Film Articles

The film’s tagline is, “There is No End,” and if ever there was truth in advertising, this is it. There is no end to the recycling of fearful clichés in the horror genre – storytelling becomes affliction, thanks to a low budget. Beginning with the basic premise of a witch unjustly burned at the stake taking revenge on innocent people one hundred years later, “Cycle of Fear” hasn’t even gotten past zippy, swoosh-y credits before instilling the fear of a derivative piece of work. Suddenly, it’s possible to appreciate “The Blair Witch Project” a little more – not because it has any substance, but because, at least, it starts from an intriguing premise and presents it with a clever cinematic gimmick.

The film’s tagline is, “There is No End,” and if ever there was truth in advertising, this is it. There is no end to the recycling of fearful clichés in the horror genre – storytelling becomes affliction, thanks to a low budget. Beginning with the basic premise of a witch unjustly burned at the stake taking revenge on innocent people one hundred years later, “Cycle of Fear” hasn’t even gotten past zippy, swoosh-y credits before instilling the fear of a derivative piece of work. Suddenly, it’s possible to appreciate “The Blair Witch Project” a little more – not because it has any substance, but because, at least, it starts from an intriguing premise and presents it with a clever cinematic gimmick.

The ambiguous label of “B movie” is often reserved for quasi-exploitative genre films. But the definition could be expanded to include any film in which cheap thrills take precedence over meaningful drama. Just as horror films that focus on gore and sex easily fall into the B movie category, and action flicks filled with explosions, car chases and gunfire with nary more than an unintelligible grunt from the hero, the comedy that subsists on gags with only token gestures towards genuine heart is as B as it gets.

Review: The Life I Lived

Perhaps greater than the fear of that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns is the fear that comes with discovering, then desperately clinging to, regret over bad choices. And many are the stories that take this primal psychological morass as the drive to dig deep into character.

Only an overzealous dog lover would make a cat give a speech about having a dog complex defined by a secret desire to be a dog. Why can’t cats get any respect? Never mind. It’s all about the hamster, anyway.
“Bolt,” Di­sney’s riff on “An Incredible Journey,” delivered in gorgeously rendered 3-D animation, starts out with Bolt (Travolta), a brave dog who is the victim of a monstrous “Truman Show” deception: He doesn’t know the TV show he stars in as a superpowered canine is all fake. So when his beloved and perpetually endangered human Penny (Cyrus) is separated from him in the latest episode’s cliffhanger and a mailing mishap puts him on the other side of the country, Bolt doggedly sets off, as always, to the rescue.

A DVD review: Death of a President

With assassination fears and an increased number of threats directed to President-elect Obama, it seems appropriate to review another hypothetical Presidential assassination, one I suspect many people never have heard of let alone seen. When released in 2006, “Death of a President” created quite the hubbub with its realistic depiction of a sitting President’s assassination – the President of the title being none other than George W. Bush. But the filmmakers were aware of the controversy – a controversy fully realized as many have condemned the film as shocking and tasteless. In crafting the film’s style and presentation, director Gabriel Range and his crew successfully avoid face-slapping sensationalism; even the assassination scene itself is too gritty, too quick, too chaotic to be perversely exploitative. Footage filmed using different camera formats, including cell phones, is seamlessly spliced (thanks to Brand Thumim’s phenomenal editing) into actual footage, representing a steadfast dedication to a cinema vérité style, a naturalistic realism that is almost anti-cinematic. Surprisingly, “Death of a President” is so studiously measured and convincing that it comes across, not as controversy for controversy’s sake, but as one of those somber, stuffy history documentaries we had to watch in school. Stuffy, but undeniably disturbing in a skin-crawling, insidious kind of way. And far from celebratory. “Death of a President” takes no joy, indulges no horrific wishful thinking, in presenting an all-too-plausible scenario in a country with a history of political assassinations.

It’s like that moment on a roller-coaster right after the endless suspense of getting pulled up the ramp and right before the sudden, terrifying drop. And that’s just within the first 10 minutes. “Quantum of Solace,” the 23rd film in a series that needs no introduction, has stunts that fall in the category of unbelievable. Car chases, foot chases, aerial dogfights – if it moves on air, land or sea, it’s in a stunt extravaganza that pounds hearts and drops jaws. Bond’s pursuit of an environmentalist who uses his “green” company as a front for sinister geo-political machinations couldn’t be pumped up with any more adrenaline.

So it’s not “Wall.E.” There — I’ve said it. Maybe I’m defending the film from an accusation that hasn’t been made – does anyone really expect a “Madagascar” film to be “Wall.E”? – but,hopefully, with that kind of snootiness out of the way we can get to what makes this sequel to 2005’s “Madagascar” a tasty puff of animation. And there’s nothing wrong with being a tasty puff of beautiful animation.

A devious spymaster, the wary and morally conflicted field operative, the relentless enemy, the high stakes, a larger-than-life plot, the inevitable reach for analogies involving spiders, flies, and webs – the military-espionage thriller gang’s all here, albeit dressed up by Ridley Scott into a gripping, uncompromising, brutal portrait of the global war on terror as fought in the Middle East. Scott’s ability to direct clear action scenes possessed of a visceral, documentary nature – unmuddled by unnecessary cuts and quirky camera angles – strips “Body of Lies” of a superficial exploitative sheen, much like “The Dark Knight” stripped Batman of his comic book-ishness, to deliver a film that entertains without sacrificing its topical integrity.

There were three reasons to be enthused about seeing “Changeling.” In no particular order: 1) Angelina Jolie who, when not collecting a paycheck from comic book detritus like “Wanted” or simply gallivanting (admittedly to our delight) as Lara Croft, is certain an actress of note. 2) Clint Eastwood, the quintessential director’s director whose mastery of filmcraft consistently yields handsome, unassuming but polished work – classical in the best sense of the word. And 3) J. Michael Straczynski (JMS), the man behind the milestone science-fiction series “Babylon 5”, an insightful writer who marks his first foray into feature films after years in television.