Looking Closer's Film Forum: Perfect Stranger
Rotten Tomatoes shows that critics are placing Perfect Stranger under citizens' arrest.
Religious-press critics agree that this one's a waste of time and talent.
Commenting on director James Foley, Christian Hamaker (Crosswalk) calls Perfect Stranger "a sad case of an artist whose career once seemed promising. Two of the director’s early films, After Dark My Sweet and At Close Range, garnered attention for their stylish look and moody performances. The filmmaker peaked shortly thereafter, way back in 1992, with Glengarry Glen Ross, an electrifying interpretation of a David Mamet play, with strong performances from an all-male cast. ... The director’s more recent output has been undistinguished, at best, and all of the star power behind Perfect Stranger doesn’t change that."
Harry Forbes (CNS) writes, "Chalk up another woeful career choice for Halle Berry, whose proven talent does not apparently extend to knowing when to say 'no.' Her latest vehicle, Perfect Stranger, is a patently trashy, utterly nonsensical thriller."
Lisa Ann Cockrel (CT Movies) warns us: "...when the twists start twisting, I, quite frankly, didn't care about the outcome. It's not exactly the experience one hopes to have 90 minutes into a 'who done it?' movie. And it wasn't surprising to learn that the director filmed three different endings to the movie, each with a different character as the killer. The plot is so ridden with holes that anyone could have done it."
She notes that the film was written by Todd Komarnicki, a Christian who also wrote Elf. "In a 2003 interview with Christianity Today, Komarnicki emphasized the importance of telling a good story: 'We have a savior who was a storyteller, [so] I think there is great value in story … I think it's a very powerful tool. Certainly, like any tool, it can be misused.' He concluded by saying that 'storytelling is what makes the movie business work.' Too bad it didn't work for this movie. A typical episode of Law and Order is less ridden with cliché (which is saying something, given that the series is about as formulaic as it gets) and more satisfying."
Greg Wright (Past the Popcorn) says:
The film features a storyline with sexually abused children, perverts with online aliases, women who play along with such men for their own purposes, and 'To Catch A Predator'-style busts. It’s got same-sex-for-influence intern-politico scandals. It’s got brutal sex crimes, rough sex, and “gee-Mr.-Springer-I-just-don’t-know” DNA tests. How topical. How current. How hip.
And the film has nothing intelligent to say about any of this. It just plays it all for entertainment value, hoping that the audience gets some kind of prurient thrill from sitting in on Internet dirtytalk and runaway sexual obsession.
The New Yorker on "Into Great Silence"
Into Great Silence is "ridiculously popular" in New York, according to a new article in The New Yorker. And when New York's only Carthusian shows up to talk about his order, things get even more interesting.
"Morality, Movies and Ratings"
Greg Wright at Past the Popcorn is considering the everlasting questions about movies and morality. In this new article on the subject, it looks like he's been reading Through a Screen Darkly and the new edition of Robert K. Johnston's Reel Spirituality.
Wright writes:
Discernment is obviously required, as is spiritual maturity. And when it comes to our children, parental guidance is always a necessity, whether it’s the bad theology of The Sound of Music, or the violent reality of The Passion. And guiding our children through the book of Judges—or the moral minefield that is the real world—is likely to be just as tough.
That’s no reason to shirk the task, though.
The Lookout (2007): A Looking Closer Film Forum
The Lookout
J. Robert Parks: "I’m not arguing The Lookout is some kind of masterpiece. The bank robbery is fairly paint-by-numbers, and the blind character is one we’ve seen many times before, despite [Jeff] Daniels’s charisma. But this is the sort of movie Hollywood should be making–and getting behind. Movies that don’t insult your intelligence or make you feel dirty for watching. But because The Lookout has a small marketing budget, this is a movie where it’s up to the critics to let you know what you shouldn’t miss."
Adam Walter blogs about it, saying it's "a tense, engaging film with this endearing twist: it is very much a character piece first, and a thriller second. The film is also admirable for its unusual restraint. Though the storyline provides opportunity for violent and sexual excess, Frank knows that a little spice goes a long way. Rather than capitalizing on these elements, he shows the maturity of his cinematic vision in opting to focus on little character momements, on the interpersonal economy of ethics, the moral snowballing that makes and remakes a person."
Jules Franco of CNS says "The Lookout shows us the sordid reality of criminal behavior. And it offers a redemptive message of how, paradoxically, letting go of the past and forgiving yourself can lead to the rediscovery of your true self." He says Gordon-Levitt is "particularly riveting in a difficult role." And notes that the film's violence and sexual elements are portrayed "with relative restraint."
And GreenCine Daily has more, more, more, more, and more.
Grindhouse (2007): A Looking Closer Film Forum
Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez have a particular nostalgia for films like those they watched growing up. Many of those films were cheap, exploitative, spectacularly bad, and filled with gratuitous violence, graphic nudity, and characters who flaunted their way with profanity. They were populated with strippers, zombies, monsters, and muscular heroes who won the day with heavy artillery. They were, in short, puerile and ludicrous. This genre of low-budget, disposable entertainment came to be known as "Grindhouse."
It was almost inevitable that the two would end up paying homage to the films they enjoyed in their adolescent years. (In fact, they've done so before, to lesser degrees, in previous releases like Rodriguez's Desperado, Tarantino's Kill Bill, and their collaboration From Dusk Till Dawn.)
But their new double-feature, Grindhouse, isn't exactly a "Grindhouse" movie. It's more like a spoof, a satire, a severely exaggerated version of something that was exaggerated to begin with. Thus, they take something subversive, and subvert it. They blow its gratuitous content so far out of proportion, it can't possibly be taken seriously.
