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September 25, 2008


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2008-09-25

Everyone's favourite madman

New doc explores the gonzo legacy of the one and only Hunter S. Thompson

GONZO: THE LIFE AND WORK OF DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON
Sept. 26 & 27; Oct. 1 & 2, Cinematheque

At first glance, politically conscious, Oscar-winning documentary director Alex Gibney's choice to detail the life of gonzo journalist and long-time druggie Hunter S. Thompson is a curious one, especially after he covered the torture horrors of Guantanamo Bay in Taxi to the Dark Side and the Enron brouhaha in The Smartest Guys in the Room.

It's only when you see which parts of the good doctor's life and career that Gibney chooses to emphasize that you begin to realize how good a subject Thompson may be.

Elaborating on just how important Thompson's coverage of the presidential campaign trail for Rolling Stone magazine was, Gibney blazes through all of the pot smoke to depict how the writer's characteristically incisive and bent wit opened up new avenues of journalism.

Covering the '72, '76 and, to a lesser extent, '04 elections (not to mention his own run for sheriff of Aspen in '70), Thompson categorized his country's options, formulated new ways of seeing socio-political issues through his tinted glasses and put them into searing poetry on the page. Right or wrong, his voice was original and proudly patriotic, if askew. The void has not been filled since his '05 suicide.

For those who have only read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (or, worse, have only seen the Johnny Depp/Terry Gilliam film; a great one, but no substitute for the literary precedent), Gibney's film is an eye-opener.

Far from a glib portrait of a man who took copious amounts of drugs and alcohol, it's an awakening for anyone simple-minded enough to believe that doing the same will gift them with a similar talent. We're told of how Thompson rewrote The Great Gatsby over and over again, teaching himself how to construct seamless prose. Talking heads such as Jimmy Buffet, Jimmy Carter and presidential hopeful George McGovern (who Thompson diligently championed against Nixon in '72) are seen discussing his magnanimous charisma and significant ability. Johnny Depp is on hand to read passages from Thompson's first book, an exposé on that timeless, ruthless motorcycle gang, the Hells Angels, while odd clips, such as the writer's appearance on To Tell The Truth, rip-roar past with musical accompaniment (the Stones' Sympathy for the Devil, natch).

Thompson led an invigorating life on his own terms, concluding it with what's got to be the most unique displacement of cremated ashes the world has ever seen.

Even in death, the man could provide gasps of astonishment.
— Aaron Graham

Speaking of turn-offs...

My Best Friend's Girl is an unadulterated mess, says Graham

MY BEST FRIEND'S GIRL
Now playing

If any film student was ballsy enough to write a dissertation on the films of Howard Deutch, one common characteristic would crop up: the fact that the wrong guy gets the girl every time out.

There's the well-documented case of the last-minute, hastily rewritten script for Pretty in Pink - Deutch's first film - in which Andrew McCarthy lands Molly Ringwald without much of an effort, leaving stylish nerd Ducky (Jon Cryer) to implausibly attract some random girl, essentially undermining the structure John Hughes had carefully built into the script.

In Deutch's newest, craggy-faced sourpuss Dane Cook gets to knowingly act like a jerk while dancing around with fire ants in his pants (you know, like his stand-up) for close to two hours before winning the affection of the lovely Kate Hudson.

Cook plays self-described asshole Tank, a womanizer who supplements his call centre income by hiring himself out to dumped boyfriends to date the women who dumped them and treat them disgustingly for one evening, thus ensuring that they'll run to the hills - and into the arms of the supposed nice guy they've pushed away.

When Tank learns that his best friend and roommate, played by Jason Biggs, is pining for co-worker Hudson, he agrees to turn up the levels of his prickish personality to 11, the unforeseen obstacle in his way being the fact that Hudson has led a chaste life previous to this and has since decided to engage her inner wild-child.

