Category: 2009

The Invention of Lying (2009, Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson)

The Invention of Lying is a 100 minute exploration of a gag. In a world without lying–or any fictive creativity whatsoever–co-director, co-writer, and star Ricky Gervais one day spontaneously mutates and lies. He lies for personal gain, only to discover exploiting people doesn’t make him feel good, so he lies to make himself and others feel good, but it gets him into trouble. It doesn’t get him what he wants and it just ends up making him rich, famous, and miserable.

The film opens with Gervais on a low point. He’s about to lose his job and he’s out on a date with his dream girl, Jennifer Garner, only she thinks she’s too good for him. Because, objectively, his genetic material isn’t good enough to mix with hers. So the other thing this world doesn’t have is any relatable version of love. Gervais and co-writer Matthew Robinson aren’t even comfortable getting into the lust questions, because once they start down any problematic avenue, they run away as fast as they can. It’s like they release they can’t make the joke funny and hightail it away. So why do the joke in the first place?

The film takes place in a small New England town where there is, inexplicably, a movie studio. Except movies are just filmed lectures of history lessons because there’s no fiction and there’s no concept of it. Gervais and Robinson entirely ignore how the world would function and how history would have progressed without imagination or creative ambition. For a while, they just keep falling back on the gimmick–what if everyone just says what they’re thinking, no matter how awful. There are a lot of flashy cameos–Ed Norton is the best–but they can only distract so much. Eventually, the film has to reconcile itself, because Gervais is in love with Garner and Garner doesn’t want him because of his genetic material.

There’s this scene where Gervais explains how he imagines peoples lives upon seeing them and Garner just sees them as fat, bald, nerdy, losers. It comes right after Gervais telling Garner she’s the kindest, best person he’s ever met, which makes absolutely no sense, but whatever, she’s supposed to be angelic.

Eventually, Garner’s part contracts and the movie moves ahead an indeterminable time, becoming just Gervais moping with buddies Louis C.K. and Jonah Hill. By this time, Gervais has increased the scale of his lying, making up God. That subplot is the best one in the film; Gervais and Robinson don’t have to be subtle about their jabs yet still manage subtely in said jabs. It operates on two levels, something the film never does otherwise.

Sadly, it’s not about Gervais inadvertently becoming a messiah, it’s about him pining for Garner. Conveniently, Gervais’s first act nemesis (Rob Lowe, one note as a successful bully) also has eyes for Garner so there’s a love triangle thing towards the end.

It’s a yawn, partially because Garner and Lowe are extremely limited in their roles, partially because Invention can only handle so much emotion. If people can’t have creative expectation, their emotions are stunted. And even when they aren’t, Gervais and Robinson are focused entirely on characters on hand, not this world they’ve ostensibly created.

Gervais drops out during the third act way too much too. He’s the only relatable character in the film; everyone else is a caricature to be mocked. He’s a caricature too (maybe the thinest one), but he’s not supposed to be mocked.

Okay photography from Tim Suhrstedt covers for Gervais and Robinson’s lackluster directing. There are a lot of songs and song montages–including a criminally atrocious Elvis Costello cover of Cat Stevens’s Sitting–and they don’t make any sense since there’s no music in Lying’s world.

Gervais’s performance is fine. Garner ranges from inoffensive to miscast. Hill is an overblown cameo, while C.K. is an underdeveloped sidekick. Besides Ed Norton, Martin Starr’s probably the funniest cameo. Others are earnest but with limited material.

The Invention of Lying would’ve made a great six part sitcom or something, but Gervais and Robinson don’t have a full enough narrative for 100 minutes. It’s not funny enough to make up for all the laziness.

1/4★

CREDITS

Written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson; director of photography, Tim Suhrstedt; edited by Chris Gill; music by Tim Atack; production designer, Alec Hammond; produced by Lynda Obst, Oliver Obst, Dan Lin, and Gervais; released by Warner Bros.

Starring Ricky Gervais (Mark Bellison), Jennifer Garner (Anna McDoogles), Rob Lowe (Brad Kessler), Louis C.K. (Greg), Jonah Hill (Frank), Tina Fey (Shelley), Jeffrey Tambor (Anthony), and Fionnula Flanagan (Martha Bellison).