Does that neutralize it's exploitative and excessive content? Not entirely. But it is much easier to laugh at what we're seeing, because the filmmakers are clearly laughing.
This isn't the kind of thing I would go see by myself. But I've enjoyed some of the films made by Rodriguez and Tarantino before, so I wanted to see if this would be a case of brilliance coming in the disguise of trash. I saw the movie with two of my best friends from college, and it reminded us of going together to the old, run-down, sticky-floor UA Cinema 150 in downtown Seattle back in our college days.
It was a nostalgic trip in several ways... including just how hard we laughed at the ridiculously over-the-top Rodriguez film. But it was also nostalgic in the way that Tarantino's installment let us down. I can't recommend Grindhouse. While I was powerfully impressed by the meticulously crafted style and some of the enthusiastic performances, the excessive, lurid content is still troubling and inappropriate, even though it's exaggerated for laughs.
Peter Suderman's National Review article: "For lovers of demented and shocking trash cinema, there are plenty of gruesome goodies to be found in Grindhouse, but Rodriguez and Tarantino dole out more abuse than their concept, or their audience, should have to endure." Elsewhere, Suderman blogs, "I really think I'm the only person that prefers From Dusk Till Dawn to Grindhouse .... Maybe it's because FDTD does a better job of being actually wildly bad rather than awkwardly imitating wildly bad."
Jeff Walls (Past the Popcorn) "I’ve never encountered the true Grindhouse experience, but I now have a full understanding of what I am missing, and I am probably better for it — missing it, that is."
Steven Isaac (Plugged In) asks, "What's the difference between the grindhouse flicks of yesteryear and the Grindhouse double-feature of today? I've never been to a grindhouse nor seen any of the films once shown there—so I won't and can't compare them side by side. But I can and will say that those films were shown on the wrong side of the tracks in "seedy, sticky" locales that, according to Tarantino, 'attracted sleepy bums and outlaws on the lam.' This one is playing at the mall. That alone says a lot about where we've been, where we are, and where the big screen is taking us in the future."
Here's the GreenCine Daily coverage, and here's even more, which is as gratuitous with its interesting links as Grindhouse is with its lunacy.
The Hoax (2006): A Looking Closer Film Forum
The Hoax
Todd Hertz (CT Movies) calls The Hoax "a mix of Catch Me If You Can, Shattered Glass, and A Beautiful Mind. But unlike the characters from those better films, there's nothing redeeming about [the central character]. I enjoy 'spiral into madness' movies, but this one can feel unsettling and smarmy because it's not a good man spiraling out of control until he realizes what he's done. Instead, you're merely watching a bad man get worse — with no eventual lesson learned or expression of contrition." He does, however, praise Richard Gere, Alfred Molina, and director Lasse Hallström.
Harry Forbes of CNS says it "sometimes resembles George Clooney's Confessions of a Dangerous Mind in its truth-vs.-reality structure, and is sometimes confusing. The film doesn't glamorize Irving's scheme ... but rather shows the extreme mental anguish Irving -- who spent two and a half years in prison -- brought on himself."
Crosswalk's Lisa Rice says, "Though the plot is mildly interesting and the filmmakers do a good job of creating tension, The Hoax leaves audiences with a slimy feeling and a cynical assurance that gifted liars and powerful billionaires do win out in the end.
The Rotten Tomatoes gang are celebrating it as the best Hallstrom film in a while.
But Jonathan Rosenbaum calls it "a quintessential mainstream doorstop deceptively marketed as an art movie." To elaborate, he says, "Essentially the same story is recounted, far more accurately as well as meaningfully, in Orson Welles's F for Fake (1974), where it delivers a radical lesson about both the speciousness of punditry and media expertise and the complicity of the audience in most hoaxes. The cynical postmodernist lessons of The Hoax are quite different: that shallow media types ... are dying to be fooled, that all of us are hustlers, and that none of us really knows the truth anyway."
So... if Rosenbaum thinks so little of the film, why does his review show up as a positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes? Hmmmm.
The Reaping (2007): A Looking Closer Film Forum
"Oh, it's very biblically based," said the promoter who called me to encourage me to see The Reaping.
I'm still trying to figure out what that meant. For all of its God-talk, The Reaping is just the kind of "faith-based film" we don't need. What hath The Passion of The Christ wrought? With only a few notable exceptions, it hath wrought a plague of exploitative, superficial, theologically confused, audience-abusing movies like Constantine and this big-budget howler.Read more
Tonight: Third Place Books (Lake Forest Park) at 6:30 pm
Tonight at 6:30pm, at the Third Place Books store in Lake Forest Park, I'll be talking about my favorite films, my favorite director/actor interviews, and my favorite “film-critic hate mail.”
Oh, and yes, and my book about a life of dangerous moviegoing... Through a Screen Darkly.
Third Place Books
Lake Forest Park Towne Centre
17171 Bothell Way NE
Lake Forest Park, WA 98155
Tel: 206-366-3333
Rod Dreher on "The Reeking"... I mean, "The Reaping"
Thanks to Peter Chattaway pointing out "Crunchy Con" Rod Dreher's comments on The Reaping, which was filmed in his hometown. Apparently, it's not just the movie that's ridiculous.
Even the claims made by Hilary Swank about the history of the area in which was filmed are false!Read more
Armchair Interviews on "Through a Screen Darkly"
Armchair Interviews has discovered Through a Screen Darkly.
Just a reminder to those of you who have read it: You can do me a huge favor by writing what you thought of it... as an Amazon review!