TAD - Doghouse

Rating: ***

It’s not often that you get the festival programmer starting things off with an apology on behalf of the British people. The film called Doghouse takes its cue from the likes of Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland by trying to find the funny in post-apocalyptic-style, undead mayhem, while still being true to the genre. However, those movies still had some romance to them, an element you’ll notice sorely lacking in Doghouse. The six main characters are a group of lads out for a weekend of womanizing and exuberant alcohol consumption. They’re loud, crass and looking for trouble. Or as Toronto After Dark Film Festival Director Adam Lopez put it, “You’ll be wishing these guys very horrible deaths.”

Well, if that introduction didn’t sell you, it does take too long for the movie to start giving you reasons to do as Lopez suggested. Basically, it begins with sad-sack Vince (Stephen Graham) whose recent divorce seems to have caused him to devolve into a slovenly frat boy in a grungy apparent, surrounded by half-eaten take-out and sleeping past noon. His five friends decide to take him out for a boys’ weekend in a small town called Moodley where, reputedly, the women outnumber the men four to one. Those who saw the original Hostel, and remember that the sole motivation of the boys to go to that small Eastern European town was the ease of “getting some,” already know that this will end in blood shed.

Like Shaun and Ed in that other English “zomedy,” it takes our sextet of British Bros a while to catch on that not all is right in the realm of Moodley. This part of the film was kind of a stretch because our heroes march along, happily oblivious despite a lack of townspeople on the streets, and what would have to be the stench of death in the air given that most of the town’s men lay disembowelled in a nearby backyard.

Putting aside the utter lack of observation skills for a group boy-men just looking to “get pissed,” director Jake West and writer Dan Schaffer really know how to mix the laughs and the gore, and the fact that sometimes those two things go hand in hand. What isn’t as clear (and maybe that’s the point) is just who might find this movie appealing and why?

For the boys there’s the fact that Doghouse goes down like a middle-aged American Pie of the Dead in Britain. The zombie virus in the movie affects only women, turning them into, as one character put it, “pissed off, man-hating, feminist cannibals.” The plot conceit opens up the opportunity for the boys to run for their lives away from zombified versions of a slutty bride, an eye-patch-wearing dominatrix and a large housewife in bathrobe and curlers. If there’s a bad girl cliché, it’s been turned into a zombie in Doghouse, or, as another one of the character’s observes in a rare P.C. moment, “This is not the time to stop objectifying women.”

Speaking of which, I’m sure those of the female persuasion are wondering what’s in Doghouse for them. Well, I suppose on the surface there’s the fact that all the accumulated hate for immature boy-men could be foisted on Vince and friends. That’s not to say that there’s a pro-feminist read to the film, although that could be a matter of perspective. These guys aren’t he-men in sheep’s clothing and survival is always a matter of timing, luck and serendipity. And to throw realism completely out the window, one of the boys’ ingenious escapes involves dressing-up in women’s clothing and “blending in.” (Of course, even that’s a borrowed gag. See: Shaun of the Dead.)

There was also some gender neutral laughs in Doghouse. “Alright, I’ve locked the back door and put the kettle on,” Matt (Lee Ingleby) says after a tricky escape. Patrick (Keith-Lee Castle) meanwhile, puts thoughts of getting chopped down off a billboard out of his head by hitting his stress-busting books on tape on his iPod. Taken individually, a lot of the gags in Doghouse work well, but as an overall effort it’s kind of here and there. There’s a lot of been there done that with zombie movies past, and the only new element the film has in its corner is that it’s easily the most openly sexist horror movie made. At least intentionally.

It really depends on your taste how you take Doghouse, but if nothing else, it’s committed to a vision. And indeed, you will enjoy watching these guys die horribly. Maybe that’s enough.

Scott Pilgrim Vs The World

Rating: *****

Sometimes the ignorance of the movie-going public is astounding. They’ll line-up for anything remade, animated, or done in 3-D, but a blisteringly original and energetic work of film, let’s skip that to see something that’s supposed to be for 10-year-olds. That may be a little harsh, but it really does flabbergast me about where the mentality of people that go to the cinema is. I could watch SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD again. I could watch right after I watched it. That’s how good this is. At least in my opinion.

