Capsules

New Releases

Sadly, this isn’t the Kevin Shields biopic we’ve all been waiting for. Instead we’ve got a curiously faithful remake of the no-budget 1981 Canadian slasher flick that was perhaps best left ignored on VHS shelves ages ago. It’s strictly paint- by-numbers, puritanical kill-the-horny-kids garbage, with the usual graphic impalements offering up a Freudian minefield of vengeful penetrations.

The catch here—and it’s a big one—is that My Bloody Valentine was shot in 3-D, and we’re not talking about the crummy kind you might remember from those woebegone second sequels to Friday the 13th or Jaws back in the ’80s.

RealD Cinema first emerged with Disney’s Chicken Little in 2005, and the technological advance is astounding. It’s a digital system that alternately projects and polarizes the separate left and right eye frames, ramping everything up to an accelerated frame rate in order to make the image look continuous. There’s none of the flatness or double imaging that was always a sad side effect in old-fashioned stereoscopic 3-D, or whatever crap format Robert Rodriguez used for Sharkboy and Lava Girl. There’s depth and richness to your field of vision, convincing even this crusty old skeptic that someday 3-D might grow into a viable artistic choice to be explored by future filmmakers.

Someday maybe, but not today. For in the case of My Bloody Valentine, it’s just a nifty way to polish a turd.

Ten years after a tragic mining accident turned its lone survivor into a pickaxe-wielding boogeyman, the mysterious gas mask-wearing marauder returns to wreak havoc on a town full of attractive, dim-witted folks, most of whom are kind enough to remove their clothes at regular intervals.

I can’t imagine how tedious this film must be in regular old 2-D, but when gouged eyeballs are flying over your head and a naked woman is running around waving a gun perilously close to your face, it’s hard not to be enthralled, at least on a base, carnival-ride, geek-show level. Of course, the novelty wears off long before this insipid movie actually ends, but it’s impossible to deny the technical achievement.

Maybe one day Vikings will be cool again. After all, pirates went through a long period of being lame with mega-budget bombs like Roman Polanski’s Pirates and Cutthroat Island tanking before the epic swashbuckling, theme park-based comeback. But until Johnny Depp pops up in a retelling of the Erik the Red saga, Vikings will have to make do with The Thirteenth Warrior, Pathfinder and now Outlander, a pricey-looking folly dropped with a thud into the infamous January dumping grounds.

At least Outlander knows that dirty, ornery alpha males who slug mead and chow on cooked animal heads won’t cut it. So the film’s screenwriters also threw in a futuristic-looking spaceman and a vicious monster from another planet. Though originally slated to have an even bigger budget with special effects from Lord of the Rings geniuses Weta, Outlander had its budget sliced so drastically, it had to headline with Jim Caviezel.

The onetime Jesus plays the mysterious man-alien, whose spaceship crashes in ancient Norway, which is being terrorized by a rampaging hungry monster. Captured by a warrior village lorded over by John Hurt—who, like everyone else, doesn’t seem particularly alarmed by the guy’s T-shirt and crew cut—Caviezel earns the Vikings’ trust through his ass-kicking, bear-killing abilities. They team up to take down the creature, which disappears for conveniently long stretches of time then returns when things finally turn seriously, painfully dull.

Credit is due for the strangest, most unclassifiable beast since The Host, though its DNA is half H.R. Giger. It comes equipped with a nasty tail and the ability to turn blood red or cool blue like a mood ring.

In its final half-hour Outlander turns into an almost passable creature feature, but the film as a whole would be a lot more fun if it didn’t star that drop-dead boring, personality-handicapped energy-vacuum Jim Caviezel, who looks like he’s constantly waiting around to be whipped by Mel Gibson.

Things perk up when Ron Perlman swings by as a bullet-headed, tattoo-faced villain rocking what sounds like a feebly attempted Irish accent. But even Hellboy can’t breathe much life into this stale affair, which plods through two hours that would probably work better as a gruesomely hacked-down, incoherent 90-minute piece of studio-abandoned garbage.

