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Uptown Magazine - Winnipeg's Online Source for Arts, Entertainment & News

March 20, 2008


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2008-03-20

'More like 10,000 B.S...'

Roland Emmerich's epic 10,000 B.C. misses the historical mark

(10,000 B.C, now showing)

D+

Never mind the chronological details. This movie is, like, in the old times with Mammoths-'n'-pyramids-'n'-spears-'n'-shit. Caveman lust woman. Cave man mission save woman. Caveman destroy Egyptian slavery. Caveman become chosen one. (Look out CGI Mammoths).

Why would screenwriting co-author and director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Patriot) think most audiences wouldn't care that the commingling histories in his historical action-epic were chronologically separated by thousands of years? If we're to take his make-believe situations and accept them, why didn't he make up some kind of complimentary fake calendar suffix - like, 10,000 B.S. - as well?

(Hey, whatevs to the movie for a sec: It was crazy packed at the preview screening. Studio Rep 'Haley' had to turn away "like, 200 people" and couldn't even save No. 1 and I press seats. Winnipeg people were Neanderthalically slobbering over the chance to see this movie, and even though it was really not very good, they allwent home satisfied. It's like they're cavemen, too!)

Frankly, I've already given this crap the plot description it deserves. Apparently the CGI is supposed to be spectacular but save for some respectable sequences involving the construction of the pyramids, it's actually quite primitive. That sabre-toothed tiger that's all up in the Cave Man's face in the trailer isn't half as good as if the filmmakers had simply animated Battle Cat from He-Man in 2D. Plus, the trailer spoils the most dramatic cat moments, anyway. Not to mention the fact that a lot of the film's medium-shot action takes place in front of a bad green screen that gives viewers the temporary sense they're looking at a diorama in the Manitoba Museum.

The all-powerful bad guys are a bunch of sissies with Howard Hughes-like finger nails and as Caveman (alright, his name is D'Leh) ploddingly fulfills this destiny without fail, over land and sea alongside his group of rag-tag warriors, the evil doers never really scare or intimidate or impress as much as they simply look silly.

Another thing: when constructing a climax involving the death of a co-lead character, the audience will always feel ripped off if you magically bring the character back to life just before rolling the credits. This establishes the fact that, as a filmmaker, you are like cocaine - you'll only leave viewers with a fleeting moment of satisfaction.
— Walter Forsberg

It's all fun and games until...

European director turns 'torture porn' flick into a statement about movies

(Funny Games, now showing at Globe Cinema)

A-

This film seems to actually be called Funny Games U.S., which appears to be a way that staunchly anti-American, European director Michael Haneke can get away with selling out.

Now, don't take this lead as some sort of indie-rock/high-school snoot-fest about Haneke being soooo early millennium. The point is that, while Haneke remaking his 1997 Austrian film of the same name for loathesome and undiscerning American audiences may seem like a tired way of cashing in, the tactic is actually redeemed by the complexity of the knowing 'winks' involved therein.

Haneke has written, "my films are intended as polemical statements against the American 'barrel down' cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator. They are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false answers."

In Funny Games, we watch as two young adults, Tom and Jerry (Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet), worm their way into a family's summer cottage, take the three unsuspecting vacationers hostage and then subject them to physical and psychological torture.

There's plenty to let us know that this movie is about 'US' - a movie-watching audience hungry for the bloodier and the more macabre - and in many ways, it's become a more relevant film than its predecessor in the wake of the popular rise of 'torture porn.'

Thankfully, though, Funny Games makes no bones about being taken seriously as a narrative - as with the hokey premises of Hostel, or Captivity. Pitt's repeated knowing looks at the camera as torture is proposed or enacted are meant to make viewers feel bad for our destructively voracious viewing tastes - an old horror genre strategy that works well.

As a horror/thriller movie, I think Funny Games is a huge success. It handily out-scares those classics of torture porn because of Haneke's Hitchcock strategy, alone: the gore is never shown onscreen, leaving you to imagine the worst - which is always the best way. Pitt and Corbet, clad in all-white prep attire and Mickey Mouse gloves, are creepily devious from the get-go and Naomi Watts - as the mother Anne - and Tim Roth- as papa George - give respectable, helpless performances rife with tears and beleaguered looks.
— Walter Forsberg

A PJD that's actually worth watching

Doc on the Three Gorges Dam should spark debate on Chinese development

(Up the Yangtze, March 29-April 3, Cinematheque)

A-

In these pages, I've been kind of hard on the recent output of what I've termed the 'Personal Journey Documentary' (PJD).