Deutch sloppily channels The Graduate in a number of his camera set-ups and plot points (Cook taking Hudson to a sleazy strip-club on their first date, for example), but doesn't bother to make a point, choosing instead to revel in the crudeness of Jordan Cahan's foul script.

It's not the depravity and bad taste that makes this movie such an unadulterated mess - it's that it's carried off with all of the charm of a fourth-grader picking lint out of his naval. Even if, like me, you haven't cared one way or the other for Hudson in the past, one begins to feel sorry for the way Cook defiles her considerable comedic chops; she's never had to sink so low, even when first starting out as an actress.

Turning up for a deplorable cameo is Alec Baldwin, looking like he just rolled out of bed from a hard night of partying. As Cook's similarly libidinous father, he attempts to cajole his son into embracing his true nature of "banging as much as possible" before doing a 180 when the plot dictates he needs to in order to wrap up the love triangle.

Biggs is hardly a Ducky. He provides his usual, listless shifting-about schtick, unconvincingly giving us the same uncomfortable-in-his-own-body act he's deployed ever since breaking into film with American Pie. But side by side, Cook makes Biggs look like Charlie Chaplin, with director Deutch figuring he doesn't need to rein in the popular comedian, allowing for the most putrid of lines, surely improvisatory, to make it in unscathed.
— Aaron Graham

Red is gold

Brian Cox shines in Red, one the best films you'll see this year

A+

RED
Sept. 25-28, Cinematheque

Brian Cox, forever notorious as the original Hannibal Lecktor in Michael Mann's Manhunter (and yes, that's how they spelled it in that movie), must contend with a trio of rural hoodlums in this rewarding adaptation of Jack Ketchum's 1995 novel.

Cox is Avery Ludlow, an uncomplicated but not simple-minded outdoorsman and storeowner living in Portland, Ore. Out fishing one day, he's accosted by three young men, played by Noel Fisher, Kyle Gallner, and Shiloh Fernandez, who attempt to rob him. When it turns out that his pockets are empty, the brasher of the bunch sets his rifle on Ludlow's dog and pulls the trigger. This sets in motion a series of confrontations between Cox and the teens' parents - two from an affluent family (with a groomed patriarch portrayed by Tom Sizemore) and one from impoverished means (with parents played by Robert Englund and Amanda Plummer). Ludlow's stated intentions? To gain justice or, at the very least, hear a sincere apology.

His pleas fall on deaf ears again and again with the parents, and nobody really joins his cause in the town save for lawyer Richard Riehle (Office Space) and a reporter (Kim Dickens). Ludlow's moral intrepidness in the face of this senseless act, seemingly meaningless to everybody but himself, slowly ingratiates itself to the audience before the real significance behind the shooting - and the dog - is revealed in a standout monologue.

Filmed in Maryland, Red had its fair share of birthing pangs, most notably the dismissal of original director Lucky McKee (May, The Woods) after only a week's worth of shooting. (Norwegian director Trygve Allister Diesen was brought in to finish and both are credited.) The quiet, pastoral ambiance imbued throughout is highly reminiscent of the more sedate works of Sam Peckinpah (Ride the High Country, The Ballad of Cable Hogue), and it could be said of Ludlow, as many of Peckinpah's protagonists are wont to express in one way or another, that he just wants to 'enter his house justified.'

The script, by Stephen Susco (the Americanized remakes of The Grudge and its sequel), is stimulatingly literate, complete with lengthy diatribes given by Ludlow to whoever he has his sights on at the moment, be it a gun-store owner with a tale to tell about his life-saving hound or the devoted reporter who wishes to relate his story.

While redolent of recent retributive rehashes The Brave One and Death Sentence, Red is more like an imaginative, contemplative country variation of Death Wish and its sequels, without Charles Bronson's tacky salt-and-pepper moustache. A character study at its very heart, Cox is the highlight and the sole reason why Red may be one of the films of the year. Run, don't walk.
— Aaron Graham

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