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November 26, 2009


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2009-11-26

Just read the book

John Hillcoat's adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road is bogged down by needless exposition

D+

THE ROAD
Opening Friday

Postponed last October, John Hillcoat's adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy's novel, The Road, is now finally being unleashed by The Weinstein Company - just in time for Academy Award season. The film arrestingly captures the book's arid, post-apocalyptic setting, but any plot momentum is quashed by anecdotal incidents involving its main characters, a father (Viggo Mortensen) and son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) on the road to an uncertain, but definitely dire, future.

An unnamed cataclysm (addressed in a series of flashbacks) has devastated the Earth - so much so that the few pockets of civilization remaining have taken up cannibalism.

Charlize Theron plays the part of Woman, the wife to Mortensen's Man. Pregnant when the disasters began, the Woman survives several harsh winters with her husband, but loses her will to continue when their son turns 11.

Now Man and Boy are heading for the warmer climates of the south, encountering sinister sorts while scrounging around for food and shelter. Reconciling with the fact that he won't be around forever, Man attempts to instill in Boy a healthy amount of distrust for strangers?- which is good advice when raping, pillaging and eating your fellow human beings is the order of the day.

Still, Man's paranoia runs a little too deep, as evidenced in a scene in which he feels threatend by a feeble Old Man (Robert Duvall). Through gritted teeth, he permits his son to invite the elder to join them for supper, before leaving him to his own devices. Out of necessity, Man is practically a walking Darwin principle.

Joe Penhall adapts McCarthy's book with some consideration, but generally takes more of a literal approach to the author's suggestive writing style - one that garnered McCarthy, who also wrote No Country For Old Men, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in April 2007. This could be a simple by-product of actualizing into images what works better in the mind, but poor technical choices - such as the bits of unneeded narration by Mortenson, likely added for clarification purposes in a fit of studio over-think - don't help.

Mortensen embodies grizzled masculinity, the same kind he did in his one-two punch for David Cronenberg (A History of Violence, Eastern Promises). Still, his portrayal here seems curiously diluted and not as effective. Ditto his charisma with the otherwise adequate Boy, played with an almost otherworldliness by Smit-McPhee.

The score is provided by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, Hillcoat's previous collaborators on the western throwback The Proposition. Once again, there's an emphasis on providing foreboding, dirge-like accompaniment and, for the most part, it adds to the primal bond on display.

One image encapsulates The Road, and it happens early on: legal tender spilling out from a satchel, rendered useless in this new world order. It's just too bad that such poetic moments are so few.
— Aaron Graham

'Jimmy Page, Jack White and The Edge walk into a bar...'

The concept for It Might Get Loud may sound good, but the film fails to dig deep

C-

'Jimmy Page, Jack White and The Edge walk into a bar...'

IT MIGHT GET LOUD
Nov. 27 & 28, Dec. 2-6, Cinematheque

Although the concept of assembling three generations of guitar heroes to talk shop was no doubt attractive on paper, It Might Get Loud leaves much to be desired.

Jimmy Page, the elder statesman who went from session player to Yardbird to the leading creative force behind Led Zeppelin, represents the '60s and '70s. Now sporting a silver mullet, Page is this triumvirate's legendary figure, keen to rhapsodize on Link Wray records and take us through tours of Headley Grange, the East Hampshire homestead that was converted into a recording space for Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham way back when.

Next on the docket, and the only individual to fully remove his celebrity cloak, is U2's The Edge.

In fact, director Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) uses more footage of him than either Page or Jack White, capturing the friendly Dubliner as he plays cassettes of rehearsals of Where the Streets Have No Name, and accompanying him to the high school where, in the late '70s, the now-iconic quartet practiced after classes ended. Choice footage of a preening, early '80s-era Bono doing his best asexualized David Bowie adds to the charm.

Last but not least is The White Stripes/Raconteurs/Dead Weather frontman Jack White, a self-mythologizer if there ever was one. Although his rip-roaring talent on the axe is without question, White's not as candid as his screen compatriots.

It's also telling that his is the only segment to contain any cinematic conceits; in this case, a 10-year-old boy masquerades as the younger Jack, following the real-life man's every lead on a rendition of Sittin' on Top of the World.

The three get together in Los Angeles on January 28, 2008. Seated in a semi-circle, a crop of influential LPs on hand, they trivially discuss their approach to their craft.

While The Edge, Page and White are not particularly inarticulate, you can sense the awkwardness that comes with a group of strangers meeting for the first time. It's not even until the last act of the film that they strap on their guitars and jam. Guggenheim must have skimmed over the encounter; the 96-minute running time contains far less of the chat than you'd expect from the opening titles.

The viewer does get occasional glimpses of excitement - never more than when the three discuss the artists that inspired them - but as we all know, musicians are ultimately judged on their performances.
— Aaron Graham

Getting the kinks out

Chris Rock's daughters inspire him to explore hair-straightening (really)

B+

GOOD HAIR
Now playing

This is not a Chris Rock concert movie. Instead, Good Hair is an examination by Rock and comedian Jeff Stilson of the phenomenon of African-American women wanting straighter hair.

One of the more interesting turns in the film is an interview with Rev. Al Sharpton.

In it, Sharpton tells his version of his role in the establishment of Martin Luther King day as an American federal holiday.

Prior to Sharpton going up to Washington to argue on behalf of MLK Day, musician James Brown insisted that the reverend use hair relaxer for the first time, as it was the singer's notion that straighter hair would ease Republican nerves.

As in the rest of the feature, Rock genially listens in, content to sit back and wait for that perfect moment to offer a one-liner.

Since he has no agenda to push, Rock leads his all-inclusive documentary on a journey that ranges from the varying thoughts of celebrities - including Maya Angelou, rap artist Eve and child star Raven-Symoné - to those of the middle-class women who spend hours in beauty salons, plunking down thousands of dollars a year on relaxers, extensions, and intricate weaves.

There's enough material in this approach alone to sustain a feature, but Rock also highlights The Bronner Bros. International Hair Show, a wacky competition that takes place every year in Atlanta, Ga., just for added measure.

Four contestants vie for $20,000 and a massive trophy by creating a bizarre, conceptual stage presentation. The shows run the gamut from cutting hair upside down to cutting hair underwater. The whole concept is a bit outré, and Rock's interactions and eye-rolls provide some of this movie's bigger laughs.

Rock's two little girls were the inspiration for this project in the first place. It was their desire for various hair treatments that led him to wonder whether or not to subject them to painful perms and the possibly dangerous chemicals involved.

Interviewing a scientist, Rock finds out that hair relaxer's main ingredient, sodium hydroxide, can erode soda cans in less than four hours.

Through it all, the actor/comedian is an affable host. He's genuinely bemused by uncovering the extravagant facts behind the hair industry's huge profit margins.

Interacting with everyday people, including women who refuse to mess with what heredity gave them, Rock has an infectious good time in the process, ensuring he gives his audience an entertaining ride.
— Aaron Graham

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