One film grabs most of the press this week. You might have heard of it. It’s got Twilight in the title. Look further though, there’s another young romance just opened, and another marriage, a depressed one. The dancing penguins are back, Luna the whale is remembered, horses are gently trained and some people dressed up as superheroes are fighting crime.
Here’s the list:
Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1: 2 ½ stars
Like Crazy: 3
Melancholia: 3 ½
Happy Feet Two: 3
The Whale: 4 ½
Buck: 4
A Matter of Taste: --
Superheroes: 3 ½
The Story of Fishbone: 3
THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN - PART 1: It happened to Harry Potter too. The last book was split in two and part one was dull and slow. At first it didn’t seem it would be that way in this one because less than a minute in Taylor Lautner rips off his shirt and runs out in the rain in anger.
He’s just seen the invitation to Edward and Bella’s wedding and his rage got the better of him. However, we’re denied such intensity for the next 40 minutes or so as the ceremony takes over, from preparation (Bella trying out high heels), to the “I do” moment, mundane speeches at the reception, and a honeymoon in Brazil, in an airy house on a sunny beach. Sunny? For a vampire? Oh, don’t analyze everything.
The young women in the audience will enjoy how well the marriage and first-sex anxieties are presented and let’s concentrate on the real problem. Bella hasn’t been turned yet and sex between a vampire and human is dangerous. It makes Bella pregnant incredibly fast and conceives a baby that threatens her life from her insides. Even worse, it endangers the peace treaty between vampires and werewolves back here in B.C. Uh, make that Forks, Washington. It was only filmed, not set, here.
Lautner comes back to try and salvage the peace as wolves lay siege to the house where Bella (Kristen Stewart) looks deathly ill without makeup and Edward (Robert Pattinson), who looks pale and other-worldly most of the time, rises to the occasion and performs a procedure that’s harrowing and bloody. It’s part of the best 20 minutes in this film and caps the imaginative bits, the hallucinations, dreams, vampire physiology, that new director Bill Condon, an Oscar winner, has worked in. It almost makes up for a lot of silliness that came before. (Four local theatres: Dunbar, Dolphin, Oakridge, Scotiabank, and many in the suburbs) 2 ½ out of 5
LIKE CRAZY: Like a light melody played in a minor key, this one doesn’t wow you but proves to be comfortably pleasing. And it presents young romance in a far more natural way than just about any romantic drama these days. The film won the top award at Sundance this year.
Anton Yelchin plays a California student who strikes up a relationship with a visiting Brit (Felicity Jones) who wants to be a writer. We get a tender montage of soulful walks, beach lounging and midway rides. But then, when she takes a trip home to England, she isn’t allowed back into the U.S. because she had violated her student visa by overstaying. The couple try a long distance affair which proves wobbly. They even get married but the visa problem remains. We wonder how they can ever get back together when jealousy also creeps in. That’s because they both start sleeping with other partners, he with Jennifer Lawrence, the Oscar nominee of earlier this year. The story is improbable and contrived but the joy-and-heartbreak mood, the improvised dialogue, the couple’s chemistry and Felicity’s acting make it work, if not resoundingly, at least pretty well. (5th Avenue) 3 out of 5
MELANCHOLIA: When a movie starts with the end of the world, in slow motion and to the music of Wagner, where can it go next? To a flashback, of course, and a visit with some of the little people living below and before this cataclysm. And a richly imagined study of depression.
Kirsten Dunst is the first patient. She’s the bride at a wedding where she’s clearly out of place. Her sister (Charlotte Gainsbourg) warns against making a scene (“You know what I mean”) but with parents as cynical and/or defeated as hers (Charlotte Rampling, John Hurt) and a chronic angst lingering inside her, you know she won’t be enjoying the evening. A quick bit of sex with a stranger out on the golf course notwithstanding. The entire wedding is one of the weirdest ever seen in the movies. It’s fraught with unease and menace.
Patient number two is her sister, who cares for her after the wedding, lives an apparently happy life with her children and rich husband (Kiefer Sutherland) but gets panicky when a new planet emerges from behind the sun and threatens Earth. Depression is infectious and director Lars von Trier is riffing on his own experiences with the malady as he explores it. His film is flawlessly acted (Dunst won an award at Cannes) and, despite its romantic gloominess, is beautiful to look at. NOTE: There’s nothing at all in it leading to the Nazi and Hitler jokes that got von Trier banned from the Cannes festival. He was just running off at the mouth. (International Village) 4 out of 5
HAPPY FEET TWO: Bigger, louder, more complex than the original film that was such a big hit and won an Oscar five years ago, but, you know, it’s for exactly those same reasons that it’s not as good. The filmmakers have worked hard to top the first one, in spectacular animation, in the huge musical numbers and in some very good 3-D. Unfortunately, they’ve ditched much of the charm and given us a penguin epic that feels belabored rather than light on its feet.
Mumble (Elijah Wood), the tap dancing rebel, is now a father with a son too shy to dance, even though it’s now the in thing with the flock. A mammoth production number to a gospel-flavored version of Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation establishes that point right off the top. The son runs away, ends up in Ramon’s colony (yes, Robin Williams is back as both this Latino character and the messianic Lovelace). There’s a new bombastic speaker too, a Swedish penguin that can fly.