Based on the graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O’Malley, SCOTT PILGRIM is zany, colourful and most importantly heartfelt. It looks pretty, but it’s got heart, which is what separates this film from the pack. That and its oozing in maple syrup love of Canadiana (or at least Torontoniana) as director Edgar Wright really nails something authentic about his hyperactive, comic book version of Hogtown that comes complete with all sorts of video game sound effects.

At the heart of the story is the boy-meets-girl drama between the titular unemployed slacker (played by Michael Cera) and the hipster, pink-haired love of his life named Ramona V. Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Naturally, the course of true love never does run smooth, and as a result, Scott must battle Ramona’s Seven Evil Exes in order to win her heart. Along the way, Scott must also help his band, The Sex Bob-Ombs, to ascend the Battle of the Bands to win a record contract and “sell out and stuff.”

That’s really kind of the bare minimum in terms of plot description because there’s really so much going on every minute of the film that you could write a 1,500 world plot breakdown. What’s really interesting is that there are a lot of characters in the film, and this can be dangerous because there’s a limited time to tell a story with little time for deviation into a side-character’s wacky antics. Not that the time issue is different with SCOTT PILGRIM, but there are a lot of characters and they’re all very well drawn.

At the centre of it all is Cera, who, while playing the sardonic slacker yet again, finds the material fitting his rather one note delivery. I think this is the fate of Michael Cera, destined to a career of finding the right scripts and right directors to suit his one note tone. Fortunately for him, SCOTT PILGRIM is all aces. As Scott’s soulmate Ramona, Winstead practically dares you not to fall for her, with her candy-coated hair, those eyes that had to have been taken right from the head of a Disney Princess and driest of the dry line deliveries. Winstead is definitely the girl you’d fight seven evil exes for, with a sardonic sass that makes her even more desirable.

Speaking of those evil exes, it’s practically a parade of geek friendly cameos. From future Captain America Chris Evans doing meathead macho right as skater/actor Lucas Lee, to former-Superman Brandon Routh as super-powered vegan Todd Ingram, to the once and future Max Fischer Jason Schwartzman as the Lex Luthor-like organizer of the evil exes, Gideon Graves, these guys are golden. And in an inspired bit of injoke casting, Cera’s ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT girlfriend Mae Whitman (her?) plays the bi-furious Roxy Richter.

If there’s a breakout star – if you can call him that considering that he’s spent all but eight of his 28 years in show business – it’s Kieran Culkin as Scott’s best friend Wallace Wells. Culkin steals a lot of the scenes he’s in, not to mention a lot of the best lines in the movie. I think I would love to see a movie about Wallace’s solo adventures, living his life according to the double standard code of Liberace’s Ghost and not caring who knows it. But honestly, I can’t pick out a bad actor in this thing.

Perhaps what trips up people is SCOTT PILGRIM’S unabashed love of modern pop culture in general and video games in particular. Things like “pee bars” and fighting your enemies until they explode into coins, or fighting the negative version of yourself in order to win the prize (or the girl in this case), should go down well with the current generation, who grew up, like me, on the original 8-bit Nintendo. It surprises me that it hasn’t translated, but I suppose that’s how cult classics are born.

I have little doubt that in the months and years to come, especially when it hits video shelves, SCOTT PILGRIM will find its audience. It’ll find the small and vocal, who will continue to sing its praises until they start fighting over who “discovered it” first. On second thought, that’s pretty much where this movie was always meant to be. SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD is a cult film made with studio money, and that, by me, is alright because I’ll do everything I can to make sure that I get $60 million worth of enjoyment out of it in the years to come.

Countdown to Zero

Rating: ****

If you’re looking for something scary to watch, you can’t do much better than COUNTDOWN TO ZERO, a new documentary by Lucy Walker. “A documentary?” you say, “Scary?” Indeed. From the producers of the seminal AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, which was about another pending man-made disaster, COUNTDOWN TO ZERO tackles the topic of nuclear weapons in the 21st century, and the dual ongoing dangers of the increased stockpiles of weapons and lax security of nuclear materials.

