The Wackness

In THE WACKNESS, Ben Kingsley counsels young Josh Peck, "Don't trust anyone who doesn't listen to Dylan and who doesn't smoke weed."

I don't listen to Dylan. I don't smoke weed. I didn't trust Ben Kingsley, either.

This is a movie about people from a different universe, one in which the rules of society as I understand them don't exist. They ingest enormous amounts of drugs. They approach sex with damaging casualness. They speak in a foreign language and listen to music that's a mystery to me. In fact, there's not one single character in this film that I could relate to, one person who didn't feel like an example of a type, but rather a complete human being. I've seen movies about murderous, medieval Huns with whom I could relate more than I could anyone in THE WACKNESS.

This movie was an audience favorite at Sundance. CHUD's Devin Faraci loved it. I don't get the appeal, not at all. THE WACKNESS does part of what movies are supposed to do, in that it takes me to a different place and time, introduces me to different people, and puts me in their shoes. But the shoes didn't fit, and the film couldn't sell them to me.

Bummer.

Bottle Shock

Movies like BOTTLE SHOCK are the reason why I read Roger Ebert. I never saw an ad for the picture, didn’t read about it in any of my other wanderings, would never have known it xisted were it not for Ebert’s review.

I just plain loved it.

Here’s a movie about the 1976 Franco-American wine competition, a promotional event organized by one Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman, CDNW) with the expectation that the American wines would be thoroughly trounced. As it happened, the Americans won in both the white and red categories. The movie assumes you know this going in, and it bathes the entire proceeding, from Spurrier’s first inspiration for the event to the aftermath of the competition, in the warm glow of fond memory.

BOTTLE SHOCK is a “little guys against the world” picture with hints of “coming of age,” “romantic comedy,” and “slobs vs. snobs.” It’s laugh-out-loud funny, utterly charming, and delightful from beginning to end.

Thanks, Roger Ebert. Perhaps I should see this SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE of which you speak so highly.

MirrorMask

MIRRORMASK. Hmm.

Dave McKean’s unsettling ‘Sandman’ covers got me interested in this picture. What would an entire film made with McKean’s sensibility look like? Well, I’m here to tell you that it would look like a moving ‘Sandman’ cover.

Unfortunately, McKean’s vision is about all this film has going for it. MIRRORMASK is a rather conventional quest tale, set in a land very much like the Dreaming, that spends all of its time looking fantastical and spends very little time creating people we care about and giving them urgent, interesting things to do.

But hey, this is a PG movie and it’s essentially a kids’ story, so it must be ok to share with the little ones, right? Wrong. My youngest started crying about three minutes in, and I’m glad I saw the rest of the film alone. Many of McKean’s visions are nightmare-inducing, and I just don’t need to wake up to screaming children in the middle of the night.

So, there it is. Scary and rather dull, MIRRORMASK is a film I could have done without.

Traitor

TRAITOR is an excellent film.

Don Cheadle plays Samir, a Sudanese-American working his way up the ranks of a terrorist organization. He's the textbook terrorist candidate: an immigrant caught between two worlds, smart, capable, devout, and with military training. As played by Cheadle, he's also deeply conflicted. He's a man who wants to do the right thing, but the people telling him what is and is not right don't seem to be any more enlightened than he (I'm describing the character instead of the performance because, hey, it's Don Cheadle. You know he nails it.).

Guy Pearce, Jeff Daniels, and Neal McDonough are among the Americans working his case. Saïd Taghmaoui, Alyy Kahn, and Raad Rawi are the major players in his cell. Each of these fine actors sells their roles, but it's a testament to Cheadle's ability that he blows them off the screen without even trying. There's so much happening behind this guy's eyes that he's always the most interesting person in the room, no matter how skilled the other players.

The movie itself is well shot and scored, though not particularly dazzling. This is more a character piece than a virtuoso production, and its exploration of the kind of guy who can rig a suicide vest or sacrifice innocents makes an excellent counterpoint to the more hero-oriented GWOT thrillers we've been getting recently. What a pleasure to get inside the mind of a guy like Samir, a guy wrestling with big questions with important consequences. This one is worth seeing.

Naked Weapon

There's a movie out there called SO CLOSE. Corey Yuen directed it, and it stars Qi Shu, Wei Zhao, and Karen Mok. It's your basic "hot Chinese assassin" movie, and it's one of the best popcorn pictures there is. It has an interesting story; beautifully choreographed fight scenes; and Qi Shu, Wei Zhao, and Karen Mok. This movie does everything right: it's glossy, cheesy, and playful. It's the GONE WITH THE WIND of "hot Chinese assassin" movies.

And then there's NAKED WEAPON, released just two months after SO CLOSE. Directed by Siu-Tung Ching, it stars Maggie Q, Anya, and Jewel Lee. It's another "hot Chinese assassin" movie (Is this a bona fide subgenre? Perhaps I should investigate!), but it's downright terrible. NAKED WEAPON barely even has a story; its fight scenes practically define the word "lame;" and it stars Maggie Q, Anya, and Jewel Lee. If SO CLOSE is the GONE WITH THE WIND of "hot Chinese assassin" movies, this is the CANNONBALL RUN: uninspired, mechanical, and dull.
Here's the story: evil Madame M kidnaps 40 13-yr-old girls, dresses them up like Lara Croft, and puts them through five years of grueling training. Those who survive become the world's elite assassins, taking out the planet's hardest targets while bathing one another in longing gazes guaranteed to ignite the imaginations of 15-yr-old boys and bore the hell out of everyone else. But, of course, the FBI and CIA are hot on their tails, which is surprising: I had no idea that the PRC was so accomodating toward U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

So you've got your chases and your stunts and your fights and your sublimated lesbianism and your budding romance and all that crap, but none of it goes anywhere, none of it makes any sense, and none of it passes for entertainment. Charisma vacuum Maggie Q is no Qi Shu, and proves herself utterly incapable of anchoring a movie; even a cheesy popcorner like this one's trying to be. Siu-Tung Ching doesn't know how to make wirework look good, he doesn't know how to choreograph gravity-based effects, and he's even more in love with the windblown look than the guys who made KRRISH. Plus, he's a moron. How do you put Pei-pei Cheng in your picture and not give her a good fight?

NAKED WEAPON may -may- appeal to the aforementioned 15-yr-old boys, but I wouldn't even recommend it to one of them. If you've got a fever, and the only thing that'll cure it is a "hot Chinese assassin" movie, rent SO CLOSE. It's superior in every way. As for NAKED WEAPON, give it a pass. Watching this movie is like having your spine ripped out: you won't feel a thing.