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

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

January 14, 2010


	Get your copy! Find the Uptown Magazine pickup location nearest you.

2010-01-14

A breath of fresh air

Gary Yates' High Life is a fast-paced and funny heist flick about four dazed and confused would-be criminals

B-

HIGH LIFE
Opens Friday

After debuting strongly at high-profile international film festivals in Berlin and Toronto, Gary Yates' latest crime yarn hits Winnipeg, hoping to attract adventurous cinema-goers with its streamlined and darkly comedic approach to an armoured car robbery.

High Life unfolds at a fast-enough clip to sustain interest in the lives of four lovably offbeat addicts and would-be criminals, circa 1983. Our unofficial narrator is Dick (Timothy Olyphant), a negligent father, ex-con and eager dreamer who one day hopes to retire to a ranch.

Bringing him back into the muck is constant screw-up Bug (Stephen Eric McIntyre, in a career-making turn), an aloof but dangerous former cellmate.

Rounding out the gang are Donnie (Joe Anderson) and Billy (Rossif Sutherland, son of Donald and half-brother to Kiefer), a charismatic ladies' man, sometime-thief and the only one of the quartet who hasn't spent time behind bars.

After gabbing endlessly and injecting themselves with morphine, Dick and Bug hatch a half-brilliant plan to take over and rob automatic bank machines (a novelty in '83).

Suffice to say, the endeavour doesn't go exactly as planned.

Wearing his influences on his sleeve (Reservoir Dogs, not to mention a plethora of other heist movies), Yates manages to keep up a relentless pace while balancing the ridiculousness of the strung-out foursome being in any kind of condition to successfully pull off the job.

Lee MacDougall adapts his own play into a feature-length film with the assistance of Yates, expanding dialogue-heavy scenes into a more kinetic story.

McIntyre excels as the madman of the group, while Anderson imbues Donnie with a twitchy nervousness that veers into unfulfilling caricature. Sutherland commits with gusto, bringing a cocksure attitude to his role as the gang's newest member.

Olyphant gives Dick a Billy Bob Thornton-esque vibe, grimed up with greying black facial hair and long unwashed locks. With such bizarre characters for support, it's little wonder that he's overshadowed by his compatriots' theatrics.

Aiding Yates' film is a soundtrack jam-packed with '70s rock favourites - April Wine even becomes a minor plot point.

Staying somewhat faithful to its stage incarnation, High Life doesn't bother with superfluous action sequences. Aside from one brief flurry of activity, the mood nicely accompanies the attitude of these dazed and confused offenders.
— Aaron Graham

PG movies: Where action stars go to die

The Spy Next Door only serves to prove that Jackie Chan's best days are behind him

D-

THE SPY NEXT DOOR
Opens Friday

Legendary martial-arts film star Jackie Chan courts domesticity as he retires from life as an on-loan secret agent in this PG-rated family film that calls to mind the tone of made-for-TV Disney movies from the 1980s.

Chan is Bob Ho, introduced (after a slam-bang highlight reel of his earlier, death-defying stunts) in the guise of his cover identity: an awkward pen salesman.

Serving his last CIA mission, he's jazzed to be settling down with suburban mom Gillian (Amber Valletta), hoping to finally ingratiate himself with her ill-tempered brood (Madeline Carroll, Will Shadley and Alina Foley).

The routine plot has a business trip forcing Gillian out of town. Chan fills in as an ill-equipped babysitter, trying his hardest to bond with a moody pre-teen girl, a womanizing nine-year-old boy struggling to fit with the in crowd, and an uncooperative little girl.

Tackling such issues as bullying, abandonment and general chaos, Chan masters all dilemmas with the aid of some clever gadgetry - and just in time to deal with some former Russian foes, an ersatz Boris and Natasha (Magnus Scheving and Katherine Boecher) who show up after the boy mistakenly logs onto Chan's laptop and downloads the recipe for a plastic-disintegrating liquid worth countless sums of money.