A Washington Times reviewer said that this film was brought to you by "the peacenik movement", a term which hasn’t been uttered by anyone since your grandpa for over 30 years now. They also said that “The pacifist message of the former is loud and clear: 'Our only option is to eradicate every last nuclear missile'..." Well if the eradication of every nuclear missile isn’t a goal worth striving for, I don’t know what is. COUNTDOWN TO ZERO though lays out a pretty compelling argument as to why this should be a priority. If the intention was to duplicate the call to action and outright provocation of concern about the issue, then COUNTDOWN should be as successful as TRUTH.

Unlike TRUTH though, this is not a story that can be told by one man. Instead, Walker and her team gather opinion and explanation from a diverse group including Tony Blair, Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Robert McNamara, Pervez Musharraf, and Valerie Plame Wilson. Still, it’s not the names that make this movie. COUNTDOWN is a wake-up call to people who think that a nuclear apocalypse is a fear from the past, and handily demonstrates just how real the possibility of nuclear terrorism might be.

Not that this is a “run-for-your-life1” kind of picture that encourages you to flip you lid and run for the hills, but a carefully considered and informative argument that says this is something that you, as a citizen of Planet Earth, should be more concerned about. Especially chilling is the examination of Russia’s “victories” in “busting” operations attempting to sell nuclear materials on the black market. Apparently, every time Russian authorities have caught some one “in the act” it’s been purely by accident. That doesn’t say a lot about a country whose nuclear stockpiles are dangerously under-guarded by a few guys that get paid a pittance, if they get paid at all.

As compelling as it is frightening, COUNTDOWN makes you want to stand up and act more than it makes you want to duck and cover. The implications are chilling, but there’s a very fine clinical detachment that makes this doc a wonderful piece of investigative journalism. Clearly there’s a problem, here’s the facts, here are the experts, and here’s what has to be done to resolve things. If anything, what disappointed me was the INCONVENIENT TRUTH treatment with a song by Pearl Jam at the end and a call to arms to the people, but that really doesn’t dilute the message of the film.

If the Doomsday Clock created by scientists at the University of Chicago in 1948 seems passé, then COUNTDOWN may be the new way to get the message out that time is still ticking away. Easily, this is one of the most compelling docs of the year.

Inception

Rating: ****

Inception is advertised as epically mind-bending in the same way as Lord of the Rings was epically, well, epic. Truthfully though, I didn’t find it borderline indecipherable, although it would be correct to say that it does test the limits of your detail grasping capacities. Either because we as audience members are constantly being treated as dumb or because we just are, people aren’t really used to a movie that says, “Hey! Pay attention!” But whatever the reason, Inception is a reward to the thinking man and woman; a summer blockbuster with heart, and brains, and soul.

Strangely though, for a movie dripping with wit and originality, its central plot device seems very familiar. It’s an accident of course. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a widower haunted by visions of his dead wife, a notion he got very familiar with earlier this year in Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island. Fortunately, with Inception we’re sparred the third act, left field twist that immediately renders the two hours previously spent with the movie a convoluted waste of style and suspense.

But the movie gods aligned the stars for this one, a crime caper, psychological thriller, mind puzzle that takes place in levels within levels of dreams. There’s convoluted mythology, but honestly, I didn’t find it so convoluted that it’s impenetrable. I don’t need to see it again to make sure I understand it all, but that’s not to say that I won’t see it again out of pure simple enjoyment. Which is the key to Inception’s success. It’s an art house movie masquerading as a blockbuster; Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind as directed by Tony Scott.

The film’s title comes from the central plot. “Inception” where rather than stealing a dream, one is implanted with in the subject. Such an operation is tricky because it’s like an organ replacement not matched perfectly with the recipient: there’s a high chance of rejection. However, the highly capable Cobb (DiCaprio) is willing to give it try, especially since the price is right. Saito (Ken Wantanabe) offers Cobb a chance to go home to his kids, who he had to abandon after fleeing the U.S., accused of killing his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard).

A wonderful team of actors back up DiCaprio as his crew. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy, and Dileep Rao all provide ample support as Cobb’s reliable dream thievery crew. Ellen Page has the unenviable role as the audience surrogate, a gifted architectural student recruited by Cobb to construct the world of the dream. It’s through Page’s Ariadne that all this complicated dream stealing stuff is explained, but fortunately all the details are shared in a way that doesn’t grind the plot to a halt.