Wendy and Lucy
Directed by Kelly Reichardt
B+
Reviewed by Matt Prigge
Opens Fri., Jan. 23

During the Great Depression, movie- goers basked in full-on escapism: frothy musicals, anarchic screwball comedies and shameless melodramas. If history truly is about to repeat itself, please don’t let fiscal miseries keep you from Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy, which is topical and recognizably bleak.

Brandishing scruffy black hair, a tattered wardrobe and roughly zero actorly ego, Michelle Williams plays Wendy, a young woman hoping to start a new life with about $500 to her name. As if in a sequel to The Grapes of Wrath, she’s driving to Alaska after hearing about promising jobs. But after spending a night sleeping in her beat-up car in a Nowhere, Ore., parking lot, Wendy discovers the motor has died.

And so begins a monsoon of bad luck, which hits a fever pitch with the disappearance of Lucy, Wendy’s dog and only companion.

Her search is severely hampered by the fact that she’s trapped in the kind of town our almost-VP would have called the Real America. Here, the shops are often closed and the people are more often unfriendly. Everyone from the cops to the mechanic to the teenage supermarket monkey cogs always follow the rules, no matter how inhumane.

The exception is an aging sad-eyed security guard (Walter Dalton), who lets Wendy use his cell phone and generally looks out for her. But their friendship is slowly and hesitantly earned, in part because Wendy never begs for sympathy, neither from other characters or from viewers.

Like last fall’s Frozen River, Wendy and Lucy offers a dark portrait of America, where moments of altruism are few but deeply moving. Which is to say that compared to Old Joy, Reichardt’s quietly devastating previous film, it’s a tiny bit of a letdown. Old Joy felt like it was written with the camera; Wendy and Lucy, while an acute social dissection, feels more scripted, less spontaneous, with sequences—notably a run-in with a possibly dangerous vagrant in the woods—that feel far too on-the-nose.

Still, Reichardt does her best to make the grim story feel organic, bringing a muted, hypnotic stillness echoed by her marquee star. But given our nation’s woes, it’s likely viewers will cut Wendy and Lucy the teensiest bit of slack that it needs.

Not Reviewed

Inkheart
Mo Folchart (Brendan Fraser) brings storybook characters to life, which is totally cool until one of them kidnaps his daughter. (Opens Fri., Jan. 23.)

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
Another excuse for Kate Beckinsale to don a pleather jumpsuit. (Opens Fri., Jan. 23.)

Ongoing

Bolt
A cute puppydog (voiced by John Travolta) thinks he’s a superhero. (Not reviewed.)

Che
Played with quiet cool by Benicio del Toro, Che Guevara is viewed at three vastly different points in his life. In Part One, titled “The Argentine,” we toggle between him on an uncomfortable whirlwind tour through New York (climaxing in a too-fiery speech in front of the U.N.) and the fabled Cuban Revolution. Filmed in heroic Cinemascope, the campaign’s a spectacular triumph, setting up things nicely for Part Two, “Guerilla,” which shows Guevara’s attempt to spread revolution in Bolivia from 1966 to 1967, which wasn’t so triumphant. A- (M.P.)

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
There’s one bit of solace to take from David Fincher’s unexpected segue into Oscar-bait territory: His heart doesn’t appear to be in it. A project that’s bounced around Hollywood for more than a decade, Benjamin Button—based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short about a man who ages in reverse—has wound up in the hands of an excessively talented filmmaker in desperate need of a movie that’ll actually make money. C- (M.P.)

The Day the Earth Stood Still
Keeping the bold strokes of the original, Keanu Reeves arrives on Earth with his gigantic robot sidekick, announcing that the human race has grown so violent and destructive, it must be annihilated for the sake of our planet. He gradually discovers we’re not such terrible people after all and maybe we don’t deserve extinction, thanks largely to a tedious drive through New Jersey with Jennifer Connelly and her bratty stepkid (Jaden Smith, Will’s son). Connelly does that doe-eyed thing she always does, gazing into the lens with tears in her eyes and precious little personality. D+ (S.B.)