Some very simplistic action sequences follow, and you soon realize Chan is a stunt performer whose best days are behind him - especially when he fends off a stereotypical baddie with a handy stepladder for the millionth time, or musters all his might to gracefully leap to the top of a roof to retrieve the little girl's runaway kitty.

Lending support are CIA operatives, played by George Lopez and Billy Ray Cyrus. (You know you're in the presence of some truly mindless, lacklustre Cineplex entertainment when the most riveting audience dilemma is trying to figure out which one has crossed over to the dark side.)

Directed by Brian Levant, the man who gave us not one but two Flintstones live-action features, The Spy Next Door offers nothing but a watered-down Chan. Seriously, if you want to introduce his work to your kids, rent Supercop.
— Aaron Graham

How to live after death

Fashion icon Tom Ford's directorial debut A Single Man tackles an issue that never goes out of style

B-

A SINGLE MAN
Opens Friday

With A Single Man, celebrated American fashion designer Tom Ford mounts a glossy adaptation of a semi-autobiographical Christopher Isherwood novel using the same eye for quality seen in his popular clothing lines (see: Gucci).

Set in November 1962, the story follows a day in the life of middle-aged George Falconer (Colin Firth), a disheartened gay university instructor contemplating suicide after the recent sudden death of his long-term boyfriend (Matthew Goode).

Dejectedly reporting to his classroom, George encounters Kenny (Nicholas Hoult), a student who seems keen to provide him with some solace. Later, he has a dinner date with fellow Londoner (and flagrant boozehound) Charley (Julianne Moore), though it's apparent by this time that George is simply going through the motions before he can work up the courage to end his own life. Being a part of society doesn't do it for him anymore - everything's become a drag.

George sees his beloved's lifeless eyes in everyone he encounters, their very breathing serving as a constant reminder of all the love that's departed for good.

Running into a Spanish hustler outside of a liquor store, George admires his beauty but, as in the rest of Ford's picture, remains removed from expressing any overt sexual desires.

The attempted suicide is a calamitous non-feat for George. After taking great pains to ensure that his finances will be dispersed amongst the few friends he's leaving behind and laying out the suit he wishes to be buried in, George realizes he's incapable of going through with it.

Other crucial scenes include Charley's assertion that the love George shared with his boyfriend wasn't "real" because it wasn't between a man and a woman. She takes it back immediately, but the damage is irrevocable. It's in such moments that George becomes emblematic of Isherwood's main theme: the steadfast refusal to accept one's place in society, in this case, one that deems homosexuality abnormal.

George's final encounter is with Kenny. The two swim nude near his home, and the sudden burst of humanity revitalizes George - but will it be enough to dispel the gloom from his life?

Interspersed throughout the film are exposition-heavy but flawlessly designed black-and-white interludes featuring George and his boyfriend; the two are treated like stylish models in a Vanity Fair ad. (You can almost smell the cologne-smeared inserts.)

Firth conveys an appropriate level of misery throughout, but his performance is never maudlin. Striving for purpose in everyday interactions while trying to cope with his loss without much support (George was refused admittance to his boyfriend's funeral by the family), he remains alone with his grief.

Ford captures the detached emotions without sentimentality, but there is a stuffiness to his approach - at times it feels like it's all under glass. As George himself says in the film: "I wouldn't want to live in a world without sentiment."

Perhaps Ford could have heeded some of that advice.
— Aaron Graham

Strength, courage and drive: what little ballerinas are made of

Tutu Much follows nine young girls from around the world hoping to make it into the prestigious Royal Winnipeg Ballet

TUTU MUCH
Jan. 17, 1 p.m. & Jan. 18, 7 p.m., SilverCity Polo Park

In TuTu Much, nine young girls from all over the globe test the limits of both their inner and outer strength, spending four grueling weeks of summer auditioning for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School.

The ultimate goal for the young hopefuls is to be offered the Golden Ticket opportunity to study as part of the School's Professional Division for an entire year, leaving friends and family to pursue their dream.

These preadolescents are leaving the nest for the very first time, making the decision of whether to continue on such a stringent path for years to come that much more difficult to face.