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Halloween II (2009, Rob Zombie), the director’s cut

Halloween II is terrible. Unquestionably terrible. It sounds as though the director’s cut, which I watched, is even worse than the theatrical cut, based on the items director Zombie added back to the film.

But I wanted Halloween II to be good. It can’t be good–even with Zombie’s dumb ideas, there’s terrible writing and an awful performance from Scout Taylor-Compton in the lead–but I wanted it to be good. Because Zombie, after teasing the audience with a direct remake of the original Halloween II as an opener, does come up with an interesting concept. What happens to Taylor-Compton after the horrific events of the first film, with all “real life” psychology thrown in–including Malcolm McDowell making a jackass of himself as “famous TV psychiatrist”–it could be really interesting.

Zombie has all the pieces–Taylor-Compton’s friend, played by Danielle Harris, and her dad, an excellent Brad Dourif, take her in, which creates all sorts of problems and new situations. Juxtaposed against McDowell tormenting his media handler (Mary Birdsong), it all could have worked out. There’s some good stuff with Harris and Dourif, Birdsong and McDowell, but it’s all accidental. It’s actors with ability transcending terribly written material.

Oddly enough, Zombie cares. He cares about his dumb story invalidating every idea of the Halloween franchise–instead of a soulless shape, Michael Myers is driven to kill by his mystically evil (and undead) mother. Zombie spends most of the movie upset he can’t show Tyler Mane’s face until the end. Zombie puts it off so long, the reveal has no point–not as commentary on the Halloween franchise, which the film could’ve been perfect for, and not for his dumb evil, mystical Myers family thing.

Great photography from Brandon Trost on 16 mm. Occasionally okay music from Tyler Bates.

And, real quick, Sheri Moon Zombie is awful in it (though not worse than Taylor-Compton); it’s sad since the film opens with a flashback where Moon Zombie’s actually good.

Halloween II is not at all worth watching, but it should have been.

Fast & Furious (2009, Justin Lin)

With Fast & Furious, director Lin and screenwriter Chris Morgan do something incredible. They take what, a decade before would have been at best a video game spin-off (maybe featuring the original, now down in their career cast's voices), and make an energetically mercenary movie out of it. The film's ludicrous at almost every turn, but it's hard not to appreciate a huge budget in CGI being spent on car chase after car chase.

Oh, there are some real cars racing, but Lin apes the conclusion to Return of the Jedi for the finale–just with cars. It's entirely admirable and entirely pointless. There's not an honest moment in the entire movie, everything is perfectly calculated to entertain. The film gets too loud and almost too busy–Gal Gadot's useless character is in the not really bad bad Bond girl part–seemingly because Vin Diesel wants a lot of tear jerker scenes to be a tough guy during.

Lin doesn't want to hold a shot–he's clearly more into Michael Bay for car chase inspiration than Billy Friedkin–but his composition is good and Amir Mokri does a fine job shooting the film. The real car racing footage looks great. All the composite CGI stuff is a little too obvious, but it's a video game, you're not supposed to care.

The film does require a certain enthusiasm for Diesel and Paul Walker's bromance; Lin gets a surprisingly okay performance from Walker.

Like I said, big, loud, dumb, sometimes perfectly amiable.

Los Bandoleros (2009, Vin Diesel)

The strange part of Los Bandoleros isn’t how it ends lame–it’s how well it starts. Sure, there’s this dumb story about how Vin Diesel, on the lamb in the Dominican Republic, has become a Robin Hood to the local people.

Oh, right, forgot–It’s a Fast and the Furious vanity short “film” from Diesel. Undoubtedly something the studio did to make him happy.

Anyway, besides the stupid club scene and the foreshadowing for the subsequent action movie and, most of all, besides Michelle Rodriguez… Diesel’s got a not bad eye for his location shooting in the Dominican Republic. He’s got a great photographer (Shawn Kim) and, even though the script is really contrived, at least the pre-franchise stuff works.

It’s pretentious, sure, with Diesel telling the story of the little people, but the movie looks great. But looking great isn’t enough to make up for Rodriguez’s vapid performance.

Do You Love Me Like I Love You, Part 1: From Her to Eternity (2009, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard)

From Her to Eternity, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' first album, runs about forty-four minutes. This short film–part of a comprehensive series (Do You Love Me Like I Love You), runs about forty minutes. It consists of band members, fans, journalists–everyone except Nick Cave–sitting in front of black and talking to the camera. Directors Forsyth and Pollard clearly told the interviewees to look directly into the camera. Some do, some don't; either way, the effect is startling.