Defiance
In 1941, four hard-drinking, rough-hewn criminal brothers headed deep into the Belarusian forest, building a kibbutz where they and fellow Jews could hide from Hitler’s goons and wait out the war. The Bielski brothers saved hundreds of lives, but these wondrous facts don’t provide enough nobility for boring director Edward Zwick. This is such a damned good story, he’s determined to oversell it. C- (S.B.)

Doubt
Doubt is a “parable” of a monstrous nun (Meryl Streep) at a Bronx Catholic school in 1964 who’s trying to destroy a progressive-minded priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman) with baseless accusations of “unhealthy” dealings with the school’s lone black student. There are only four characters, but the action consists primarily of debates between the nun and priest, as well as dialogue with a younger nun who’s caught in the middle. B (M.P.)

Frost/Nixon
Based on Peter Morgan’s smash 2006 stage play, the film attempts to chronicle the travails of shlock TV host David Frost (expertly played by Michael Sheen) as he overpays and underprepares for an epic stretch of interviews with “Tricky Dick” Nixon (played by the always magnificent Frank Langella, who’s a bit too grave and Shakespearean to truly convey the disgraced leader’s wormy, shifty mannerisms, no matter how impressive his jowls). C (S.B.)

Gran Torino
Clint Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a grizzled old Korean War vet who, after the death of his wife, tends to while away the days sitting on his front porch guzzling cans of PBR, offering salty observations on the decline of his white-flight Detroit neighborhood. Barking ridiculous, dated slurs for every minority in his sight, he’s like Dirty Harry in the sunset years. A variety of contrivances find Walt begrudgingly befriending a family of Hmong immigrants next door. Young Thao (Bee Vang) is an awkward, bookish kid—prime recruitment material for the local gangs. These thugs make the huge mistake of scuffling on Walt’s pristine front yard and kicking over the wrong geezer’s garden gnome. B+ (S.B.)

Hotel for Dogs
Orphan kids have to find a new home for their puppy when their new guardians won’t allow pets so they open a hotel for city strays. (Not reviewed.)

Marley & Me
Inquirer columnist John Grogan wrote a memoir about his (admittedly adorable) puppy. Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston star in the film version. (Not reviewed.)

Milk
As San Francisco’s cherished local legend—the first openly gay man ever elected to a public office in America—Sean Penn’s Harvey Milk is a buoyant, expansive figure. As droll as he is shrewd, the character is delightful to watch. The real Harvey Milk’s lanky stance, queeny mannerisms and honking Noo Yawk accent aren’t just fodder for a typical Oscar-friendly dead celebrity impression—they’re pushing this actor out of his gloomy old comfort zones. There’s such a feeling of playfulness and joy in this performance, I dare say Sean Penn hasn’t been this much fun to watch since Fast Times at Ridgemont High or at the very least Carlito’s Way. A- (S.B.)

Notorious
The inevitable Biggie Smalls hagiography fails as soon as the first post-credits words hit the screen: “March 9, 1997.” It’s not just that it’s textbook to start a biopic at the end. It’s an omen that there’s no chance the film will remotely approximate its subject’s singular mix of storytelling, humor, confidence, vulnerability and eerily prophetic morbidness. C+ (M.P.)

Paul Blart: Mall Cop
The guy from The King of Queens stopped making a television show so he could portray a Rent-a-Cop on the big screen. Huh. (Not reviewed.)

The Reader
Kate Winslet essays Hannah Schmidt, a mysteriously private and weary mid-30s tram conductor in post-WWII Germany who seduces 15-year-old Michael Berg (David Kross). They have a special relationship: He reads her the greatest hits of classic literature and then she works his bones. After a couple sweaty months Schmidt abruptly disappears. It’s eight years before Berg sees her again, this time as a law student sitting in on her war crimes trial. C+ (M.P.)