Some of the would-be students include 14-year-old Won-Jung from Gwacheon, Korea. Working part time at her parent's grocery, she's so in love with dance that she can be seen snaking alongside the crammed shelves, testing out new maneuvers learned from class.

Kayla, a 13-year-old Calgary native, and Lauren, a 12-year old Winnipegger, are just two more of the disparate nine who struggle with homesickness, minor injuries and self-conscious issues over whether they'll measure up.

RWB director Arlene Minkhorst is another key figure for the film, depicted as necessarily strict when introducing the girls with some words of warning that any sort of rule-breaking will not be tolerated. This prompts one of the youngsters in a one-on-one interview to quip about how very wrong her friends are when they thought she lucked out with a vacation away from home.

Although ballet enthusiasts will obviously have much more to discuss when it comes to a post-film chat, this light-hearted look isn't just an insider's account; director Elise Sherhorne captures the strains, pains and sacrifices the talented must face for the chance to see if a lifetime of plying their art is even in the realm of possibility.

The doc, produced by Vonnie von Helmolt - no stranger to pirouetting on film, as she produced Guy Maddin's Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary - will be screened as part of a limited engagement at Polo Park. If you're into dance, don't miss it.
— Aaron Graham

Crash and burn

Youth in Revolt starts out promising - but it winds up being a bit of a let down

YOUTH IN REVOLT
Now playing

More skillfully refined in his mealy-mouthed Gen-Y persona that he's developed in the pandering Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist and the let's-get-drunk-and-laid Superbad, Michael Cera begins to show some semblance of range in his newest, a coming-of-age comedy adapted from a cult novel by C.D. Payne.

The range comes in part because of the creation a bad-boy alter-ego for shy, reserved Nick Twisp (Cera), a clever, smart-mouthed kid living a double-sided white-trash existence: his divorced mom (Jean Smart) romances a hot-headed cop (Ray Liotta) after her first boyfriend, Jerry (Zach Galifianakis), a bearded, beer-bellied con-artist dies, while his dad (Steve Buscemi) has found some oversexed, stoner gal (Ari Graynor) to share his life with.

After a car-selling scam goes south for Jerry, he loads Nick and his mom in a jalopy and temporarily moves them out to a mobile home in a remote area of California.

It's in this predicament that Nick meets (and immediately falls for) Sheeni (Portia Doubleday), a sophisticated adolescent who loves Jean-Paul Belmondo, Serge Gainsbourg, and all things Parisian.

Trouble is, she's already got a do-gooder boyfriend and, though Nick may be too wussy to earn her charms, her boyfriend's no match for Nick's alter-ego, the thin-mustachioed Francois Dillinger who Sheeni can't help but adore.

The misadventures of Francois, with a terrified Nick playing witness, begin after the two would-be lovers part ways. He burns down half of Berkeley, Calif. just to impress her, and even dares to sneak into her French-speaking boarding school. Both end disastrously, keeping the pair apart indefinitely.

Unlikely characters crop up for support: Sheeni's druggie brother (Justin Long), her church-going parents (M. Emmett Walsh, Mary Kay Place), a bizarre neighbour (Fred Willard) with an obsession for all political causes, and a classmate from England (Adhir Kalyan) who Nick quickly befriends after moving to live with his father.

With such an interesting cross-section of performers, the film lazily drifts into an episodic structure for its last couple of acts, with Nick's impulsive attempts at affection interrupting the lives of these truly peculiar people.

Adapted by Gustin Nash and directed by Miguel Arteta - a television veteran with three idiosyncratic indie films to his credit (Star Maps, Chuck & Buck, The Good Girl) -Youth in Revolt revels in its strangeness without an over-reliance on hipness.

More in line with the jazzy short tales read by radio raconteur Jean Shepherd (that famous voice who narrates his autobiographical A Christmas Story), the film unfolds like a bad joke: A great premise with a poor punch-line.
— Aaron Graham

Current Issue • Archive • What’s Up • Contact • Media Kit • Contests