The film has a little narrative. The end of one band, the start of another. Then it moves through the tracks on the album–Forsyth and Pollard don't just not add in music, as it would distract from the interviewees, they don't identify the interviewees until the end credits. If the viewer isn't familiar with early eighties British and Australian punk… good luck.

It's long, often boring, but the interviewees keep it engaging.

2/3Recommended

CREDITS

Edited, photographed, directed and produced by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard; released by Mute Records.

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S. Darko (2009, Chris Fisher)

Terrifying as it might be to say, but S. Darko could actually be worse. It’s an official sequel to Donnie Darko as the producers of that film still had sequel rights, but Daveigh Chase–as this picture’s titular lead–is the only returning cast member. It certainly does not have the involvement from the original’s writer-director.

And S.’s director Fisher isn’t bad. He’s really not. The undoubtedly cheap Utah locations are beautiful. The DV doesn’t look great, but Fisher does have some good composition. And if he were telling the story of Chase and friend Briana Evigan broken down in the middle of nowhere, meeting strange people and cute boys… S. might be okay.

But not with Nathan Atkins’s script. His script plays like a terrible TV movie of the original, complete with story beats. Worst might be how people are constantly traveling through time, just because they wish they can. The other connections to the original flip off that film’s fans. S. is a desperate cash grab with an incompetent script.

Chase is okay in the lead. Evigan’s good about twenty percent of the time. Ed Westwick’s awkward, but quite good most of the time as the guy they meet. Nice supporting turn from John Hawkes too.

Sadly, the rest of the acting’s weak. For starters, Jackson Rathbone is atrocious as Chase’s suitor and James Lafferty’s inept as the town oddball.

S. Darko uses Elizabeth Berkley as stunt casting. Does anything else really need to be said?

The Search (2009, Mark Buchanan)

The Search has an odd problem–director Buchanan isn’t happy with being sublimely profound. Instead, he goes for obvious and slightly forced profound. It’s unfortunate, since the short is otherwise breathtaking.

Solitary man Matt Berry, who works for SETI, beta tests one of the at-home antenna kits (you know, for kids). He discovers he’s able to listen in on fetching neighbor Flora Montgomery, who has recently lost her husband and is having problems raising her kids alone.

All these scenes are amazing. Everything–Jean-Louis Schuller’s photography, Gregor Barclay and Gavin Thomson’s music–it’s all fantastic. And I haven’t even gotten to Berry, who’s phenomenal. He doesn’t talk for the first half or so of the short, it’s just this perfect physical performance.

The obvious ending hurts the short a little, but it’s more unfortunate than anything else. It’s too easy a move to pass up for Buchanan apparently.

2/3Recommended

CREDITS

Directed by Mark Buchanan; screenplay by Gregor Barclay, based on a story by Buchanan; director of photography, Jean-Louis Schuller; edited by Nathan Haines; music by Barclay and Gavin Thomson; production designer, Elizabeth E. Schuch; produced by Colin Bell and Buchanan.

Starring Matt Berry (David), Flora Montgomery (Laura) and Tim Plester (Flood).

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Repo Chick (2009, Alex Cox)

If Repo Chick were a half hour short, it would work a lot better. Sadly, it’s an almost ninety minute feature–even as a seventy minute feature, it’d be a lot better.

The problem’s the front end. Cox has to introduce his cast, sure, but he never manages to give the film a real narrative. He opens establishing Jaclyn Jonet as the titular Repo Chick–she’s a Paris Hilton analog who needs a job–but the second, better half of the film involves some nonsense about Predator drones, runaway trains and Chloe Webb being hilarious as a televangelist.

The second half also has better acting overall, with Jonet’s three moronic sidekicks barely showing up. Cox had to know he was getting bad performances out of Danny Arroyo, Jenna Colby and Zahn McClarnon, but he doesn’t seem to care. Colby’s particularly incapable.

Miguel Sandoval and Robert Beltran are good throughout, but Beltran doesn’t get any good material until the second half. Also good in the second half are Jennifer Balgobin and, especially, Angela Sarafyan. Xander Berkeley’s really funny in the bad first half too.