Revolutionary Road
Based on Richard Yates’ 1961 novel, this phenomenally dull new film from director Sam Mendes has absolutely nothing new to say, yet says it loud and insistently anyway. In a fiendish bit of stunt casting, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet reunite for the first time since a certain fateful boat trip 11 years ago, starring here as Frank and April Wheeler, a tedious married couple prone to squabbling at great length about the tragic soul-crushing emptiness of their giant house, fancy car and beautiful children. The Wheelers feel so suffocated by their affluence and good fortune, it’s all they really talk about. D- (S.B.)

Seven Pounds
Seven Pounds, an exceedingly poor film directed by Gabriele Muccino, is just the sort of jerk-around that gives manipulation a bad name. Containing roughly 20 minutes worth of story but stretched out past the breaking point to a full two hours, it’s nothing but smoke and mirrors, all elliptically designed to conceal crucial information from the audience. The film plays like an exercise in annoying the viewer, deliberately confusing not for any meaningful purpose, but merely because if any of our questions were answered in a timely fashion, there wouldn’t be any movie left. Somewhere along the line, everyone involved with the film probably realized that if audiences could actually discern what Seven Pounds was about, they’d be laughing so hard at its stupidity, nobody in the theater would be able to hear the dialogue. D (S.B.)

Slumdog Millionaire
Teenage nobody Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) is a mere few questions away from beating the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. But Malik’s been accused of cheating, and as the shadowy, belligerent authorities go through his taped performance, answer by answer, we’re treated to his ramshackle, Dickensian childhood as an orphaned slum kid from Mumbai, riding the rails and eking out various desperate existences alongside his more crafty and ethics-handicapped brother. C+ (M.P.)

Twilight
Stephenie Meyer’s putrid Mormon propaganda novels finally reach their full insidious cinematic potential in the hands of Catherine Hardwicke, a former production designer-turned-director and bona-fide villain who trivialized extremely serious teenage drug and alcohol concerns with the insipid Thirteen before shrinking the Virgin Mary’s life story into an insipid “Dude, Where’s My Manger” epic in her justly forgotten The Nativity Story. Twilight teaches young girls there’s a hunky, handsome vampire (Robert Pattinson’s Edward, inciter of riots at Hot Topics all over this land) who’ll always love you for your clumsy, banal self no matter how insipid you are. You might even be as boring as Kristen Stewart’s gangly Bella. This is a parable of religious self-abnegation, as Edward and his painstakingly disciplined over-friendly family members make a huge show out of “abstaining from pleasures of the flesh” and consorting only with one another during family-friendly activities like baseball games. D- (S.B.)

Valkyrie
Tom Cruise is far more famous these days for bizarre behavior than blockbuster openings, so in desperate need of career rehab, here he stars as Colonel Claus Von Stauffenberg, Nazi with a conscience, and architect of the suitcase bombing that nearly killed Hitler in the waning days of WWII. It’s a classy, handsomely mounted production, directed with brisk efficiency by Bryan Singer. ” C+ (S.B.)

The Wrestler
Faced with a health crisis, wrestler Randy the Ram’s (Mickey Rourke) forced to consider retirement, and that’s when the movie begins questioning how we define ourselves. If a man is what he does for a living, who does he become when he can’t do that anymore? The Ram tentatively tries to muster an existence beyond the mat, attempting to reconnect with his estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood.) Only Cassidy seems to understand. Brilliantly played by Marisa Tomei, Randy’s favorite stripper is secretly a single mom, and the two foster a friendship outside the sleazy club’s VIP room. Just like the Ram, Cassidy’s getting too old to make a living off her body anymore, and Aronofsky quietly underlines their similarities with matching camera movements whenever these two are “at work.” A- (S.B.)

Yes Man
Jim Carrey agrees with everything in a movie that feels a little too reminiscent of Liar Liar. (Not reviewed.)