cast is consistently strong, particularly Deneuve and Ardant, bravely throwing caution to the wind and mugging fearlessly in an all-out effort to bring down the house.

Grade: B

Bride and Prejudice: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

Austen goes to Bollywood

(Originally published 2005)

Bollywood’s interpretation of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice" is just what you expect--slight, chaotic, fun.

It’s a camp musical, which sends the film far and away from its source book while nevertheless keeping the bones of the plot in place. It's amazing what they've done with it.

Here, Austen's Elizabeth Bennet is played by the stunning Aishwarya Rai, a former Miss World whose Lalita knows a few things about how to smolder. The Darcy character is played by Martin Henderson as a rich hotel hunk from the States with whom Lalita falls in love in spite of her mother's meddling.

The film hails from Indian director Gurinder Chadha, whose "Bend It Like Beckham" was a nice jolt. Here, she channels the same energy that drummed through that film, lifts it a notch, and creates a movie that's pure trash art.

Grade: B

Beyond the Sea: Movie & DVD Review (2004)

"Sea" doesn't go beyond a 'C'

(Originally published 2004)

The Kevin Spacey movie, "Beyond the Sea," stars Spacey as Bobby Darin, the former pop star and teen idol doomed to death at age 9 by a doctor certain he wouldn't live past the age of 15.

Rheumatic fever nearly felled him, but thanks to the help of an enthusiastic stage mother (Brenda Blethyn) who encouraged his talent and made him believe he had the goods to be a star, Darin dug deep and found the pluck to live until age 37, when he died in 1973 after living life to its breaking point.

Now, in "Beyond the Sea," Darin's life is lived again - or at least a version of it is lived again. As directed by Spacey from a script he co-wrote with Lewis Colick, "Sea" is mined from Spacey's years of interest in Darin, the likes of which, it turns out, have a whiff of star worship and fantasy about them.

Spacey is 45 and looks it. In spite of that, he has cast himself as a man whose first hit song, "Splish Splash," was performed at age 22. I don't care how good your lighting is, how talented your cinematographer or how swell your cosmetic surgery went: Onscreen, 45 is only 22 if you have a burlap bag tied over your head.

Aware of this, Spacey contrives a movie-within-a-movie structure, with Darin looking back on his life from the viewpoint of an older man gleaning insight from his inner child, literally portrayed here by William Ulrich. It's all tricky, kitshy, hokey stuff, and I'd like to tell you it works, but unfortunately, it works only in parts.

Mirroring most biopics based on celebrities, "Beyond the Sea" follows its subject's rise to fame. It chronicles Darin's handful of pop hits, his marriage to actress Sandra Dee (Kate Bosworth), his Academy Award nomination for 1963's "Captain Newman, M.D.," his rage, his ego, his eventual undoing by the rapidly changing times.

As Spacey tells it, no accomplishment was ever too much to please Darin, whose insatiable drive was fueled by the lack of time he knew he had left as well as his eagerness to be bigger than his more talented contemporary, Frank Sinatra, a man he obviously tried to emulate.

It's also Darin's drive that strained his closest relationships, beginning with those who helped him reach the top, his manager, Steve (John Goodman), his brother-in-law, Charlie (Bob Hoskins), his sister, Nina (Caroline Aaron), and extending to Dee herself, who turned to booze and ciggies because life with Darin was at once too little and too much.

What ensues is a showy, energetic little soap opera whose best moments come when Spacey plays it straight. The whole inner child angle is a drag, it's clumsy and self-conscious. But when Spacey takes to the stage as Darin and sings, the movie floats.

Spacey has a good voice and charm to spare, but in spite of all the little dramas that pop up throughout, the film never really gets to the root of who Bobby Darin was. Was he the real thing, or just a performer crafted by system and the times? Spacey allows him to remain an enigma, which could have worked for a bigger star, but which here does the middling Darin no favors.

Though it likely wasn't Spacey's intent, it cheats Darin of leaving his mark.

Grade: C

Walk the Line: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

Becoming one at the mic

(Originally published 2005)

We've walked this line before.

Big movie, great cast, Oscar buzz, all riding the rails of a story based on a famous musician's life. At the end of 2004, two artists received similar treatment--Ray Charles in the excellent biopic of his life, "Ray," and Bobby Darin in the underwhelming "Beyond the Sea," which didn't exactly create a splish splash at the box office, regardless of Kevin Spacey's efforts to the contrary.

"Walk the Line," on the other hand, will generate such a splash, and it's a wave that likely will extend into the heart of the pending awards season.

The film, which James Mangold ("Identity," "Cop Land," "Girl, Interrupted") based on a screenplay he co-wrote with Gill Dennis, follows the defining years of Johnny Cash's life.

Mangold takes us from Cash's difficult childhood in Arkansas, in which a pivotal event changed him and his relationship with his family forever, to his rise to fame, his struggle with drug addiction (thanks to an introduction to Elvis), his marital problems with first wife, Vivian (Ginnifer Goodwin), the great love he felt for June Carter (Reese Witherspoon), and the defining moment in which the grayness of an otherwise muddled, self-destructive life lifted during his knockout, 1968 show at Folsom State Prison.

There, in front of 2,000 cheering inmates, all of Cash's frustrations and successes, his disappointments and dark humor, his rage, loneliness and failures--particularly his failures, which he wore like badges on his black sleeves--allowed him to connect with these men in a performance that arguably was the best of his career.

Thing is, as with so many biopics focused on musicians, Mangold's movie is essentially a film about overcoming addiction in order to further one's path to legend. That familiarity would have done the movie no favors had Mangold not had the strength of subtlety, which shows throughout, and especially the terrific performances from his cast, who transcend formula by allowing audiences to fully invest themselves in what matters--the budding, turbulent relationship between Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) and June.

Giving their best performances to date, Phoenix and Witherspoon each do their own singing here while possessing the sort of chemistry that sets their particular ring of fire alive.

What Mangold and his performers understand is that there are times in one's life when the most difficult thing to do is to give yourself over to someone, to open your heart and trust that person, in spite of all signs suggesting that you'd be a fool to do so. This was the case for June Carter, who feared what marriage to Johnny Cash could mean, and Witherspoon gets it right, nailing the woman's anxiety and apprehension. We all know the outcome, but it's the building up to that moment that's so compelling and, in the end, what "Walk the Line" really is all about.

Grade: A-

Moulin Rouge: Movie & DVD Review (2001)

Too much, well, too much--but what a show

(Originally published 2001)

In the dizzying opening moments of Baz Luhrmann’s decadent new musical, “