Don’t worry, it’s explained. Not that it matters a lot because the story turns elsewhere. Once again, there’s an environmental angle, climate change, which cracks the ice and traps Mumble’s colony. Meanwhile, in an almost completely unrelated parallel story, two krill (voiced by Brad Pitt and Matt Damon) are trying to better their lot under the sea and spouting philosophy about “existential terrors”. Quite a mish mash this one. The craftsmanship is far better than the storytelling. (International Village, The Dolphin and many suburban theatres) 3 out of 5
THE WHALE: This is a tweaked and improved version of the film that played here three years ago as Saving Luna. There is some new footage, a more streamlined edit and a less precious narration. It’s now spoken by Ryan Reynolds, who supported the film, along with his former wife, Scarlett Johansson, and thereby helped get it into theatres in the United States. It had been popular at film festivals and seeing it again reminds us of why. This is a gorgeously filmed documentary about Luna, the young whale that got stranded in Nootka Sound on the west side of Vancouver Island a few years ago, annoying some boaters, delighting others and confounding the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. He made news world-wide.
He was just a kid, playful and looking for friends but touching him, stroking and later, even just looking at Luna, was illegal. Local natives claimed he was a chief reincarnated. They prevented DFO from moving him back to his family because they feared he would be taken to an aquarium. The film by Michael Parfit and Suzanne Chisholm, a couple of nature journalists, is still a little too anthropomorphic in its views of animal motivation, but it’s also funny, emotional and tragic. And beautiful up there on the big screen. (Granville Theatre) 4 ½ out of 5
BUCK: A fine movie for anyone who likes horses, or animals in general for that matter. It shows how one man treats them properly; trains them without whips, but with respect. The star of this documentary is a horse handler named Buck Brannaman, a man so laconic and easy going you might find yourself thinking of Gary Cooper. You should recall the movie The Horse Whisperer. He inspired it, advised on it and saved a crucial scene by knowing more than the professional trainers. Robert Redford calls him a “no nonsense guy,” a description that fits perfectly what we see him do in a series of horse clinics. He can get these animals to walk, stop and turn at the exact pace he sets, without inflicting pain. He suffered enough of that himself from an abusive father and embraced a gentle training method he likens to properly raising children. There’s a tragic sequence with an orphan horse that never learned to behave but most of the film is sunny, touching and lightened with wry humor. (VanCity Theatre) 4 out of 5
Playing in tandem with …
A MATTER OF TASTE: A documentary for foodies about a man who served up creations like "eel, violets and chocolate," "espuma of calf brains and foie gras," and "beer and truffle soup” and was praised with three stars by the New York Times. That was Paul Liebrandt at age 24. Since then he’s had an up and down career in the Big Apple’s tough restaurant scene. Director Sally Rowe spent more than a decade tracking it and focuses her film on the tense lead-up to a visit and taste test by a food critic who can make or break careers. (VanCity
SUPERHEROES: Think the amateur crime fighters in movies like Defendor or Kick-Ass are total fiction? Or the news story from Chilliwack this week about three teens dressing as comic-book characters to “troll” for sexual predators just a one-off oddity? Think again. It seems there are people all over willing to don spandex and imaginary identities to patrol the streets for baddies.
This entertaining, often amusing, documentary, originally made for HBO, gives us a glimpse of over 40 of them and a closer visit with a few.
Mr. Xtreme has a Justice League with only one member. But he’s recruiting. The generically-named Super Hero drives a red Corvette. Master Legend surveys a city skyline from a rooftop and proclaims “This is the town that I defend.” In a rare scene of actual crime fighting, Dark Guardian confronts a New York drug dealer who yaps back defiantly. Some spend more time just doing good deeds on the street. Vancouver’s contribution, for instance, Thanatos, helps people on the downtown eastside wearing a death mask and a long coat. The film lets them explain themselves and doesn’t judge. A psychologist says they’re “not necessarily any crazier than you or I” but a police spokeswomen has a list of concerns and Stan Lee of Marvel Comics appears a little bemused. (Pacific Cinematheque) Note: Thanatos will attend Sunday night and take questions. 3 1/2 out of 5
Playing in tandem with …
EVERYDAY SUNSHINE: THE STORY OF FISHBONE: A fresh take on some common rock and roll themes: bands split by infighting and bands that failed to make it big. Plus a new extreme: a kidnapping charge on a leader for forcibly bringing back a player who walked out. That and much more drama swirls around Fishbone, the Los Angeles band once touted by other musicians and critics as the next big thing. It didn’t happen, although they had a major record deal, Spike Lee directed a video and their live shows were legendary. This film charts their struggles all the way. Six friends from south central Los Angeles bussed to a white high school formed the band in 1979 and played a goodtime ska/reggae/rock/soul hybrid with a goofy stage presence. Friction started when the Rodney King riots brought a mood change. One member wanted to get serious; one was called a dictator for resisting change and the clown of the group developed a creepy alter ego, Dr. Mad Vibes. Many changes of personnel and record labels later, the band is still going and celebrated by Tim Robbins (“unique”), Flea (“magic”) and Gwen Stefani (“we were all influenced by them”). (Pacific Cinematheque) NOTE: Co-director Lev Anderson will attend Friday night. 3 out of 5
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