For this reason, even Cotillard is given something to do that’s more intriguing than being the main character’s guilt complex. Mal is the ghost in the machine, for all intents and purposes, the film’s villain. She’s a complication that can be sprung at anytime, and unfortunately one that renders Cobb in a manner similar to what happens to Superman when he’s faced with kryptonite. All the minutia about will she or won’t she ruin the plan and the degree of Cobb’s guilt over her death sometimes strains the caper plot, but there’s nothing dull about this movie’s universe, and thus things seem to keep chugging along.

By my count about half the movie is the titular caper as the crew digs in layer after layer inside the dreams of Cillian Murphy’s Robert Fischer, the son of an industrialist who Saito thinks has too big a company to compete with. Of course, if this were a Michael Bay movie that would be more like a complaint because of the complete overbearing nature that Bay conducts his action. Nolan is more subtle. He ratchets up the tension slowly, adding level after level as the crew goes deeper into the Fischer’s dream, which looks about as vivid as a vintage Bond movie,

The success of Inception is not in its perceived originality, though while it’s certainly an original work, it’s like a Tarantino movie, as in it’s a rich, quilt like tapestry of different film references. No, Inception works because it was crafted by a master, meticulous in detail, and capable of not just seeing a clear vision, but of bringing it to life for all to see and experience. It’s living proof that spectacle is still possible for a two dimensional film in a world gone three dimensionally crazy.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Rating: ***

From the studio that brought you the film based on a theme park ride, and the sequel to a movie that’s 70 years old and didn’t need a part two anyway, comes a film based on a segment from a movie of short cartoons inspired by pieces of classical music. Further still, this movie has almost nothing to do with the material that inspired it save for a title and the fact that it’s about a wizard and his employee. Of course to make matters more egregious is the fact that the filmmakers shoehorned in a little homage to the famous Mickey Mouse starring segment from Fantasia, all mops a dancing and cleaning supplies going awry. Thanks, there’s another childhood memory butchered.

Strangely enough though, there is something compelling to be found in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. If anything, there’s enough adventure and magic in it to make the act of sitting through it worthwhile. It’s perfectly entertaining in its own way, but I can’t say that I get wholly invested in the story. In fact, it’s a reaction quite similar to the one I had for director Jon Turteltaub’s most recent effort, the National Treasure movies. The plot contrivances, the technobabble, and quirkier than quirky characters make the movie, at times, hard to swallow, but if you can get around that, you might have a good time.

But first you have to get over the exposition loading as the opening narration tells us about Merlin, his apprentices, sorcerer wars, Morgana La Fey and something called the “Prime Merlinian.” This ridiculous piece of alliteration is revealed to be a sorcerer born whose power will be equal to Merlin, and thus be able to defeat Morgana once and for all should her minions release her from the nesting doll holding her prisoner. Naturally, this prophesized chosen one is a nerdish slacker living in the 21st century.

There’s something enchanting about treating modern New York City as a hidden magical playground, and casting the pronouncedly loopy Nicolas Cage as the sorcerer Balthazar, charged with the mission of finding the Prime Merlinian and training him, is inspired. It’s too bad then that Cage is on complete autopilot mode, which leaves his poor apprentice Jay Baruchel to work his acting magic on the audience. Baruchel does an admirable job, but one can’t help but get the feeling that he may be a little bit over his head. Alfred Molina though, as the film’s primary villain, manages to be saucy, creepy and just generally slick while he’s making with the evil.

The main trouble though is that like a lot of big, studio, summer pictures, it’s got its mind on franchise opportunities. Now it’s often a good idea to look to the future, but not when it comes at the expense of the here and now. I look at the first Pirates of the Caribbean as a prime example because in that is no sign that the filmmakers were laying out a plan for part two, three and four. In Sorcerer’s there’s so much backstory and ground work you can practically see the producers flagging things to reference in later films. Why else would you saddle the opening with prologue before prologue before getting into the real story?