Sure, there are some great PJDs in the doc canon - Ross McElwee's Sherman's March (1986), Jeff Krulik's Heavy Metal Parking Lot (1986), and Michael Moore's Roger and Me (1989) come to mind - but my principal gripe has been with the National Film Board's increased reliance on this approach in making its documentaries and co-productions. It's too facile and reliantly understandable, foregoing more inventive documentary strategies that develop the genre and search for 'truth.'

The new NFB co-production, Up the Yangtze, too, can be included in this domain of the Personal Journey Doc but, thankfully, it's only dabbling. Sure, there's some sap-family connection about the filmmaker's grandpa's Yangtze River origins, and the film lacks the air of charisma that comes with the filmmaker-as-protagonist shtick. But, by mostly shutting his narrative yap, Montreal filmmaker Yung Chang offers a terrific fly-on-the-wall story about how the construction of China's Three Gorges Dam is affecting the lives of millions of Chinese.

Much of the film takes place aboard a Yangtze "farewell cruise" tour boat, where all sorts of fascinating intrigue is observed, primarily through two youths - one rich, one poor - who work on the ship.

Employment on the boat is a trial-by-fire experience for young Yu Shui (aka Cindy), but as her father observes in chatting with the cruise ship's hospitality commander, it's also perhaps the closest her impoverished family could ever get to educating its children: "She's never had the chance to go out and see the world - this is her first time."

For well-off Chen Bo Yu (aka Jerry), the experience is simply a way to make dollars and improve his English.

As we move up the river, towards the dam itself, the gargantuan scale of the project is revealed alongside the general indifference of the government to the human impact of the project; over two million people are being forced to abandon their soon-to-be-flooded ancestral cities and towns.

"China is too hard for the common people," a shop owner says, before bursting into tears with stories of being physically beaten into submission to relocate. A government official disagrees: "All of them are happy."

Realizing that this collective socialist sacrifice is being made at the behest of capitalistic endeavours says a lot about the lightning-speed commercial development of China and Up the Yangtze gets you closer to the churning turbines of debate than anything else I've seen. Take a trip and see it.
— Walter Forsberg

If UFC ran a high school...

Never Back Down is a ridiculously violent ridiculous cash-in

(Never Back Down, now showing)

C+

So, devoted reader, what's all this hubbub about Bill C-10? Canadian-made films are too sexy and violent for the Alberta taxpayer?

From where I'm sitting in the projection booth these days, that sounds like total whiny garbage - some of the greatest Canuck cinema might never have slipped through the proposed new restrictions that the Conservatives are offering up.

What's most outrageous is the fact that Hollywood product like the new teen flick, Never Back Down, is way more inappropriately violent than anything we've ever made - though I'm sure Caelum Vatnsdal's weighty tome on Canadian horror films might prove me wrong somewhere. And these kinds of films play in our theatres with total immunity to Harper's censorship committees!

This movie is Ultimate Fighting transplanted into the social circle of an Orlando high school. Midwestern, pretty-boy protagonist Jake (Sean Faris) moves to a new school, far from his native Iowa, where he's naturally a farmer out of water.

Thanks to a viral video of him kicking ass at his last football game back in Iowa, Jake is challenged by the school's uber-cool-kid, and mixed martial arts master, Ryan (Cam Gigandet) to see who's the toughest cookie. When forced into a corner at a party, Jake can't keep up with Ryan's swings and kicks. So, will he ever be able to get into shape, top Ryan at fisticuffs and win the favour of Ryan's girlfriend, Baja?

Aside from the gratuity of muscle-y teens fucking each other's shit up to Kanye West, this film exudes discount-morality - especially at the climax when Jake insolently informs his mixed martial arts master/trainer (Oscar-nominated Djimon Hounsou as Jean Roquoa) that "sometimes, fighting the fight means doing the one thing you don't want to do."

These words come immediately before the final fight at the 'Beat-Down' Tournament, where we get to see his ribs broken via X-ray torso shots. I would love to see an X-ray of what my stomach looked like suffering through this one.
— Walter Forsberg

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