Film Articles

Lampooning the George W. Bush presidency can feel a lot like taking shots at the broadside of a barn. The former President’s inarticulate expression and body language struck some as folksy and others as just plain goofy – few politicians were so ready-made for cartooning. And that, of course, is even before controversial policies that left the body politic divided against itself, a situation ripe for sharp-tongued, poison-pen satire.

One of the best lines in Monster vs. Aliens was the crack about how the US is the only place in which aliens seem to land. Fans of Doctor Who would beg to differ, of course, but nevertheless, Hollywood’s US-centric vision of alien contact gets a decisive rebuke from District 9, which sets the aliens’ arrival in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Writer, producer, director Budd Schulberg, winner of the second Thomas Ince Award at the Culver City Backlot Film Festival in February of 2007, died at his home in Westhampton, N.Y., on Aug. 5, at he age of 95.

Buzz for “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” came with news of fans reportedly unhappy about the inclusion of human-enhancing “accelerator suits.” Since the film, much like the series it adapts, is bursting with futuristic military technology that includes mind control, invisibility, nano-technology disintegration and energy weapons, the use of accelerator suits by two characters for a fraction of an action sequence seems like a rather feeble complaint. Such is the nature of fandom. Insofar as the general question of faithfulness goes the double-edge is: G.I. Joe, the movie, is every bit the infantile militaristic fantasy soap-opera of the cartoon series.

Okay, I admit it. No, no, really: I admit it. I’m a big enough person to confess I’m wrong when something happens against my expectations. Although I didn’t think it possible, the new Star Trek movie by J.J. Abrams rekindled my great, though long-dormant, affection for Star Trek.

With beloved subplots – Percy Weasley’s entrenchment in the Ministry of Magic at the expense of his family, ongoing quidditch games, and so on – either merely hinted at or expunged from the Harry Potter films altogether, the hugely successful series has become something of a litmus test for purists.

When notorious bank robber John Dillinger and Special Agent Melvin Purvis finally have a face-to-face in “Public Enemies”, the result lacks the primal tension of master thief Neil McCauley meeting Lieutenant Vincent Hanna for coffee and mutual understanding in Michael Mann’s defining cops-and-robbers opus “Heat.” The scene’s lack of charisma is not rooted in any shortcomings on the part of Johnny Depp or Christian Bale, who each benefit from the absence of fantasy genre dressings to dig into earthier parts, but from a film that teases with the mirror-like structure and sustained intensity of “Heat” only to fall into the easy trap of romanticizing its subject. Critically, “Public Enemies” lacks the impartiality that made “Heat” such a riveting study in contrasts.

Fiction always has to make more sense than reality; someone apparently forgot to tell this to screenwriter Maude von Ehrenkrook.

Moon is the sort of rare, thoughtful science fiction drama that Danny Boyle’s Sunshine aspired to be before degrading into a glossy, modernized analogue to Paul Anderson’s schlocky horror-trash Event Horizon. There’s no such demeaning collapse here. The film is a refreshing master class in science fiction cinema that stays true to its function as an existential, science-driven think-piece.

The Hollywood answer to problems in filmmaking often rests on the time-honoured tradition of throwing money around. Independents, however, for whom even the price of a shoestring can seem daunting, have to rely on a more precious commodity: creative, lateral thinking.