I will say that once the story gets going it breezes by, which is a kind of a shame because it feels like there should be some more to it. Baruchel’s Dave does a lot of whiny about how he doesn’t want to be a wizard and how he keeps blowing his chances to date anew the girl that got away in the fourth grade. In other words, it’s all rather typical, and in the end, despite having a briefer training regiment than Skywalker at Yoda’s Jedi School, Dave is able to summon the magical gravitas to overthrown Morgana (played by the underused and undervalued Alice Krige).

But somewhere in this litany of complaints there are moments that were enjoyable. Molina’s evil scheming, whenever he’s on screen, is consistently enjoyable to watch, especially his interactions with Toby Kebbell as Drake Stone, a wizard who poses as David Blane like showman. There are also some reasonably well done action scenes that make good use of effects and the movie’s New York locations. Of course I expect Turteltaub to be able to construct some decent adventure, but this Sorcerer lacks that certain spell that could have made it sing. Satisfying, but not overall inspiring.

Predators

Rating: ***

Way back, a long, long time ago (the 80s), someone (James Cameron) had a bright idea for a sequel to ALIEN. While Ridley Scott’s original was big on atmosphere in the cramped quarters of a spaceship with only the creature and a small group of long-haul space-truckers to stop him, ALIENS went bigger. Cameron’s sequel had more guns, more thugs and, most importantly, more aliens.

It took about 25 years for the trickle down effect to, well, trickle down for another mega-space-monster franchise: PREDATOR. The Schwarzenegger epic already had one sequel starring Danny Glover (?), and then segued into the lacklustre ALIEN VS PREDATOR films. But somewhere in between, then indie auteur Robert Rodriguez had a bright idea: let’s have more PREDATORS. Now, the brain trust at Fox has never exactly been protective of their franchises (*cough*X-MEN LAST STAND*cough*FANTASTIC FOUR*), so when they decided to revisit Rodriguez’s script from 1994 it was like Christmas morning.

The results however are somewhat mixed. Directed by Nimród Antal, PREDATORS is undoubtedly bad ass, even though the Academy Award laureate in this film is unusually high. Still, there are clichés and plot traps by the dozen, and something about the Predators themselves just doesn’t feel quite as menacing, but in the long run this film is an improvement by light years over what’s been done with the franchise before.

The film puts us right in the centre of the action as Royce (Adrian Brody), a former US soldier now mercenary wakes up mid air and lands in a foreign jungle having been parachuted in from a great height. He encounters others: Mexican drug cartel enforcer Cuchillo (Danny Trejo), Chechen war vet Nikolai (Oleg Taktarov), Israel Defense Forces sniper Isabelle (Alice Braga), death squad soldier Mombasa (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali), death row inmate Stans (Walton Goggins), Yakuza bad ass Hanzo (Louis Ozawa Changchien), and doctor Edwin (Topher Grace). It doesn’t take them long to put two and two together. They’re on an alien planet and they’re being used as prey for a group of alien hunters.

The script seems to take a lot of time to establish the characters and get them oriented in their setting, but they seem to get oriented pretty quick and there’s not much character to these guys to begin with. For the most part, these guys are names and loose affiliations Trejo is playing that menacing Mexican guy he always plays and Grace is the ironic detached guy who doesn’t seem to fit in. Brody was a surprise though. He conveyed just enough burly gravitas to make me believe he belonged with the rest of these rough necks. A later encounter with Laurence Fishbourne as a US army soldier long-since stranded on the alien world was interesting, but his appearance was brief and really not very fulfilling.

Of course, coming in to a movie like PREDATORS you’re not expecting a lot in the way of complex character work or engaging dialogue, after all the first film starred such thespians as Jesse “The Body” Ventura and Carl “You’ve Got A Stew Goin’” Weathers. The film creates viable tension as it leads up to the first battle between the humans and Predators, but something seems to happen once our gang comes across Fishbourne’s crackpot, the film loses a lot of its momentum. I’m also not sure where exactly Royce gets his great plan to force a captive Predator to take the human prisoners home, or even where he gets half his ideas. Or why everybody else seems to follow him despite the fact that he’s not giving anyone orders or evens seems to want to help anyone but himself. But I guess if they didn’t, there wouldn’t be much of a movie…

But the action is solid and the cast does exactly what it needs to in order to make sitting through the film an easy experience. Certainly, in watching PREDATORS one appreciates that this is the sequel that was always there, somewhere, in the franchise’s capabilities. And certainly fans, those long suffering fans, will be grateful to have a film worthy of their beloved mandible-accessorized monster. PREDATORS is pure entertainment, and proof positive that when you put the right creators in charge, the results can astound. That lesson comes a little too late for some other franchises, but better late than never as they say.