Jonet’s never exactly good, but she certainly does get better as the film goes on. Cox doesn’t give her the promised character arc, but it’s no surprise. He doesn’t take Chick seriously. He’s got absurd digital backdrops, using miniature train sets with actors moving among them. It’s supposed to be unconvincing, he just doesn’t have a good story for that approach.

Still, it’s intentional ineptness somewhat succeeds.

1/4★

CREDITS

Written, directed and edited by Alex Cox; director of photography, Steven Fierberg; music by Dan Wool; production designer, Nicolas Plotquin; produced by Cox, Eric Bassett, Bingo Gubelmann, Daren Hicks, Benji Kohn, Austin Stark and Simon Tams; released by Industrial Entertainment.

Starring Jaclyn Jonet (Pixxi), Miguel Sandoval (Arizona Gray), Del Zamora (Lorenzo), Alex Feldman (Marco), Chloe Webb (Sister Duncan), Xander Berkeley (Father de la Chasse), Rosanna Arquette (Lola), Robert Beltran (Aguas), Karen Black (Aunt de la Chasse), Zahn McClarnon (Savage), Jenna Colby (Eggi), Danny Arroyo (666), Jennifer Balgobin (Nevada), Zander Schloss (Doctor), Angela Sarafyan (Giggli), Eddie Velez (Justice Espinoza), Frances Bay (Grandma de la Chasse), Bennet Guillory (Rogers), Olivia Barash (Railroad Employee), Tom Finnegan (Senator Fletcher), Linda Callahan (Rikki Espinoza) and Karen E. Wright (Colonel).

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Orphan (2009, Jaume Collet-Serra)

Orphan‘s a peculiar failure. The script isn’t particularly good; it’s layered with foreshadowing upon foreshadowing and some very predictable turns. But it has these occasionally strong dialogue scenes between Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard. It runs out of them after a while, but they leave a positive memory.

Then there’s director Collet-Serra. He really likes crane shots in what should be enclosed spaces and he likes to use handheld when he should have a track. Orphan feels like an inexperienced director who got the opportunity to do a lot of things just because he could. Collet-Serra can’t do the two simple things Orphan needs him to do.

First, it needs him to tie a children’s story–Aryana Engineer and Jimmy Bennett get an adopted sister–to an adult’s story–Farmiga and Sarsgaard are new adoptive parents. Both of these stories (more Farmiga and Sarsgaard because of their fine acting, Farmiga in particular) have some strong moments. Scared kids is a classic, cheap movie standard and Collet-Serra can’t pull it off. It’s sort of embarrassing, because he doesn’t even seem to get it.

Second, he needs to give the family’s house a personality. He can’t. Some of it is lousy production design courtesy Tom Meyer, some of it is Collet-Serra’s incompetence.

As the film’s bad seed, Isabelle Fuhrman is mediocre. She can’t hold her accent and she’s never believable in hindsight after the big reveal.

Orphan‘s a boring thriller with bad direction and an excellent Farmiga performance.

0/4ⓏⒺⓇⓄ

CREDITS

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra; screenplay by David Johnson, based on a story by Alex Mace; director of photography, Jeff Cutter; edited by Timothy Alverson; music by John Ottman; production designer, Tom Meyer; produced by Joel Silver, Jennifer Davisson Killoran, Susan Downey and Leonardo DiCaprio; released by Warner Bros.

Starring Vera Farmiga (Kate), Peter Sarsgaard (John), Isabelle Fuhrman (Esther), CCH Pounder (Sister Abigail), Jimmy Bennett (Daniel), Margo Martindale (Dr. Browning), Karel Roden (Dr. Varava), Rosemary Dunsmore (Grandma Barbara) and Aryana Engineer (Max).

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The Boys (2007) #33

The Boys 33

I really wish I could remember the name of the Wonder Woman analog because Ennis does some great stuff with her this issue. He also does something interesting with the Homelander–setting him up to attempt being a superhero. But those developments are on the Seven side of things….

On the Boys side of things, Butcher goes against the rest of the lame heroes, rather viciously. These guys aren’t particularly reprehensible so at times it seems excessive, until one remembers what they’ve done (Ennis never directly references it, just makes the scenes long enough the reader does it on his or her own).

Hughie and Mother’s Milk regroup and plan out their next steps too. The next issue needs to be a doozy.

John McCrea and Keith Burns take over on art, which gave me slight pause. But they go ahead and keep up the violent intensity without any humor.