Love Ranch

Rating: ***

The new film Love Ranch does something unusual for a Hollywood film, it makes age look sexy. True, this is a film about the first legal brothel in Nevada, but the honorific title of sex bomb doesn’t belong to one of the nubile young actresses that play the ladies of the house, but rather the Academy Award-winning Dame that plays their madam. It should come as no surprise that Helen Mirren owns sex appeal at 65 years of age, but it’s just nice to a movie let it be. Of course, we can probably credit that to Mirren’s husband Taylor Hackford, who happens to also be the film’s director.

But leaving aside the aesthetics for a moment, Love Ranch is an interesting story. The titular establishment, which opened for the first time in the 70s, was the subject of much controversy, even in the laissez-faire state of Nevada. The Ranch was the brainchild of Charlie Bontempo, but it was really his put upon wife Grace Bontempo that kept up the business and made it lucrative. One might even say it was a model. Charlie had his ambitions to turn Reno into the new Vegas with himself as the Bugsy Siegel-like mastermind, but as the story goes, behind every great man…

Mirren stars as Grace and she’s teamed with fellow Oscar-winner Joe Pesci as Charlie; an odder couple on film you can hardly find. Yet somehow, for some strange reason, the combination of classically Brit Mirren and obnoxious Jersey boy Pesci works, and works beautifully. You buy them as a couple because of their dynamism, because there’s something that the one needs from the other and vice versa. Pesci is restraint in his performance playing a kind of giddy con man that hides his more thuggish inclinations that only come out when things don’t go his way.

The movie follows Grace and Charlie has the latter copes with his latest brush at immortality: managing a washed up heavy-weight fighter named Armando Bruza (Sergio Peris-Mencheta). Of course because of Charlie’s questionable past in regards to law enforcement, on paper, the management of Bruza falls to Grace. But while Grace knows nothing about managing a boxer, she does know something about men, and what she gets out of Bruza – attentiveness, passion and a little danger – is a far cry from what she gets from Charlie – philandering, neglect and violent leanings.

Grace begins a secret affair with Bruza. Secret because if Charlie ever found out then Bruza’s value would decrease both as a person and as a boxer. The relationship between Grace and Bruza is utterly believable in the moment as Mirren and Peris-Mencheta have palpable chemistry. Still, there’s so much more punch to the stuff going on between Mirren and Pesci that when the movie doesn’t focus on their tumultuous marriage/business partnership the mind wanders. You want to learn more about their background, how they met, and how they engaged in this let’s say “unique” business venture together. The film has an ample and talented supporting cast including Bryan Cranston, Gina Gershon, M.C. Gainey, and Bai Ling, but who’s kidding who? The only stars of this movie are Pesci and Mirren.

The screenplay itself, as penned by American Gangster writer Mark Jacobson, seems a bit too all over the place. It makes no moral judgments against the Bontempos but it doesn’t do much to stick up for them either. The film required the assured tone of P.T. Anderson’s Boogie Nights, which chronicled the lives of people in the porn industry in a sympathetic way while showing it for what it is, warts and all. Combined with Mirren’s melodramatic narration that seems more romance novel than anything, and the opportunity to make something unique and powerful about sex workers and their industry seems wasted. Especially in a historical context.

Structurally, Love Ranch struggles to get beyond the typical biography pattern of a good-spirited character, bogged down with adversity but given the strength to overcome and stand on their own as a smart, successful and independent person. But this type of storytelling always strikes me as more TV-movie-of-the-week than something made of people with Oscar-calibre skill. Still, that skill comes through thanks to Mirren and Pesci’s performances. Love Ranch was interesting, though not all together involving. Not nearly as lurid or as lucid as it could be, Love Ranch is fittingly in the middle of nowhere thematically.